William Byrd

• for the Virginia planter see William Byrd II

William Byrd (1543–1623), English composer, was one of the last and perhaps greatest of the great Tudor and Jacobean masters that formed the musical component of the English Renaissance.

He was a pupil of Thomas Tallis, was appointed organist and choirmaster at Lincoln Cathedral in 1563, joined the Chapel Royal in 1570 and, with Tallis, was given a royal monopoly of music printing. (He was to publish three sets of his own songs to English texts.)

Whilst brought up in a Protestant household, he increasingly leaned towards Catholicism, and much of his finest music is set to Latin texts – his music for the mass is the equal of any on the Continent. Whilst much of his catholic music is of a melancholy nature – he equated the state of catholic England with the fall of Jerusalem – he also wrote joyful consort and keyboard pieces that can be called exuberant.

References:

“Oxford Companion to Music”

“The Grove Concise Dictionary of Music”.