William Byrd's Three Masses on the BBC's "Listening Service"

We are celebrating the 400th anniversary of William Byrd's death on July 4, 1623 throughout this year. Of course, it's being celebrated mostly in England!

The BBC has published a Composer of the Month article on his life and times in their classical music magazine, Tom Service has commented particularly on his Three Masses on his BBC program, Stile Antico has released a new CD, his works were performed at the Proms in Londonderry, and the Latin Mass Society in England is sponsoring a Byrd Festival with his Masses and works from the Gradualia including in the celebration of Mass at Corpus Christi Maiden Lane and other churches, etc., etc.

What's so good about the Latin Mass Society's effort is described in their program for the Festival:

This year, 2023, witnesses the four hundredth anniversary of the death of William Byrd, one of England’s greatest Renaissance composers. The Latin Mass Society is marking the occasion with a Byrd 400 Festival ofsacred music. From September 2023 the Southwell Consort, under the direction of Dominic Bevan, will perform music from Byrd’s Masses, Cantiones Sacrae, and sacred motets, as well as his organ music. 

Byrd’s sacred music was composed for the Roman Catholic Mass during a time when English Catholics faced religious persecution. Despite the clandestine climate in which it was composed, much of Byrd’s polyphony is sumptuous. It represents the last artistic flowering of an English liturgical tradition almost stamped out at the Reformation. 

The words, chant and ritual actions of the traditional Latin Mass were ancient in Byrd’s own day, and they have remained essentially unchanged ever since. It is within this context that this festival of sacred music will take place, presenting Byrd’s work in the original liturgical context for which it was composed.

In his "Listening Service" program, Tom Service makes a suggestion about these three Masses--meaning the ordinary text of the Mass, the Kyrie, Gloria, Credo, Sanctus/Benedictus, and Angus Dei--were integrated into the celebration of the secret Masses for which the works were intended. He notes the presence of the "custos" mark at the end of each part, suggesting that it means that the Mass parts were sung as the Mass was being "spoken". Service suggests that the Masses lasted as long as the Byrd Mass settings, around 20 minutes.

But I wonder about that, because not all Masses include all the parts of the ordinary, depending on the feast or feria being celebrated. In the Traditional Latin Mass, a Missa Cantata is sung/chanted by the priest, not spoken, and not all parts of the Mass, like the Roman Canon, are audible to the congregation even at a Missa Cantata; a Low Mass is a mostly silent Mass and usually these parts of the Mass are not sung. (That's assuming that the Mass revisions that Pope Pius V approved in 1570 for the Roman Missal, the Masses Catholic missionary priests were offering in England at the time Byrd was a Catholic and wrote these three Masses, are comparable to the Missa Cantatas and Low Masses I attend today.)

The Masses Byrd attended in Stondon Massey in Essex were celebrated under duress because it was illegal to say or attend Mass and everyone there, especially the priest, was in great danger, and so Service thinks these 20 minute Masses would have been practical, safe, and even politic, under the circumstances--to sum it up, serviceable.

As John Milsom wrote in the cover notes to the 2013/2014 CD of Byrd's Three Masses and the Ave Verum Corpus depicted above:

. . . In the 1590s, when his Masses were composed, there were no Catholic church choirs in England, and he never imagined them being sung proudly and publicly in cathedrals for all to hear. Few hard facts survive about the kinds of performances Byrd’s Catholic works received in his lifetime, but we can speculate with a fair degree of confidence. In the age of the Spanish Armada and the Gunpowder Plot, England’s Roman Catholic community celebrated Mass covertly behind closed doors, taking pains not to be found out and punished or fined. Their secret services took place in rooms hastily converted into chapels, led by priests who led surreptitious lives. If music was used, then it was sung and played by whoever came safely to hand: family members, invited guests and trusted servants. By definition, then, Byrd’s Masses are really chamber music, not choral repertory, and it was never Byrd’s intention that they should be sung in the resonant ambience of a great church by a choir such as that of Westminster Cathedral. . . .

Milsom comments on Byrd's Court career and the Anglican service music he wrote there and then states:

In private, he moved in the network of England’s Catholic community, whose religious beliefs he shared, and for whom he also wrote music—initially motets, but latterly also works for liturgical use, such as the three Masses and, later, the impressive cycle called Gradualia. As Byrd grew older his allegiances shifted, and he spent less time in London and more time with the Catholics in rural Essex, where he set up home. But his retreat never became a rift. Up to his death Byrd remained loyal to his queen [and king: James I from 1603 to 1623!] and his country, and he was tolerated at court even by those who knew of his double life.

He continues the discussion by contrasting the differences between the way Byrd sets words to music in the Anglican and Catholic works, noting that Catholic works "savour their words more meditatively, and speak with a more personal voice." (Please read the rest there.)

When Charles Cole reviewed the CD from the Westminster Cathedral Choir for the New Liturgical Movement website, he noted that Martin Baker had departed from the usual method of recording the choir:

It was perhaps partly in deference to these original performances in Tudor times that Martin Baker, the Master of Music, decided to make quite a radical change to the way the choir was recorded. Most of the Cathedral Choir’s recordings are made in the Apse, the usual liturgical singing position of the choir, however for this recording, the choir stood on the Sanctuary in a large square facing inwards towards Martin Baker, who stood at the centre. The effect is very different, both intimate and powerful, with a noticeable change in the acoustics. There is a heightened sense of dynamic range, with diminuendi of extraordinary control which taper into nothingness. And although this music will be very familiar to anyone in regular proximity to a traditional Catholic choir, there is a real sense of a new experience when listening to this recording.

I guess the only way we could come closer to hearing this music as Byrd and the congregation heard it would be to record an amateur choir in a small space!

Finally, I do have to make one comment about the "Composer of the Month" article from the June issue of BBC Music Magazine: Andrew Stewart writes that "Byrd risked punishment to compose sublime settings of outlawed Latin texts, especially during the 1580s when Jesuit missionaries from the continent were being burned at the stake . . ." (p. 60) 

No, they were being hanged, drawn, and quartered!

St. John Boste, the Mass, and Psalms 114 and 42

I apologize for the lack of blogging (if anyone noticed!) but I've not been feeling well this week. 

Also, I admit that the Motu Proprio Pope Francis issued last Friday really shocked me as it has many who love the Traditional Latin Mass of the centuries (just as I love the Novus Ordo, the Sacrifice of the Mass I've attended most of life as a Catholic)--particularly because so many of the priest-martyrs of the English Reformation from the Elizabethan era forward celebrated essentially this form of the Mass, having learned it in Rome, and Prague, Rheims, Douai, Vallidolid, after Pope St. Pius V promulgated the 1570 Roman Missal. 

One of those priests suffered horrendous torture and martyrdom on July 24, 1594: Saint John Boste. He is one of the Forty Martyrs of England and Wales canonized by Pope Paul VI in 1970.

Saint John Boste was born in northwestern England, and could be considered a revert in a way because he was born in a Catholic family, conformed at least outwardly to the Church of England to study at Oxford and become a Fellow of Queen's College, and then returned to the Catholic Church.  According to the Catholic Encyclopedia:

Priest and martyr, b. of good Catholic family at Dufton, in Westmoreland, about 1544; d. at Durham, 24 July, 1594. He studied at Queen's College, Oxford, 1569-72, became a Fellow, and was received into the Church at Brome, in Suffolk, in 1576. Resigning his Fellowship in 1580, he went to Reims, where he was ordained priest, 4 March, 1581, and in April was sent to England. He landed at Hartlepool and became a most zealous missioner, so that the persecutors made extraordinary efforts to capture him. At last, after many narrow escapes, he was taken to Waterhouses, the house of William Claxton, near Durham, betrayed by one Eglesfield [or Ecclesfield], 5 July, 1593. The place is still visited by Catholics. From Durham he was conveyed to London, showing himself throughout "resolute, bold, joyful, and pleasant", although terribly racked in the Tower. Sent back to Durham for the July Assizes, 1594, he behaved with undaunted courage and resolution, and induced his fellow-martyr, Bl. George Swalwell [or Swallowell], a convert minister, who had recanted through fear, to repent of his cowardice, absolving him publicly in court. He suffered at Dryburn, outside Durham. He recited the Angelus while mounting the ladder, and was executed with extraordinary brutality; for he was scarcely turned off the ladder when he was cut down, so that he stood on his feet, and in that posture was cruelly butchered alive. An account of his trial and execution was written by an eye-witness, [Blessed] Christopher Robinson, who suffered martyrdom shortly afterwards at Carlisle.

You may read about the intensive search for Father John Boste here in John Hungerford Pollen's edition of Unpublished Documents Relating to the English Martyrs, published by the Catholic Record Society in 1908, starting on page 63. You might notice that one of those questioned during the search for John Boste was his brother Lancelot who had a copy of a document written by Blessed William Hart, executed in 1583! 

Another website points out that Saint John Boste was dedicated to celebrating the Mass as the center of his mission to Catholics during the 12 years of his service:

He travelled widely in the northern counties, and he and anyone sheltering him, indeed anyone just hearing Mass, risked death. Nevertheless he maintained his ministry for 12 years, which was a tribute both to his stamina and his faith, for most of his fellow priests were taken within days of landing in Britain. It was said of him that 'if he missed to say Mass one day, it was not his will'.

It further states:

Months of cruel imprisonment in the Tower of London followed. He was racked 17 times, but betrayed no one, and he persisted in his devotion to the Mass.

As the West Durham Catholic Parishes blog notes, Father Boste openly admitted his priesthood at his trial, while emphasizing that being priest did not mean he was a traitor or plotter against Elizabeth I in anyway:

“I am a priest of the holy Catholic church: and I came, though unworthy, according to St. Paul, to preach the gospel of Jesus Christ, whereof I am not ashamed, and to administer the sacraments to my beloved countrymen….. All this I needs must confess, and I am not ashamed of it, but do greatly rejoice that I have done so.” He denied working to politically undermine the queen, saying: “My function is to invade souls, not to meddle in temporal invasions”.

In addition to praying the Angelus (his execution was thus at about 6:00 p.m.), St. John Boste prayed Psalm 114:

Dilexi. The prayer of a just man in affliction, with a lively confidence in God. Alleluia.

I have loved, because the Lord will hear the voice of my prayer.

Because he hath inclined his ear unto me: and in my days I will call upon him. 

The sorrows of death have encompassed me: and the perils of hell have found me. I met with trouble and sorrow: 

And I called upon the name of the Lord. O Lord, deliver my soul. 

The Lord is merciful and just, and our God sheweth mercy.

The Lord is the keeper of little ones: I was little and he delivered me. 

Turn, O my soul, into thy rest: for the Lord hath been bountiful to thee. 

For he hath delivered my soul from death: my eyes from tears, my feet from falling. 

I will please the Lord in the land of the living.

It's impossible for me to read that psalm and not think of Psalm 42, prayed by the priest, the servers, and the congregation (in pecto) at the beginning of the Mass of the 1962 Roman Missal:

Judica me, Deus. The prophet aspireth after the temple and altar of God.
A psalm for David. 

Judge me, O God, and distinguish my cause from the nation that is not holy: deliver me from the unjust and deceitful man. 

For thou art God my strength: why hast thou cast me off? and why do I go sorrowful whilst the enemy afflicteth me? 

Send forth thy light and thy truth: they have conducted me, and brought me unto thy holy hill, and into thy tabernacles. 

And I will go in to the altar of God: to God who giveth joy to my youth. 

To thee, O God my God, I will give praise upon the harp: why art thou sad, O my soul? and why dost thou disquiet me?
Hope in God, for I will still give praise to him: the salvation of my countenance, and my God.

Praying that psalm at the two Traditional Latin Masses I've attended since Friday, July 16 (I wanted to attend a third but had to leave just as Mass started because I felt ill), helped me again understand and accept that God is always Good and He loves me.

Most Precious Blood of Jesus, save us!

Saint John Boste, pray for us!