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.

by way of Ethan Iverson, Steve Reich's Tehilim; Kyle Gann on the history of minimalism; some thoughts on a style that had any interaction with the pop of its era and the post-war Pax American context that made that possible

A week late but ... Steve Reich had a birthday recently ... 

 https://ethaniverson.com/2020/10/07/steve-reichs-tehillim/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hf2qDuMyWHg

Ethan Iverson rightly points out that it would be hard to find someone more eloquent on the history of minimalism than Kyle Gann but I'm going to go so far as to point you to the chapter where Gann discusses the movement because, as I hope long-time readers know, I've referenced Gann's writings on a semi-regular basis here, at least when the blog is dealing with music.

https://www.kylegann.com/AM20C-8.pdf

MASS - Steve Dobrogosz

Years ago ... someone asked if I'd heard Steve Dobrogosz' Mass
https://oldlife.org/2016/08/23/was-francis-schaeffer-an-intellectual/#comment-146073

August 24, 2016 at 2:59 pm

...Ever checked out what Steve Dobrogosz does with The Mass. Not saying it’s a perfect correlation to what you’re interested in, but it’s certainly worth considering.

Well, took a while to get around to it. But ...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xw__h35uBtw

Toby Twining: Chrysalid Requiem--Sanctus

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HgGqm_jnL_0

I, of course, learned about this reading Kyle Gann's The Arithmetic of Listening, which is a great book on the history of tuning systems I'm going to have to blog about at some point this year.  I'm still committed to composing using the equal-tempered set-up we guitarists are given who don't have access to fretboards that have alternate tunings, but I've been intrigued by a lot of work done in what's maybe too colloquially known as microtonal 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

Toby Twining--Chrysalid Requiem, Dies Irae

Not that I'm really at all committed to composing microtonal or extended just intonation music myself (the classical guitar is in its most conventional form the most stuck-to-equal-temperament instrument an instrument can be), but I do like to listen to music that's composed without being tethered to equal temperament.  String quartets by Haba, keyboard music by Wyschnegradsky or Ben Johnston, especially the string quartets of Ben Johnston, I find that I can enjoy microtonal music.  Johnston's been my favorite because, to put it bluntly, Johnston was the microtonalist/extended just intonationist composer who didn't forget that tunes have to be in the music, which is not necessarily the case with, say, Easley Blackwood (although, frankly, I don't dislike the Blackwood string quartets, I just don't come back to them as listening experiences the way I repeatedly have with Johnston's quartets).

Anyway, having read Kyle Gann's wonderful recent book on the history of tuning systems I learned about Toby Twining's Chrysalid Requiem.  So, fair warning to people who aren't into microtonality or extended techniques in choral singing, don't click on the link but if you are ... a link to the Dies Irae from Toby Twining's Chrysalid Requiem is after the break

Francis Poulenc--Vinea mea electa from 4 Motets pour un temps de pénitence

A beautiful little choral work by Poulenc I remember from my college choir days

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8RrbSOce1Uw