Kerry McCarthy's biography on William Byrd

Byrd

Kerry McCarthy

(c) Oxford University Press 2013

ISBN 978-0-19-538875-6

McCarthy's biography of the English Renaissance composer William Byrd is an almost breezy primer on the composer's life and times but given how opaque Renaissance choral music can be this is one of the book's several strengths. It may be that we can't entirely describe what happened in Byrd's musical life and times in terms of tonality as taught in US or UK music pedagogy; on the other hand, framing Byrd's recusant Catholicism in light of how much religious non-conformity cost other people in the Elizabethan era is not so hard to understand.  We will learn from McCarthy, for instance, that once Catholic music was banned any proof of owning Catholic liturgical music within Elizabethan England was regarded as evidence of potential or actual sympathy to political intrigues against the crown. 

As long as you're moderately comfortable reading scores the book isn't very taxing for a reader, although it helps a great deal if you have heard, for instance, Byrd's masses and some of his keyboard music.  This is a biography that is geared for a lay reader who, while musically literate, is not going to be steeped in Renaissance liturgical practices among Protestants and Catholics and all of that.  In other words, you don't have to have gotten a seminarian's education on the one hand or anything beyond undergrad level music-reading to be able to get benefits from reading this book.  As Byrd has been one of my favorite composers for decades I had a lot of fun reading this biography. It also brings up a few points I have discussed here over the years about polystylistic exchange within musical eras and the role that improvisation in then-contemporary or even popular styles used to play in the music pedagogy of this or that era.

Ethan Hein on Wellerman, sea shanties, and folk idioms gives me an excuse to mention the most famous pirate tune you probably only heard as a shape note hymn

So the sea shanties thing has been happening and Ethan Hein has discussed Wellerman recently.  The ex-choral singer in me can't resist writing a few things that I hope may be of interest about the sea shanty genre. 

http://www.ethanhein.com/wp/2021/wellerman/#more-21976

...

Harmony is not the only thing that makes this sound like a folk song. The Longest Johns’ untrained singing style contributes to the folkiness too. Their backing vocals use some “bad” counterpoint and voice leading. For example, at the end of the chorus, on “take our leave and gooo,” the four singers all converge on C in octaves rather than spreading themselves out across C, E-flat and G. If I wrote counterpoint like this in graduate tonal theory, I would have flunked. But this tune would not be improved by “correct” voice leading. Classical-style choral arrangements of folk songs like this can sound smoother and prettier, but without the rough edges, the music loses its soul.

...

To this I can add a few first-hand observations about singing a variety of styles of choral music.

William Byrd--Mass for 5 voices, performed by The Cardinall's Musick

Let no one think that because I linked to a recent microtonal choral work by Toby Twining I don't have any love for the monuments of choral music past.  I am more of a fan of Elizabethan era choral music than I am of microtonal music and I am particularly fond of Byrd and Tallis. 

Here's the Kyrie from Byrd's spectacular Mass for 5 Voices, just to make sure that today's posts to musical links get some of the earlier eras of music besides contemporary.  I like contemporary plenty but contemporary still builds upon the past and in Western contexts building on a past that includes William Byrd is, I think, always a good idea.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YrgudFQ6-IE