Liturgy and Contemplation in Byrd's Gradualia

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Sixteenth-century allegory of the liturgical cycle: “You bless the crown of the year with your goodness.”

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New York London

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Routledge Taylor & Francis Group 270 Madison Avenue New York, NY 10016

Routledge Taylor & Francis Group 2 Park Square Milton Park, Abingdon Oxon OX14 4RN

© 2007 by Taylor & Francis Group, LLC Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis Group, an Informa business This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2008. “To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.”

International Standard Book Number‑10: 0‑415‑97861‑0 (Hardcover) International Standard Book Number‑13: 978‑0‑415‑97861‑3 (Hardcover) No part of this book may be reprinted, reproduced, transmitted, or utilized in any form by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying, microfilming, and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without written permission from the publishers. Trademark Notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. Library of Congress Cataloging‑in‑Publication Data McCarthy, Kerry Robin. Liturgy and contemplation in Byrd’s Gradualia / Kerry McCarthy. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index. ISBN 0‑415‑97861‑0 1. Byrd, William, 1542 or 3‑1623. Gradualia, liber 1. 2. Byrd, William, 1542 or 3‑1623. Gradualia, liber 2. 3. Catholic Church‑‑England‑‑History‑‑17th century. I. Title. ML410.B996M33 2006 782.32’3092‑‑dc22 ISBN 0-203-94297-3 Master e-book ISBN

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2006031358

Contents

Acknowledgments

vii

Introduction

ix

1 The Gradualia Cycle: Genre and Presentation

1

2 “Meditate These Wel”: English Catholic Encounters with Sacred Texts

17

3 Liturgical Practice and English Catholic Identity

71

4 Text Types and Settings

111

5 Chronology and Narrative

167

Notes

193

Bibliography

225

Index of Byrd’s Works

233

General Index

235



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Acknowledgments

When I began studying William Byrd’s music more than a decade ago, I could not have known I was acquiring a delightful community of scholars as well as an inexhaustible topic of research. This book would have been impossible to write without the help of other Byrd specialists, who have shared their knowledge and met my often difficult requests with generosity. Thanks are due first of all to Roger Bowers, John Harley, Joseph Kerman (to whom I am indebted in countless ways), John Milsom, Davitt Moroney, Oliver Neighbour, Richard Rastall, David Trendell, Richard Turbet, and all the people who converged on the Duke University campus in November 2005 for the International William Byrd Conference. Others whose help has been indispensable include Jane Alden, Margaret Bent, Karol Berger, Tom Brothers, George Brown, Richard Carlin, David Chadd, Virginia Hancock, Stephen Hinton, Tess Knighton, Scott Lindroth, Laura McCarthy, Dominic and Felicity McGonigal, Joy Rowe, Aaron Taylor, Larry Todd, Rob Wegman, and the editorial staff of Early Music History, in which an earlier version of chapter 5 appeared in 2004. I am grateful to the numerous librarians who have helped me at every stage of research and writing: at the University of California–Berkeley, the British Library, Duke University, the Folger Shakespeare Library, the Guildhall Library, the Huntington Library, the Newberry Library, Reed College, Stanford University, and Stonyhurst College. Byrd once wrote that the “expressing well” of his music in performance “is the life of our labours.” For many years now, the musicians at the annual Byrd Festival in Portland, Oregon, have been committed to the repertoire—both familiar and unfamiliar—and to exquisite music-making. For this, and for first encouraging my interest in English polyphony, I am grateful to Dean Applegate, Richard Marlow, and Cantores in Ecclesia, who have followed Byrd’s example by thriving in unfortunate political circumstances. John and Susan Altstatt welcomed me into their household during the process of writing and revision. Their hospitality is written into every page of this book. My greatest debt is to William Mahrt, vray trésorier, who taught me (as Ignatius might have put it) to think with the liturgy. This volume is dedicated to the memory of Philip Brett (1937–2002), who inspired so much of it and would doubtless have been its most critical and insightful reader.

vii

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Introduction

William Byrd, in one of his dedicatory prefaces, left us some remarks on how he wrote sacred music: “In the words themselves (as I have learned from experience) there is such hidden and mysterious power that to a person thinking over divine things, diligently and earnestly turning them over in his mind, the most appropriate measures come, I do not know how, and offer themselves freely to the mind that is neither idle nor inert.”1 At first glance this sentence seems to apply best to his three collections of motets, the Cantiones sacrae published between 1575 and 1591. Byrd spent this period of his life in a direct search for, and response to, verbal inspiration. The search led him through Savonarola, Augustine, the darker corners of the Scriptures, a variety of freely composed texts, and—when it suited him—the traditional Latin liturgy.2 He chose words for their emotional force, for their imagery, for their political connotations, or for whatever else invited a creative response. When he had chosen them, he set them colorfully, sometimes at great length. His selection and manipulation of subject matter during these years was itself an art. The three books of Cantiones and a number of similar motets surviving in manuscript bear witness to this fact. As Joseph Kerman has noted, Byrd “takes texts as he wants them” for this music, and he interprets them as he sees fit.3 Byrd’s note on the “hidden and mysterious power” of sacred words does not come from any of these motet books. He wrote it many years later, in the preface to the first volume of his Gradualia. This is a large collection of music, 109 pieces in all, mostly for the celebration of Mass on the major feast days of the Roman church year. It includes the famous and ancient festivals (Christmas, Easter, Pentecost), a number of pointedly Catholic holidays (Corpus Christi, All Saints’ Day, the Assumption of Mary), and a variety of other seasonal observances. Byrd published it in two installments, the first in 1605 and the second in 1607. He worked on it through a violent political crisis in England and the oncoming rush of modernity. The Gradualia cycle was completed in the same year that saw William Shakespeare’s King Lear, Claudio Monteverdi’s pioneering opera Orfeo, and the founding of Jamestown, the first permanent English colony in the New World.4 It was the product of Byrd’s ripe middle age, after he had left his public role at court and turned his attention to music for the Catholic liturgy—which was forbidden in England at the time, punishable by heavy fines, imprisonment, or even (in rare cases) death. The so-called proper of the Mass is an elaborate network of brief sentences, mostly drawn from scripture, designed to comment on and adorn the events ix

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  •  Introduction of the liturgical year. Each day in the church calendar comes with its group of five or six predetermined texts, to be sung or said at various points during the Mass: the entrance procession, the reflective pause between scriptural readings, the offertory, the communion. These words are not negotiable: a composer at the service of this liturgy cannot pick and choose them to suit his taste. Rossini once claimed—though the story may be apocryphal—to be able to set his own laundry list to beautiful music. Byrd himself has attracted some sympathy from readers who saw him spending his mature years working over a long series of Latin fragments along the lines of “Quotiescunque manducabitis.” In his study of the Gradualia, Kerman sometimes associates less successful music with less colorful texts, or commiserates with Byrd for having to set words without easily accessible mood or imagery: A composer might well regard the text of Quodcunque ligaveris (1607/44) as a joyless challenge rather than any kind of stimulus. . . . In “expressive” terms the words at this point are negligible.5 The other texts are relatively neutral and so is Byrd’s music for them.6 Byrd may have been bored with text setting, but his purely musical imagination was as busy as ever.7 The texts of the Corpus Christi Mass, returning as they do again and again to the ingestion of the body, blood, bread, meat, honey and wheat flour, are not ideally calculated for musical setting. Byrd is perhaps more to be congratulated for providing striking settings of the offertory and communion than blamed for writing, in the introit and gradual-alleluia group, music in a light polyphonic style that is deft, concise, and rather vacant in character.8 When he decided to begin composing Mass propers, Byrd faced, voluntarily and for the first time in his life, a large amount of material “not ideally calculated for musical setting.” It was in precisely this context that he first wrote about the power of the sacred words, the “sentences themselves,” to evoke a creative response. The key to a more profound understanding of this music is in fact a simple question, around which this book revolves: How did Byrd read and interpret the texts of his Latin liturgical works? Chapter 1 of this volume deals briefly with the background of the Gradualia: the European tradition of polyphonic Mass proper settings and Byrd’s own artistic biography as it evolved into the early seventeenth century. Very few composers before him had set the Mass proper at such length. The handful of previous attempts were mostly sponsored by world-class musical establishments such as the Cathedral of Notre Dame or the court of the Holy Roman Emperor. It is surprising to see Byrd taking on this sort of project in a rural backwater of Jacobean England, where it was strictly illegal to use the music as

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Introduction  •  xi he intended it. We are fortunate to have direct evidence of his own ideals and intentions through more than thirty years’ worth of first-person dedicatory prefaces. His famous remark on inspiration quoted above is in fact only one among many similar statements in his notes to the two volumes of Gradualia. These late prefaces, quite unlike his earlier ones, reveal two major interests: the habit of reflecting at length on sacred texts and an almost exaggerated concern for their ceremonial function. I address the first of these two interests in chapter 2. Byrd’s approach to text setting, as described in his own words, has direct parallels in numerous Counter-Reformation practices of meditation and devotional reading, especially those promoted by the Jesuit order. England was inundated at the turn of the seventeenth century with tireless Jesuit missionaries teaching layfolk how to meditate (“like locusts all over,” as one exasperated Protestant commentator described them) and by printed instructions on how to contemplate sacred words, from the simplest devotional picture books to the most refined treatises.9 There is ample illustration here of how an educated English Catholic of Byrd’s day was likely to “think about divine things and turn them over attentively and earnestly in his mind.” Many of the surviving sources have direct parallels in his sacred music. The content of the Gradualia reflects above all the other main theme of Byrd’s later prefaces: the pervasive English Catholic concern with correct liturgical practice. Chapter 3 examines contemporary views of the Mass (in particular the Mass proper) and the annual cycle of feast days. I draw on a variety of evidence here, from first-person testimonies and court records to polemical books and tracts. Byrd’s coreligionists turned to the events of the church year both when defining their community against outside forces and when building up their own faith. Under their influence, Byrd also turned from the common topics of many of his earlier motets (with their focus on captivity, pain, and lamentation) to begin a positive project on a scale not seen even in pre-Reformation England, much less in beleaguered dissident circles. Chapters 4 and 5 revisit the music itself, both its structure and its detail, in view of all the above. Given the internal evidence of the Gradualia, and Byrd’s likely chronology in composing it, it is clear that that he wrote with his eye on larger liturgical and contemplative narratives as well as on individual Mass proper sets and single pieces of music. When we study his approach to different genres (how does, for example, each introit function as the rhetorical introduction of its set?) and liturgical events (how does he create a musical and emotional trajectory through a given day’s proper texts, or through a given section of the year?), the entire collection falls into place as a complex—yet coherent—whole. The present volume makes no claim to be either a systematic piece-by-piece analysis of the entire Gradualia cycle or a comprehensive account of its production and print run. Readers seeking the former should turn to Kerman’s

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xii  •  Introduction extensive chapter in The Masses and Motets of William Byrd. Those interested in the latter are well served by Philip Brett’s prefaces and notes to the five relevant volumes of the new Byrd Edition, recently re-edited and published under separate cover by the University of California Press.10 The purpose of this book is simply to follow some specific cultural and intellectual threads through Byrd’s Latin liturgical works, and to dig deeper into the milieu that inspired those works. It also offers a case study of how one composer reimagined the creative process in the final decades of his life. Any project of this kind will necessarily involve a fair amount of nonmusical evidence. I ask the reader’s temporary indulgence if it appears at times to be drifting far from the central topic of Byrd and his music. This volume draws on a number of sources, some of them rather unlikely material for a work of musicology, but all of which combine to shed some light on what was itself a complicated social and spiritual context. “If I seem to be digressing unconscionably,” as Mary Carruthers asks of her readers in the preface to her magisterial book on medieval techniques of memory, “I hope they will bear with me until we come back to the main subject, enriched in understanding.”11 It is my hope that this book will do something to enrich the understanding of what Byrd called his “swan song,” a unique work and among the greatest artistic monuments of the Counter-Reformation.12

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1

The Gradualia Cycle Genre and Presentation

The Renaissance music theorist Johannes Tinctoris sorted the polyphonic music of his day into three categories: A Mass is a large piece of music, to which the words Kyrie, Et in terra, Patrem, Sanctus, and Agnus, and sometimes other parts, are set to be sung by several voices: others call this the Office. A motet is a moderate-sized piece of music, to which any sort of words are set, but most often sacred. A song is a small piece of music, to which any sort of words are set, but most often amatory.1 This simple scheme can be traced back to the ancient hierarchy of literary genres and, more directly, to Cicero’s three genera dicendi or levels of rhetoric.2 Just as classical poetry falls into various categories (epic, lyric, pastoral), and classical rhetorical style into various degrees of elaboration (grand, moderate, humble), so musical compositions are either large (magnus), middlesized (mediocris), or small (parvus).3 The polyphonic Mass enjoyed the place of honor among Renaissance musicians, as the epic poem had among the ancient Greeks and Romans, for both aesthetic and ideological reasons. It accompanied the most important ritual act in Christian society, and it was adorned with the most complex and varied techniques available to composers.4 Tinctoris’s definition of the genre includes not only the five well-known Mass movements—Kyrie, Gloria, Credo, Sanctus, and Agnus—but interdum caeterae partes, “sometimes other parts.” By “other parts” he meant the constantly varying proper of the Mass, the pieces that change from one day to the next: the introit, offertory, and communion, along with some combination of gradual, alleluia, tract, and sequence, according to the season and the importance of the occasion. These proper items are interwoven with the Mass ordinary and are equally vital to the order of the service. William Byrd devoted most of his two volumes of Gradualia to music of this sort.5 The tradition of setting Mass propers “to be sung by several voices” is nearly as old as polyphony itself and includes some of the most intricate music of the Western polyphonic tradition. Perhaps most notable is the medieval 

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  •  Liturgy and Contemplation in Byrd’s Gradualia repertoire of the Magnus liber organi, which began life in the later twelfth century at the Cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris and was eventually transmitted as far afield as Spain and Scotland.6 The Magnus liber sets the solo portions of numerous graduals and alleluias to polyphony. These two pieces, the most elaborate in the chanted Mass proper, are sung together as a reflective interlude between the epistle and the gospel; their opening intonations and verses are traditionally assigned to skilled cantors, which makes them an obvious choice for multivoiced settings. The series of Notre Dame graduals and alleluias covers the medieval calendar in a systematic way, set out according to the order and liturgical rank of each occasion. Craig Wright has compared this music to other great works of an era that admired hierarchy, intellectual order, and the pursuit of encyclopedic knowledge: “That a single individual might attempt to apply polyphonic music to the liturgy on a systematic basis for all the major feasts of the Church year is harmonious with the tenor of the age. The one hundred or so organa in the Magnus liber organi of Leoninus constituted no less a summa musicae liturgicae than . . . the Summa of Aquinas.”7 Despite the formidable precedent of the Magnus liber, there was no similar tradition of polyphonic Mass propers in the later Middle Ages. The strictures of Pope John XXII’s early-fourteenth-century decree Docta sanctorum, which banned (at least in theory) all but the simplest liturgical polyphony, could hardly have helped reverse this decline.8 When the genre began to resurface in the fifteenth century, it did so only in certain circumstances. Polyphonic settings of the Mass ordinary flourished in almost every place with sufficient resources to support them. Proper settings were rare by comparison. The main reason was, of course, a practical one: the five movements of the ordinary are fixed and suitable for almost any liturgical occasion, but the proper is specific to a single event in the calendar, which makes it something of an extravagance rather than a practical addition to a choir’s everyday repertoire. Given the resources and labor needed to produce polyphonic music, especially before the easy availability of print, it is no surprise that composers and their patrons turned away from constantly varying texts in favor of unchanging ones. The existing repertoire of Mass proper cycles in the Renaissance can be split roughly into two categories, divided by the liturgical reforms during (and, to some extent, preceding) the mid-sixteenth-century Council of Trent. One of the most important changes at the Counter-Reformation was a radical pruning of votive Masses, various services sung ad libitum in place of the usual Mass of the day. The Tridentine decrees restored the existing calendar of feast days to primary status, eliminating many votive Masses and restricting the use of the remaining ones. This was a major departure from late medieval custom. Up to the early sixteenth century, the Mass proper for Pentecost, Trinity, or even Easter was often adopted for the ordinary Sundays during the year; the Virgin Mary was traditionally commemorated on Saturday, the Holy Cross on Friday, and the Eucharist on Thursday; the Requiem Mass was, of course,

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The Gradualia Cycle: Genre and Presentation  •   ubiquitous. Fifteenth-century manuscripts such as Trent 88, which transmit polyphonic votive cycles rather than systematic settings for the liturgical year, offer an accurate snapshot of the church’s priorities at the time they were compiled.9 Musicians also had pragmatic reasons to concentrate on votive offices at the expense of individual feast days, just as they preferred the more stable Mass ordinary over the less stable Mass proper. Votive music could be recycled once a week, or even more frequently, while music for a particular festival was limited by the demands of the annual calendar. Almost all of the few surviving proper settings from pre-Reformation England were intended for votive Masses—more precisely for the Missa Salve, or Lady Mass, the regular commemoration of the Virgin that was a staple of English choral foundations. The Lady Mass in the Sarum liturgy was provided with a different alleluia for each day of the week, which became a favorite place for polyphonic elaboration. Despite the wholesale destruction of English liturgical materials in the course of the sixteenth century, there are extant alleluia settings by a number of early Tudor composers: Nicholas Ludford, John Sheppard, John Taverner, and even the young Thomas Tallis.10 The tradition eventually resurfaced with Byrd, whose Gradualia includes a full set of music (though following the Roman missal rather than the Sarum rite) for these votive services. The Lady Mass was cultivated enthusiastically in England up to the Reformation. Musicians in some other areas of Europe had already started, in the generation before Martin Luther’s reforms, to move away from the late medieval emphasis on votive Masses and to concentrate instead on the proper services for Sundays and feast days. The trend toward liturgical integrity gained momentum under the influence of John Burchard, papal master of ceremonies to Innocent VIII and the notorious Alexander VI, who issued a reformed Ordo Missae in 1502 as a humanistic tidying-up operation on what he saw as an overgrown liturgy. Burchard’s Ordo had a considerable impact on its early-sixteenth-century admirers, who started almost at once, especially in German-speaking circles, to cut down on the proliferation of votive offices.11 Perhaps most noteworthy in this context are the Mass propers set by Heinrich Isaac under the commission of Constance Cathedral and the imperial chapel—a tradition carried on through the sixteenth century by Isaac’s student Ludwig Senfl and his successors at the Munich Hofkapelle, up to and including Orlando de Lassus.12 Manuscript sources such as Jena 30 and Weimar A began to set out the propers of the year in a comprehensive cyclic format.13 The Lyons Contrapunctus, published in 1528 and the first printed book of Mass propers to appear on the European market, is a yet more orderly cycle for major feast days: more than 80 percent of its texts match the contents of the Gradualia, and the anonymous composer uses a system of musical transfers similar to the more elaborate one adopted by Byrd.14 The midcentury series of Officia by Mattheus le Maistre is organized in much the same way.15 Other collections, such

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  •  Liturgy and Contemplation in Byrd’s Gradualia as Costanzo Porta’s 1566 Musica in introitus missarum—excerpted alongside Byrd’s own motets in an Elizabethan manuscript (BL Add. MS 47844)—and Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina’s 1593 Offertoria totius anni, were devoted to settings of a single Mass proper item, such as the introit or the offertory, for the whole church year. The Counter-Reformation repertoire of polyphonic propers, like its remote medieval ancestor in the Magnus liber, shows a commitment to cultivating and adorning the liturgical year in its full integrity. Such a commitment cost more in the sixteenth century than it had in the twelfth or thirteenth. Unlike the avant-garde urban musical culture of the Parisian cantors, this second wave of interest in the Mass proper could lead composers into an unfashionable cul-de-sac. Musicians of the late Renaissance, intoxicated by new possibilities of both sacred and secular expression, were not the most likely candidates for turning out large, often repetitive, and usually chant-based collections of liturgical polyphony. A real interest in ritual propriety, whether the patron’s interest or the composer’s, was one of the few things that could inspire a shift from overtly affective material to the systematic grind of the large-scale liturgical cycle. David Fallows notices a similar change in perspective during Guillaume Dufay’s residence at Cambrai in the 1440s, where he wrote the Mass propers preserved in Trent 88: “After a youth of display and, one is bound to add, musical arrogance, he appears to have tried to consolidate and to adopt a plainer, more devotional style, conceivably for a grand project of music for the Mass and Office.”16 The comment would be equally true if Byrd’s name were substituted for Dufay’s. Nothing about Byrd’s early career suggested he would go on to pursue a “grand project” of this sort. There is little in his earlier work, beyond a few juvenile efforts and a group of settings from the Office of the Dead in the 1575 Cantiones, that suggests any interest in systematic liturgical or quasi-liturgical composition. Joseph Kerman notes that the younger Byrd chose ritual texts, when he did, on their own rhetorical merits and not because of their importance in the calendar: he concentrated on “occasions such as Lent. . . and midsummer Sundays; this is not the sort of thing that a liturgically-minded composer spends his time with, as appears from the output of Sheppard and Tallis.”17 Although he must have been familiar with the impressive repertoire of Latin Office polyphony those two composers produced in the 1550s, there is no trace of any similar music for the proper of the Mass. Given the enthusiastic copying activities of scribes such as John Baldwin and Robert Dow, and their remarkable salvage of so much of the Office cycle, it is unlikely that a parallel Mass cycle was passed over entirely in silence.18 Byrd may even have seen Continental Mass propers at some point—one notable possibility is the group of Porta introits in Add. MS 47844—but there is no evidence that he had contact with any full-scale proper cycles of the kind he went on to write himself.

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The Gradualia Cycle: Genre and Presentation  •   There is also no real precedent among Byrd’s vernacular works. The reformed order of worship left room for freely composed sacred music in the form of the English anthem, but it had no place for specific feast-day pieces of the sort he set in the Gradualia. A substantial percentage of the Roman ritual was kept intact by the Reformers, but the Mass proper was not part of it. The eucharistic liturgy in the 1559 Book of Common Prayer retained four-fifths of the old Mass ordinary: the Kyrie (as a congregational response to each of the Ten Commandments), the Credo (between the lessons and the sermon), the Sanctus (though with a pointed omission of the Benedictus), and the Gloria (as a post-communion hymn of thanksgiving). The Elizabethan Prayer Book also kept an annual cycle of scripture readings, collects, even “a proper preface, according to the time” for several major feasts and their octaves—but all five items of the old proper cycle were rejected.19 There must have been few English professional musicians by 1605, whatever their religious beliefs, who even remembered such a tradition. Barbara Haggh has remarked that full polyphonic cycles of feast-day propers after the time of Dufay were cultivated only at the courts of royalty and Holy Roman Emperors.20 Her claim is problematic when applied to the Gradualia (though Byrd continued to enjoy some level of royal patronage while producing his Latin liturgical music), but her general point remains valid: the polyphonic Mass proper was a luxury item that could only be produced in a supportive atmosphere. This makes Byrd, as a staunch and sometimes beleaguered Catholic in voluntary retirement from court, a doubly unlikely author for such a project. Given the apparent lack of outside precedents, it is useful to turn to the internal evidence of his two Gradualia volumes, especially his own statements in the 1605 and 1607 dedicatory prefaces. What did he have to say for himself as he presented this music to the public? The Evidence of Byrd’s Prefaces Byrd began each of his books with a first-person dedication, to which he often added a note to the reader, or other explanatory material. The only exceptions are the three Mass ordinaries of the 1590s, which seem to have been printed under some political duress and lack even title pages.21 Byrd’s prefaces serve a number of functions. They address the person honored in each collection, mixing the traditional clichés of patronage with occasional flashes of warmth and even intimacy. They speak to the needs of the musicmaking public: Byrd emphasizes (in 1611) the need for thorough rehearsal, explains (in 1605) how to find pieces in the index, and warns (in 1588) that “if there happen to be any iarre or dissonance, blame not the Printer.” They also provide a valuable window into his musical and political identity, especially in his later years as a Catholic liturgical composer. With the rise of single-composer prints in the course of the sixteenth century, musicians began using the dedicatory pages to speak publicly about

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  •  Liturgy and Contemplation in Byrd’s Gradualia themselves and their work. At first these prefaces were written by the printer or compiler; such introductions are common all the way back to Ottaviano Petrucci’s Odhecaton. No true composers’ prefaces survive from the early part of the century. The first one appeared in 1532 with the printed works of Carpentras, and they quickly became a commonplace in music publishing.22 In a printed collection, the composer was speaking in a more or less indirect manner, through the voice of his music; the first-person dedication was a unique opportunity to address his patron or reader and fashion his own artistic persona in their eyes. The literary critic Stephen Greenblatt has defined “self-fashioning” as “a characteristic address to the world, a consistent mode of perceiving and behaving.”23 Self-fashioning in early modern England most often involved a highly charged relationship to authority—civil, religious, artistic, or any mixture of the above—and a cultivation of the creative project, most often the written word, as an extension of the self. Greenblatt’s case studies from Renaissance England involve both creative artists and religious polemicists, all of whom were embroiled in the same broad set of conflicts that surrounded Byrd. He includes only one Catholic, Henry VIII’s ill-fated chancellor Thomas More, who was an admirable but somewhat unrepeatable prototype for religious dissidents of Byrd’s generation. It is worth testing the model of active self-fashioning on a later Catholic subject, one who also had a painfully close involvement with a number of conflicting authorities and interests. What was Byrd’s mode of “characteristic address to the world” in his Latin publications? His project may be easier to define in negative terms than in positive ones. The contemporary name for a Catholic loyalist in England, which modern scholarship has taken up, was recusant—from the Latin recusare, “to refuse.” The recusants refused to transfer their allegiance from Rome to the state church, with all that implied in terms of public conformity; they refused to take part in established worship, or be ministered to by the established clergy. The concept of recusancy, for better or for worse, defines members of a group in terms of what they will not do. Some of the most valuable evidence for the cultural influence of English Catholic musicians (including Byrd) survives in the form of accusations that they were boycotting the activities of the established Church or persuading others to do the same. 24 Byrd’s music can easily be defined in terms of protest against, or outrage at, the religious establishment and the climate of persecution in Elizabethan and Jacobean England. It can also be defined in terms of gradual rejection of the public sphere in favor of the private: a broad trajectory leading away from public cathedral and court composition, through politically charged sacred chamber music, to a reclusive later life spent providing for the needs of the Roman liturgy. An examination of Byrd’s published prefaces may add something to the more active side of the balance. Even after withdrawing into a milieu marked by clandestine operations and enforced silence, he had a good deal to say to his audience.

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The Gradualia Cycle: Genre and Presentation  •   The joint presentation of the 1575 Tallis-Byrd Cantiones is an unusually blunt piece of self-fashioning.25 For artists in Elizabethan England, there was no more highly charged relationship to authority than a dedication to the queen herself. Compare Edmund Spenser’s fulsome offering of The Faerie Queene in terms that Greenblatt describes as “language yoked to the service of a reality forever outside itself”: “‘To the most high, mightie, and magnificent Empresse renowmed for pietie, vertue and all gratious government Elizabeth by the grace of God Queene of England Fraunce and Ireland and of Virginia, Defendour of the Faith. . . .’”26 The 1575 motet book likewise addresses her with all possible ceremony and nationalistic zeal. Two prefatory poems by Richard Mulcaster and Ferdinand Richardson dwell on the long-concealed excellence of English music, which has finally (for Elizabeth’s pleasure and vindication) come to light in printed form. Mulcaster praises the book as a long-overdue revelation: “Our England once admired the great works of these others [foreign musicians], but always let her own lie hidden. Now, having found leaders in Tallis and Byrd, whom she bore, she allows her offspring to see the light of day.” Richardson lists the most renowned composers of the time—Jacobus Clemens non Papa, Alfonso Ferrabosco, Nicolas Gombert, Orlando de Lassus—and laments the absence of “a solitary English name in any printed book” until now, when “Tallis and Byrd. . . direct the printing of their songs, allowing them to be read by others.” The composers address Elizabeth as a musical authority in her own right: “compared with the greatest artists, you easily surpass them, whether by refinement of voice or agility of fingers.” Given the level of skill among the professionals at the Elizabethan Chapel Royal, this statement could hardly have been offered in total sincerity: it is a flattering tribute to the Queen, who will, they hope, look on their work with favor and encourage further publications. In a poem at the end of each partbook, they present their cause to a different audience with gentler optimism. The Authors of the Songs to the Reader We commend these first-fruits to you, gentle reader, as a woman still weak from childbirth entrusts her infant to the care of the faithful nurse, for your esteem will be their milk. Thus nourished, they will promise a fruitful harvest; if unfruitful, they will fall by an honorable sickle. Many of these “first-fruits” appear to have been written specifically for the new book. Other pieces must have been older, especially some of the music included by Tallis, who was seventy at the time of publication and had a substantial portfolio at hand. In the last sentences of their dedicatory preface, the composers hedge on the matter of originality and productivity: “it depends only on the testimony of your good will whether we should go on in this manner [ulterius in hoc genere progredi], or end our work with this single volume.”

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  •  Liturgy and Contemplation in Byrd’s Gradualia In the dedication of his 1575 Cantiones, Byrd first began to articulate in print his own complex relationship to authority. With typical audacity, he started at the top and worked his way down. Of course he could not make public offerings to Catholic dignitaries at such a high level. His younger English contemporary Peter Philips, who had fled to Europe, did in fact dedicate a book of Cantiones sacrae to the pope in 1613, denouncing the “discord of heresy” in the most blunt polemical terms. We have good contemporary evidence that Philips’s motets were known in Jacobean England, perhaps even in their original printed form: Henry Peacham remarked that he “hath sent us over many excellent songs, as well madrigals as motets,” though it is difficult to imagine how the overheated rhetoric of the preface could have escaped Jacobean censors.27 Byrd could not indulge in a dedication to the pope, or a member of the Jesuit or Vatican hierarchy, for basic reasons of self-preservation. Given the focus of his later publications, and his changing relationship to the authority of his patrons, he would likely not have done so even if it had been politically expedient. Philip Brett noted in his edition of the 1607 Gradualia that Byrd’s dedication to the Essex recusant Sir John Petre was “out of step with his usual practice of offering his publications only to the most high and mighty in the land, beginning with the Queen herself in 1575, and working through a list— Hatton, Worcester, Hunsdon, Lumley, Northampton—representing the most powerful or luminous men of the Court.”28 Byrd had hardly exhausted his list by the early seventeenth century; there was no lack of sympathetic courtiers to whom he could dedicate books. His dedications were beginning to change because the focus of his creativity was shifting. The patrons and supporters of the Gradualia, unlike the recipients of Byrd’s earlier dedications, appear to have been in some degree of direct contact with the production and singing of the music. Byrd’s note “to the true lovers of Music” is printed directly alongside the formal preface in the 1605 book. In the 1575 Cantiones, the corresponding address to the reading public, begging their approval or at least their honest criticism, comes as a postscript after the last piece. The 1575 preface appeals publicly to the judgment of the Queen; the afterword is directed to the judgment of the musician, scribe, or enthusiast who has absorbed the collection of music and formed an opinion of it from experience, the reader by whose verdict the work ultimately stands or falls. When Byrd returns to the note ad lectorem in his first collection of Mass propers, there is less distance between the official recipient of the work and the performer who will be involved in its realization. In the second book of Gradualia, Byrd finally transfers even the practical information (such as notes on the feast days provided for and the number of voices in each set) to the main body of the dedicatory preface itself. Such material would have been unthinkable, or at least badly out of place, in the 1575 dedication to Elizabeth.

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The Gradualia Cycle: Genre and Presentation  •   Byrd’s solo volumes of Cantiones, published in 1589 and 1591, were conceived on different terms than the 1575 book. He makes the difference clear in his prefaces. These new motet books were part of an intensive publishing drive: two collections each of Latin and English songs within the space of three years, as well as a substantial manuscript of keyboard music prepared under his own supervision. Many of the Cantiones had been circulating in various manuscript versions for a decade or more. In his 1589 dedication, Byrd notes the “carelessness of scribes” and complains that numerous faults have crept in.29 He wanted to edit and preserve his work accurately, and the energy of his publishing effort is almost tangible in the language of the prefaces—above all in the first of the two. The rhetoric here is, understandably, simpler than in the joint dedication to Queen Elizabeth. Byrd casts himself as an editor, an anthologist, and even a craftsman who, before offering his works to the public, wants to “bring them back to the lathe” and refine them. The 1575 book made oblique references to the preexistence and known excellence of the music. Now Byrd explains his intentions in plain language, and refers to the work of correcting manuscript errors and sorting an extensive repertoire of songs that has already been in circulation.30 These books of Cantiones appeared at the real crossroads of Byrd’s professional life. He had been composing “sacred songs” of this sort, intensely personal, expressive Latin works, for at least two decades. His revered teacher and collaborator Thomas Tallis had died just a few years earlier. He would soon turn his back on London public life (along with lengthy penitential motets) and devote a good part of his creative energy to liturgical works. These books are a composer’s affectionate retrospective on a world he was about to leave behind. In the 1589 preface, his concern for the integrity of the music shows even through the conventional speech of patronage and publishing. “When some people,” he writes, “close to me and of good reputation, noticed recently that certain songs of mine had, through the carelessness of scribes, acquired some errors which had certainly not come from our own little Muse in his manuscripts: they implored me, and finally got me to submit the manuscripts to the press, though not before I had first gone over them and corrected them further. But they were in such a jumble (farrago) and so numerous that I thought it better to divide them into several books, as time permitted, and publish each as it was ready.” In the preface to the second book of Cantiones in 1591, which is similar to the 1589 preface but even shorter, Byrd refers directly to the act of composition, though still in a retrospective way. This collection is dedicated to one of Byrd’s chief patrons, John, Lord Lumley (c. 1534–1609), whose house on the outskirts of London was a renowned center of art and learning. Lumley was a keen amateur musician who built up an extensive music library, including a large collection of Continental sources and the full run of Byrd’s printed works.31 He was also a staunch recusant who had been imprisoned several

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10  •  Liturgy and Contemplation in Byrd’s Gradualia times (once in the Tower of London) for his religious nonconformity and his tendency to become involved in unsuccessful Catholic plots.32 Both of these traits made him an ideal sponsor for a collection of Latin motets. It is even possible that some of the Cantiones were composed especially for him and his circle. In his dedication, Byrd makes no attempt to hide the retrospective nature of the print, but he emphasizes his close ties to the household at Nonsuch and the value of artistic patronage that also takes the form of friendship: “Just as crops grow more fruitfully under a temperate sky, so the Muses yield sweeter and more abundant fruits through the kindness of patrons. Therefore, I have thought it fitting to dedicate to you whatever Harmony has, in the past years, suggested either to my mind or to my pen.” There is still no mention of the sacred subject matter (much less its Catholic implications) in either of these dedications, although the rather coy circumlocution of the 1575 title (“songs which on account of their subject matter are called sacred”) has been replaced in both cases with the more direct Cantiones sacrae. Byrd’s last printed works before the Gradualia, his three Mass ordinaries of 1592 through 1595, are a special case. Well-advised caution kept him (or his printer) from including even a title page with them, much less a prose introduction, though his name is given clearly at the top of each page of music. Such anonymity was common practice with controversial recusant books. The Jesuit missionaries who came to England in the 1580s obtained license from Rome to print books without the author’s name, the publisher’s name, or the place of printing. This practice had been explicitly forbidden by the Council of Trent, but the hierarchy recognized the inherent dangers of disseminating Catholic devotional works in England (to say nothing of controversial tracts or propaganda), and they allowed authors and publishers the privilege of remaining anonymous.33 Byrd must have been aware of the dispensation, but this was the only time he took even partial advantage of it. The prefaces to his three Masses would in many ways have been the most interesting documents of all. Unfortunately, there is no first-person account of Byrd’s transition to a new focus on liturgical forms, as there is for his international debut as a court composer in the mid-1570s or his intensive editorial project in the late 1580s. When looking at his next wave of printing shortly after 1600, we must consider that he may have prefaced his Gradualia to some extent with what he could not say a decade earlier. The dedications to the two volumes of Mass propers bring a change in content as well as in presentation.34 A number of new topics appear in these later prefaces: extended discussion of the composer’s craft; clear references to the sacred and, more specifically, liturgical nature of the music; and emphasis on the text as its foundation and inspiration. The opening lines of the 1605 preface draw us into a different world from that of the motet books:

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The Gradualia Cycle: Genre and Presentation  •  11 The swan, they say, when death approaches, sings more sweetly. However little I have been able to equal the sweetness of that bird in these songs which I have ventured to dedicate to you in my extreme old age, I have had two defences for trying to imitate him. One was the sweetness of the words themselves; the other was your worthiness. For just as it is unfitting to construct a rough work out of an extremely precious material, so the holy words in which are sung the praises of God and the citizens of heaven deserve nothing less than a heavenly harmony, to the extent that we can attain it. Moreover, in the words themselves (as I have learned from experience) there is such hidden and mysterious power that to a person thinking over divine things, diligently and earnestly turning them over in his mind, the most appropriate measures come, I do not know how, and offer themselves freely to the mind that is neither idle nor inert. Various critics have quoted the famous lines on musical inspiration—the last sentence of the excerpt—for almost a century; what they often neglect is the statement on the worthiness of the sacred words and the importance of setting them in an appropriate fashion. Philip Brett has drawn attention to this earlier passage: “In an expression reminiscent of the rhetoric books, Byrd emphasized the need for high matters to be treated in high style, and expounds the doctrine of decorum central to Renaissance aesthetics.”35 Of course Byrd’s acceptance of a “doctrine of decorum” predates the Gradualia by several decades. A serious concern for high style can be identified in all of his sacred works, including the English anthems, services, and even domestic devotional songs. A tribute to decorum would have been just as appropriate, with the necessary alterations, in the preface to the 1575 book. At the head of a liturgical collection, where Byrd chose to place it, it is more than a statement on compositional propriety. He is in fact defining the sacred texts proper to the liturgy as the material with which he is working. The comparison can be stated as an analogy: precious raw material is to fine craftsmanship as liturgical text is to fine musical setting. The precious material is a given; Byrd’s duty as craftsman or composer is to do it justice. Once he has established the primacy of the text, he only then goes on to discuss his musical reading of it. He revisits this topic later in the 1605 preface: “With the soundest judgment, Alexander forbade that he should be painted or cast in bronze by anyone but Apelles or Lysippus. Likewise, it was not permitted for me to fulfil my office in any other way but to adorn divine things with the highest art of which I was capable.” The phrase officio satisfacere (“to fulfil one’s office”) was a technical term used in contemporary ecclesiastical Latin to mean the carrying out of one’s liturgical duty. In 1586, for example, Pope Sixtus V used it when writing about the need for more deacons in the major Roman basilicas: there were so few that they could not “fulfil their duty,” and higher-ranking clergy

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12  •  Liturgy and Contemplation in Byrd’s Gradualia were being forced to perform the lower-grade liturgical actions that normally belonged to deacons.36 It is not at all likely (despite the wishful thinking of some twentieth-century enthusiasts) that Byrd was under any kind of ecclesiastical mandate to write music for the Roman rite, although he may well have been actively encouraged in that work by his English Jesuit associates. In any case, he presents himself in both this and the 1607 preface as a person charged with the cultivation of the liturgy. He himself described the 1605 Gradualia as his “night-labors, which I do not call such falsely,” and the sense of urgency and hard work persists throughout both prefaces. The 1605 book also includes an “address to the reader,” which is worth reprinting here in its entirety: Noble and upright men, who find it agreeable at times to sing hymns and spiritual songs to God, here are published for your exercise the Offices of the whole year which are appropriate to the most important feasts of the Blessed Virgin Mary and of All Saints, along with some additional songs for five voices with their texts drawn from the fount of sacred writings. In addition there is also the office for the feast day of Corpus Christi, along with the more solemn antiphons of the same Blessed Virgin and other songs of this kind for four voices, and also all the hymns composed for the praise of the Virgin. Finally, here are various songs for three voices set appropriately for the feast of Easter. So that these songs might be arranged, each in its own place according to the various parts of the office, I have appended at the conclusion of the book a special index in which all those appropriate to the same feasts, though they differ in their number of voices, will easily be found listed together. If I have given these holy words (as I have wished to do, and as they themselves demand) notes not entirely inappropriate, let the honor be God’s, as is just, but the pleasure be yours. However that may be, judge justly and well, and commend me to God in your prayers. Farewell. In the 1575 Cantiones, he and Tallis had addressed a short poem to the readers, asking their fair judgment on the music. Thirty years later, Byrd is making a similar request to “judge justly and well,” but according to different criteria: “if I have given these holy words (as I have wished to do, and they themselves demand) notes not entirely inappropriate.” The action to be judged is now the appropriate setting of the words, even more than the composition per se. Byrd’s concern for ritual order is clearest here. These are practical notes on how to fit the music to the needs of the Mass and Office, offering it to the readers pro vestra exercitatione—literally “for your exercise.” This is hardly a term associated with the leisured cultivation of chamber music, even religious chamber music. In fact, it was the term used by his Jesuit contemporaries to describe the process of meditation in the Spiritual Exercises, another long, systematic journey through the events of the liturgical year.37

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The Gradualia Cycle: Genre and Presentation  •  13 In the introduction to the second book of Gradualia, Byrd restates the two prevailing themes of the first preface—primacy of the text and concern for the liturgy—even more explicitly. “My spirit,” he writes, “mindful of its fidelity, duty, and devotion to God, burns to leave behind for posterity in at least some way a grateful soul’s public testimony, crediting all to the Creator. Therefore, in this, my advanced age, being committed to the divine service, I have set out (although unworthy and unequal to the task) to add notes as a garland to certain holy and delightful phrases of the Christian rite.” He presents himself in this excerpt not just as wanting to “fulfil his office,” as in the 1605 dedication, but as “being committed to the divine service” (divino cultui inserviens.) The verb inservire has an additional set of connotations beyond its root word servire: this intensified form means to serve, indeed to be a slave to, but it implies “devotion to” or “attachment to” as well. Inservire is also the technical term used to describe the person who serves at Mass, that is, who performs the complementary duties to the priest and speaks or sings the responses.38 As in the parallel statement from the first Gradualia preface, Byrd’s self-presentation as a composer resonates with the contemporary language of liturgical practice. It is also noteworthy that he presents his work here as a “public testimony,” even though it was written for a forbidden liturgy. This runs counter to the model of an inward trajectory from public to private life. Not even in the lavish 1575 preface did he make such a claim; he and Tallis pointedly offer their music as a testimony only to the Queen, whose approval will in turn ensure their further success. The 1607 preface includes a particularly striking simile: “notes as a garland” (notulas pro coronide) to adorn the “phrases of the Christian rite.” The image of a decorative garland has obvious affinities with an intricately woven musical work, and it recalls his 1605 statement on “adorn[ing] divine things with the highest art.” It also recalls the imagery of Psalm 64:12: “you bless the crown [or garland] of the year of your goodness,” benedices coronae anni benignitatis tuae, which well suits a yearly cycle of liturgical music. Byrd certainly knew his psalter and could search it for evocative texts of the sort. This verse was printed alongside a sixteenth-century allegorical emblem of the liturgical year—the twelve-segmented serpent handed down from heaven to earth, biting its tail in an eternal circle, adorned with the fruits and flowers of the various seasons.39 The verse was also sung at Lauds during the Office of the Dead, a devotion cultivated by a large number of English Catholics.40 Byrd’s term coronis is not the usual Latin word corona used in the verse from Psalm 64 and elsewhere in the Vulgate. The Greek koronis refers literally to a garland, to the decorated prow of a ship, or to the scribal flourish at the end of a literary composition—and also, by extension, to the highest ornament or summit of an endeavor. (In antiquity, this scribal flourish—coincidentally—often took the form of a little bird.) Grafted into a humanist Latin text, this term can describe the crowning touch to something: a sixteenth-century

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14  •  Liturgy and Contemplation in Byrd’s Gradualia Roman archbishop, defending the past tradition of the Jubilee Year, presented a number of historical testimonies, concluding “pro coronide” with an account of all the European royalty who made pilgrimages and lavish donations to the Vatican for the anniversary of Christ’s birth.41 The word occurs in only one classical Latin source, the poem that opens Martial’s tenth book of epigrams. Here the poet, speaking in the persona of his own work, urges the reader not to linger over it any longer than desired: Si nimius videor seraque coronide longus Esse liber, legito pauca: libellus ero. [If I seem too long a book, and too slow to reach my final flourish, read just a little: then I will be a booklet] There is an affinity between Martial’s introduction and Byrd’s, a goodnatured offering of what is bound to overwhelm some of the intended audience; seventeenth-century scribes certainly took the eclectic rather than the systematic approach in their own readings of the Gradualia.42 Byrd appears to have had at least a nodding acquaintance with the Roman poet: he borrowed his couplet on the sweet song of the dying swan, featured on the title page of Gradualia I, from book 13 (as he carefully notes) of Martial’s epigrams.43 There is a definite sense in Byrd’s choice of the rather obscure term coronis that the music is only the embellishment, the “final flourish,” to a ritual and poetic cycle that is well-established in its own right. One puts a garland on something or someone that is already beautiful. To sum up: Byrd’s 1605 and 1607 prefaces, unlike their late-sixteenth-century predecessors, are full of statements on the sacred text: • “the sweetness of the words themselves” • “the holy words in which are sung the praises of God and the citizens of heaven” • “in the sentences themselves . . . there is such hidden and mysterious power” • “if I have given these holy words . . . notes not entirely inappropriate” • “certain holy and delightful phrases of the Christian rite” • “texts drawn from the fountain of sacred scripture” and on its liturgical function: • “being committed to the divine service” • “so the songs might be arranged, each in its own place, according to the parts of the Office” • “the Offices of the whole year, set out for your use” • “fitting for the solemn observance of these feasts” • “to fulfil my office” • “to adorn divine things with the highest art.”

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The Gradualia Cycle: Genre and Presentation  •  15 Byrd constantly returns to his view of the composer’s craft as being at the service of, for the adornment of, these two topics. Given the space devoted to such concerns in his later prefaces, and their complete absence from his earlier books, it is clear that he became intensely engaged with both the texts and the rituals of the Roman liturgy as he worked on his Mass proper cycle and the complex of related pieces. Throughout the prefaces to his Gradualia, he identifies with the meditative practices of English Catholics, as well as with their tenacious love for liturgical activity under even the most adverse conditions. As it became clear that Catholic emancipation was a long-term goal at best, a number of Byrd’s recusant contemporaries fashioned themselves in relation to the competing authorities of their day: the English crown, the papacy, and the whole troubled spectrum in between. Byrd fashioned himself with overwhelming reference to the authority of the liturgy, which, as he reveals in his prefaces, was enough to sustain a major work of art over several years. His self-declared “committment to the divine service” explains his readiness to work in such a problematic genre, and the risks he was willing to take in presenting a “public testimony” to the widest possible audience.

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2

“Meditate These Wel”

English Catholic Encounters with Sacred Texts

Both the prefatory material and the content of William Byrd’s Gradualia show him to be a committed reader of “sacred sentences.” He was far from alone in this interest. The devotional life of any educated Counter-Reformation layman was focused strongly on the printed word. The situation of Catholics in England, where the sacraments and other physical observances of religion were hard to come by, nourished (or forced) an even more text-centered piety. It is no coincidence that Byrd used the language of religious contemplation when he discussed musical text setting. Setting words to music, of whatever kind, draws the text from the abstract into the concrete as it becomes audible and is prolonged through time. Even the simple act of reading aloud makes the same leap. Readers in the sixteenth or seventeenth century, like their modern counterparts, were in danger of skimming over important texts and failing to profit from them. The Elizabethan Jesuit missionary Robert Southwell warned against this risk in his Short Rule of a Good Life when he advised the laity how to act on feast days: “I must bestow those days in reading good books, hearing sermons, and suchlike godly exercises, not lightly running over them, thinking it enough to have heard or read good things, but pausing upon such things as move my affection and printing them well in my mind and memory.”1 Prayers in print or manuscript often specified that they had to be read out loud in order to gain their full spiritual benefit—a requirement that, as Eamon Duffy has put it, can turn even a casual “hour of pious browsing” through a prayer book into a manifest act of devotion.2 Intoning a text on a single pitch or to a simple formula, as is done with liturgical readings and much of the sung Office, places it even more precisely in a temporal framework. Setting a text to music beyond the bare minimum needed for recitation, whether in the form of elaborate melody, homophony, or imitative polyphony, raises the process to a yet higher level. Any account of Byrd’s Gradualia will, sooner or later, cite the opening text of its most famous piece: Ave verum corpus. When we read these three Latin words, we generally accept them as shorthand for a much larger complex of ideas—a setting of a devotional poem beginning “Hail true body,” a study in expressive homophony, one of the very few Gradualia items to exist in a 17

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18  •  Liturgy and Contemplation in Byrd’s Gradualia prepublication manuscript version, a well-worn favorite among choral singers—and we pass over them without further reflection. Pause for a moment and read the phrase aloud: Ave verum corpus. Or sing it to a monotone, a pitch of your choice: Ave verum corpus. Or, yet more appealing, sing it to the top line of Byrd’s setting:

Even a plain reading or recitation brings out a number of details: the strong alternating rhythm (A-ve ve-rum cor-pus; Byrd rarely set accentual Latin poetry of this sort); the change from the bright, open a and e vowels of the opening salutation to the darker o and u, or the sonorous voiced fricative v giving way to the dry r and p. The contour of Byrd’s soprano melody further reflects the ebb and flow of the metrical pattern—the first accented syllable is thrown into relief by an upper semitone, and the second by a whole tone, while the third and last dissolves into a quick flutter of ornamentation. For those who know the piece well, this top line, even sung on its own, will also recall what goes on below it: the pungent harmonic transformation as D major moves to F major (while the syllable itself remains unchanged), emphasizing the all-important word verum, “true,” and the attendant claims about the Eucharist; the sting of the cadential seventh as it sounds in the tenor; the serene major third that concludes the phrase.3

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“Meditate These Wel”  •  19 By the simple act of speaking and singing aloud, we have begun to do with the text what Byrd, in characteristically colorful terms, called “turning over and over” (pervolutare), testing out its various resonances. Ave verum corpus: a short phrase of metrical poetry, a series of attractive sounds inviting melodic and harmonic elaboration, and, above all, a personal salutation. It is safe to assume that the current reader has not been addressing these words to anyone (except perhaps a handful of other library patrons, who may by now be wondering about this unusual exercise or even thinking of Byrd themselves). The words are nonetheless words with an object, addressed to a specific person, in this case to Christ in the form of the Eucharist. We can only guess where, when, and why Byrd’s piece was sung in the English recusant community. It could have accompanied prayer in the presence of the Sacrament, as in the Forty Hours’ devotion or at the consecration of the Mass. In a religious culture where access to these ceremonies was relatively rare and dangerous, such practices may well have been the exception rather than the rule. Philip Brett has observed that Ave verum marks “a decisive turn from the hieratic mood of the Corpus Christi Propers,” a shift from ritual activity to the most intimate level of personal and domestic devotion.4 Unlike the annual cycle of Mass propers, Ave verum was a primer text of the sort taught to children, a simple, easily memorized rhyme. Any Catholic consumer of the Gradualia would likely have muttered it hundreds of times in the course of his or her life. Byrd’s interpretation, like any successful meditation on an old theme, must have brought with it the shock of both the new and the familiar. These words, of course, carry a different set of connotations for an earlytwenty-first-century singer or musicologist than they did for the early-seventeenth-century English recusant. By reflecting systematically on them—and we have hardly exhausted the possibilities in the past few paragraphs—we can still forge a direct link with another community that reflected on them more than four hundred years ago. We hear similar sounds and are drawn into a similar affective world, mediated through Byrd’s distinctive reading. In its journey from silently read to spoken to sung to harmonized text, the little fragment Ave verum corpus is transformed from an abstract set of signs on a page to a tangible phenomenon in the mind and ear of the reader. The same can be said of any text Byrd set to music, including the other 108 texts of his Gradualia. Many of the contemplative methods popular among English Catholics, and among the Counter-Reformation faithful in general, were likewise designed to enrich the reader’s experience by prolonging and elaborating each point of meditation in time. These methods can be divided roughly into two categories: the set of Jesuit-influenced techniques that grew up around the Spiritual Exercises of Ignatius of Loyola, and the practices associated with popular devotions such as the Rosary and the Marian litanies. Both of these categories are well-documented in contemporary sources. They are also linked to liturgical observance and the events of the church year, making them useful points

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20  •  Liturgy and Contemplation in Byrd’s Gradualia of comparison with the Gradualia cycle. There was a good deal of overlap and mutual influence between Ignatian and non-Ignatian methods, but for the sake of clarity, this chapter will deal with each in turn: first with specifically Jesuit methods of reading and reflection, then with the proliferation of other devotional practices in England. Ignatius and the Art of Meditation No account of the English recusant community, or of Byrd’s artistic contribution to it, is complete without discussing the widespread impact of the Jesuits on both its spiritual and social structures.5 Beginning in the 1570s, a steady stream of young English Catholics were trained at Jesuit colleges abroad, ordained to the priesthood, and prepared to return home as missionaries—and often martyrs: Brett begins his introduction to the Gradualia for All Saints’ Day with a reminder that nearly 30 percent of Elizabethan missionary priests were killed in the line of duty.6 Edmund Campion, who landed at Dover in June 1580 and was followed a few days later by his two companions Ralph Emerson and Robert Persons, was the first member of the order to infiltrate the country. Barely eighteen months later, all three had been hanged, drawn, and quartered on charges of treason, an event that shook the English Catholic community and seems to have precipitated Byrd’s notorious song Why do I use my paper, ink, and pen?7 In the tense, highly charged religious atmosphere of Elizabethan and Jacobean England, the effect of the Jesuits—even when imprisoned or in hiding, as they almost invariably were—was quite out of proportion to their physical presence in the country. They soon gained a reputation as men who could make contact with, persuade, and mobilize vast numbers of the Catholic laity, transforming them (at least ideally) from timid conservatives into fierce revolutionaries. Michael Questier evokes the contemporary Protestant attitude toward these missionaries: “If the polemical literature is to be believed, the Society of Jesus was feared by English Protestants after 1580 more than any other Catholic body. And the quality which made the Society so terrifying, more even than its subscription to dangerous political doctrines, was its capacity for self-ingratiation, deception, and proselytisation. It seems that however small the number of Jesuits in England, the Society’s brand of subversion was exercised on a massive scale, and at all social levels.”8 Their supporters lauded them as heroes, while their detractors (including not only Protestants but some disgruntled old-school recusants) saw them as highly dangerous fifth columnists. What all sides agreed on was their influence across a broad spectrum of the population.9 One of the most important traits of the Jesuit order, and one that set them apart from the numerous non-Jesuit missionaries doing similar work in England, was the practice of the Spiritual Exercises, a system formulated by Ignatius of Loyola (1491–1556), the founder of the order. The Exercises are a

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“Meditate These Wel”  •  21 highly regimented method of meditation, teaching the subject to reflect (ideally through an intensive month-long retreat) on both the life of Christ and one’s own life. As the religious and intellectual discipline most characteristic of the order, this method was taught extensively wherever Jesuits were active. The England of Byrd’s day, even with its climate of hostility or outright persecution, was no exception to this rule. As a cycle of systematic contemplations on the life of Christ and associated topics, the Exercises have much in common with the observance of the church year. The same priests who worked most intensely to restore Catholic liturgical life in England were often the most enthusiastic about teaching these skills to the recusant laity. Ignatius himself was not the most obvious candidate for founding a Counter-Reformation religious order. He went through life as a successful, highspirited, and not particularly devout Basque nobleman until he experienced a conversion at the age of thirty. He was seriously wounded in battle and forced to spend a long, tedious convalescence in bed; accustomed to reading courtly romances, he asked for some libros de caballería to pass the time. There were none in the house, so he was given two religious books instead: the Golden Legend by Jacobus de Voragine and The Life of Christ by Ludolph of Saxony. These works gradually convinced him of the relevance of spiritual matters, and, over months of intensive reading, changed his entire worldview. He became attached to the texts, and began to study them in depth. “Liking those books a lot,” as he recalled several decades later in the third person, “he had the idea of extracting certain things, briefly and in their essentials, from the lives of Christ and the saints. . . . Part of the time he would spend in writing, part in prayer.”10 The practice described here was to evolve over several decades into the Spiritual Exercises as they are known today. From the earliest days of his conversion, Ignatius worked hard at developing his own skills in meditation, prayer, and mental discernment; he also began to help others in these matters.11 As he began to form what would later become the Jesuit order, he taught his companions to do likewise. In 1527, six years after his initial conversion, he was already “giving spiritual exercises” to the public, and carrying around a set of “papers, which were the Exercises.”12 By 1533, at the University of Paris, he was systematically instructing others on how to administer them. He had kept manuscript notes on meditation from the very beginning; “as for the Exercises,” he recalled, “he had not produced them all at one time, rather that some things which he used to observe in his soul and find useful for himself it seemed to him could also be useful for others, and so he used to put them in writing.”13 The final written form of the Exercises did not appear in print until 1548, eight years before Ignatius’s death. A survey of its reception made in 1948, four centuries after its first printing, estimated that it had been published in more than four thousand separate editions.14

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22  •  Liturgy and Contemplation in Byrd’s Gradualia Both the form and the content of the Exercises bear the distinctive stamp of the two books Ignatius encountered during his recovery. The thirteenthcentury Golden Legend (Legenda aurea, or literally “golden things to be read”) was among the most famous devotional works of the later Middle Ages.15 It narrates the lives of the saints through a series of short biographical sketches, beginning with St. Andrew on November 30 and progressing through the liturgical year; it also describes all of the chief feast days in the calendar.16 These sketches are a mixture of sound historical fact and various degrees of fanciful heroic narrative. The Spanish version, which Ignatius read, includes a prologue describing the saints “as the ‘knights of God’ who did resplendent deeds in the service of ‘the eternal prince, Christ Jesus,’ whose ‘ever victorious banner’ these knights were following.”17 Rhetoric of this kind spoke naturally to a young soldier who wanted to sublimate his quest for earthly glory into a search for spiritual good. Some of the imagery in the Exercises, such as the meditation on the opposing armies of Christ and Satan, can be traced directly to the material Ignatius read in the Golden Legend.18 Ludolph of Saxony’s Life of Christ (Vita Christi) had an even greater impact on the development of the Exercises.19 Although the Exercises bear the imprint of Ignatius’s own temperament and approach to spiritual matters, it is clear that “the sequence contained in Ludolph’s Vita,” which he studied so intensively during the months of his convalescence and copied into his own notebooks, “became the nucleus of [his] thought.”20 This fourteenth-century book presents the narrative of the life of Christ with meditations on each scene. In addition to his earthly life of thirty-three years, it also includes events outside that limited temporal framework, from the eternal generation of the Son within the Trinity (in the first chapter) to the Last Judgment and the life of heaven (in the final chapters.) Between these more abstract meditations, Ludolph follows the entire story chronologically, from the Annunciation to Pentecost.21 He begins with a prologue to the reader, a set of instructions for using the book: Your part will be, if you want to draw fruit from these sayings and deeds of Christ, to put aside all other preoccupations; and then, with all the affection of your heart, slowly, diligently, and with relish, make yourself present to what the Lord Jesus has said and done, and to what is being narrated, just as if you were actually there, and heard him with your own ears, and saw him with your own eyes. . . Although many of these facts are recounted as having taken place in the past, you nevertheless should meditate upon them as if they were taking place now, in the present; for from this you will surely experience great delight.22 To help the reader do this, Ludolph accompanies his narrative with detailed descriptions, taken, as his title says, “from the Gospel and approved teachers.”

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“Meditate These Wel”  •  23 The Ignatian Exercises are much more compact. With the exception of the first few scenes, such as the Annunciation and Christmas, Ignatius presents only the basic descriptive texts of the life of Christ; he asks his subjects to create the scene in their minds and follow through with their own meditations. Ludolph, who designed his book as material for private reading rather than notes for a guided retreat, gives much more detail. Each scene, in Ludolph as in Ignatius, ends with a prayer summing up the relevant subject matter and entering into a dialogue with the characters involved. Ignatius calls this a coloquio, a Spanish word adapted directly into Latin as colloquium and into English as colloquy; it is a standard classical term meaning “dialogue” or “conversation,” but he uses it specifically “to indicate the prayer of familiar conversation that he encourages as the culmination of an exercise, and which calls for special reverence.”23 The whole process should take approximately an hour; five of these sessions, at least during the most intensive periods of the retreat, are carried out each day.24 The Exercises fall into four main sections. The overall plan, in Ignatius’s own words, is as follows: Four weeks are taken for the following Exercises, corresponding to the four parts into which they are divided: in the first week, there is consideration and contemplation of sins; in the second, of the life of Christ our Lord up to and including Palm Sunday; in the third, of his sufferings; and in the fourth, of his resurrection and ascension, to which are added the three modes of prayer. This does not mean, however, that each of these “weeks” must necessarily consist of seven or eight days. . . They must sometimes be shortened, and sometimes drawn out. . . . Nonetheless, the Exercises should be completed in thirty days, more or less.25 Between the second and third weeks, there are detailed instructions “for making an election,” a decision on some important matter regarding one’s future or state in life.26 The Exercises were very often used as a method of soulsearching for people considering entrance into vowed religious life—they were required of all Jesuit novices from the very first years of the order—and Ignatius builds the process of discerning such a vocation into the fabric of the retreat. For people who are already married, under vows of some other sort, or not considering a radical change of circumstance, there are instructions on “how to amend one’s existing life and state” in light of what has been perceived in the Exercises.27 There are also a number of instructions scattered throughout the book on daily life, prayer, examination of conscience, and discernment of various kinds. The cycle of meditations includes fifty-one biblical “mysteries of the life of Christ our Lord,” covering his entire physical life on earth from the Annunciation to the Ascension.28 The presentation of each “mystery” consists of three short biblical passages, sometimes with a brief commentary, paraphrase, or

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24  •  Liturgy and Contemplation in Byrd’s Gradualia explanation; the set of 150 texts adds up to a précis of the Gospels, broken into small pieces for effective rumination. Ignatius’s account of the Epiphany, a typical example, is given below. As in his original work, all biblical material is given in quotation marks. The Three Kings. Matthew 2. First point. The three kings, following the guidance of the star, came to worship Jesus, saying: “We have seen his star in the East, and have come to adore him.” Second point. They worshipped him and offered him gifts: “Falling prostrate on the ground, they adored him, and offered him gifts: gold, frankincense, and myrrh.” Third point. “Having received an answer in a dream that they should not return to Herod, they went back by another road into their own country.”29 Ignatius offers detailed instructions for contemplation in only the first handful of scenes. His notes on Christmas show the method most clearly; this is the full Christmas meditation of the Exercises: The first prelude is the history: how our Lady left Nazareth almost nine months pregnant, sitting (as we may piously meditate) on a donkey, with Joseph, a servant-girl, and an ox, so that they might go to Bethlehem and pay the tribute which Caesar had imposed on all those regions. The second prelude is the composition, by imagining the place: to see in your imagination the road from Nazareth to Bethlehem, considering its length, its width, whether it is level or winds up and down hills and valleys; and considering the place, or the cave of the nativity, whether it is large or small, low or high, and how it is furnished. The third prelude is the same as in the preceding meditation, and in the same words.30 The first point is to see the persons, that is our Lady, Joseph, the servantgirl, and the infant Jesus after his birth. I will imagine myself a poor and unworthy slave, looking at them, contemplating them, and serving them in their needs as if I were there, with all possible respect and reverence; and reflect on my own self, to gain some profit from all this. The second point is to listen to, pay attention to, and contemplate all they are saying. Then I will reflect again on myself to gain some profit. The third point is to look and consider what they are doing: traveling and working hard, so that our Lord is born in the greattest poverty, and after so much hardship, hunger, thirst, after the heat and cold, after offenses

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“Meditate These Wel”  •  25 and insults, he might finally die on the cross—and all this for me. Then, by reflecting, I will gain some profit. Finally make a colloquy, as in the previous contemplation,31 and say the Pater noster.32 The words given by Ignatius as raw material for the cycle of meditations, following the earthly life of Christ from the Annunciation to the Ascension, have much subject matter in common with the proper texts of the liturgical year. These two framing events in the Ignatian cycle are also key liturgical events in the Gradualia cycle, and a collation of these brief texts (see Table 2.1) shows correspondences with nine of Byrd’s twelve major feast days. Table 2.1  From Ignatius of Loyola, Spiritual Exercises §261–§312 (Scriptural “mysteries . . . to meditate and contemplate on”). 262a. The angel entered the place where Mary was, greeted her, and said: Hail, full of grace. You will conceive in your womb and give birth to a Son. 1605 / 14a5 Ave Maria gratia plena (Annunciation) 1605 / 15a5 Ecce virgo concipiet (Annunciation) 263a. Elizabeth, filled with the Holy Spirit, cried out with a loud voice and said: Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb. 1605 / 14a5 Ave Maria gratia plena (Annunciation) 1607 / 9a4 Ave Maria / Beata Virgo (Christmas) 264c. There was a multitude of the heavenly host saying: Glory to God in the highest. 1607 / 6a4 Hodie Christus natus est (Christmas) 265a. The birth of Christ is made known to the shepherds by an angel: I bring you good news of great joy, for this day is born to you the Savior of the world. *1607 / 6a4 Hodie Christus natus est (Christmas) 267a. The three kings, guided by the star, came to adore Jesus, saying: We have seen his star in the East, and have come to adore him. 1607 / 12a4 Vidimus stellam (Epiphany) 267b. Falling prostrate on the ground, they adored him and offered him gifts: gold, frankincense, and myrrh. 1607 / 11a4 Reges Tharsis (Epiphany) 268a. They carry the Infant Jesus to the temple, to present him as the first-born to the Lord, and they offer for him a pair of turtledoves and two young pigeons. 1605 / 19a4 Hodie beata Virgo (Candlemas) --continued

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26  •  Liturgy and Contemplation in Byrd’s Gradualia Table 2.1  From Ignatius of Loyola, Spiritual Exercises §261–§312 (Scriptural “mysteries . . . to meditate and contemplate on”). (continued) 268b. Simeon, coming to the temple, took him into his arms and said: Now you dismiss your servant, O Lord, in peace. *1605 / 3a5 Senex puerum portabat (Candlemas) 1605 / 4a5 Nunc dimittis servum tuum (Candlemas) *1605 / 18a4 Senex puerum portabat (Candlemas) 278a. To his beloved disciples he speaks apart about the eight beatitudes: Blessed are the poor in spirit, the meek, the merciful, those who mourn, those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, the clean of heart, the peacemakers, and those who suffer persecution. 1605 / 32a5 Beati mundo corde (All Saints) 289c. He instituted the most holy sacrifice of the Eucharist as the greatest sign of his love. Take and eat, he told them. *1607 / 14a4 Venite comedite (Votive Mass of the Sacrament) 301c. Jesus says to them: Do not be afraid. Go, tell my brothers to go into Galilee, and there they will see me. *1607 / 22a5 Victimae paschali laudes (Easter) 305c. St. Thomas believed, and said, My Lord and my God. Christ says to him: Blessed are those who have not seen and have believed. *1605 / 8a4 Pange lingua (Corpus Christi) 306c. He asked St. Peter three times about his love for him, and then he entrusted his sheep to him: Feed my sheep. *1607 / 43a6 Tu es pastor ovium (St. Peter & Paul / St. Peter’s Chains) 312b. He led them out to Mount Olivet, and in their presence was taken up, and a cloud hid him from their sight. *1607 / 28a5 Psallite Domino (Ascension) 312c. While they are looking up to heaven the angels say to them: Men of Galilee, why are you standing there looking up at the sky? This Jesus, who has been taken up from you into heaven, will return in the same way as you have seen him going into heaven. 1607 / 30a5 Viri Galilaei (Ascension) Note: Material also found in the Gradualia is in italics; paraphrases and non-literal citations are marked with an asterisk.

Beyond this central cycle, the Exercises also offer a complex of subsidiary techniques and guidelines for meditation, to be continued after the formal round of topics has been completed. The “three modes of prayer,” which Ignatius discusses in considerable detail in his manuscript, are more specific methods for

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“Meditate These Wel”  •  27 “gaining some profit” from biblical or devotional texts. His first mode is a systematic reflection and examination of conscience, made by working through the Ten Commandments, the Seven Deadly Sins, the five senses, and similar traditional lists, considering how each one pertains to the subject at hand. The second and third are most relevant to the present study of close reading, and in fact show considerable affinities with Byrd’s own method as described in the preface to the 1605 Gradualia. The second mode of prayer consists in contemplating the meaning of each word of a prayer. . . . The person should say the [first] word, and continue to consider the word as long as meanings, comparisons, relish, and consolations connected with it are found. The same procedure should be continued with each word.33 The third mode of prayer is by measures, or by duration, in the form of rhythm. With each breath taken in, or each one expelled, the person should pray mentally, saying one word of the Pater noster, or any other prayer which is being said, so that one word of the prayer is said between one breath and another; and in the time between, he should pay attention to the meaning of the word, or the person to whom it is addressed, or his own lowliness, or the distance between that person’s dignity and his own lack of it.34 The third mode of prayer, “prayer by measures” (por compas in the Spanish original) draws on musical as well as spiritual terminology. “This metaphor,” as one annotator of the Exercises says, “is brought in from the art of music; this way of praying joins prayer to a certain sacred harmony, in which devout thoughts and feelings respond to each breath, and both heart and flesh exult in the living God.”35 Breaking up the text into viable syntactical and/or expressive units, then reflecting on them one by one, is of course reminiscent of the process of polyphonic text setting—as in the Easter introit from the Gradualia, where the strongest words are set apart, and each is given a striking musical treatment: Resurrexi et adhuc tecum sum alleluia: posuisti super me manum tuam alleluia. This practice of reflecting word-by-word on a short prayer is spelled out explicitly in some English devotional handbooks associated with the Jesuit order. Certaine devout considerations, a 1606 translation of the second part of Fulvio Androzzi’s Opere spirituali, demonstrates the technique as part of a

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28  •  Liturgy and Contemplation in Byrd’s Gradualia discussion of “Divers wayes of saying the Pater noster.”36 This source reaches back to the first generation of Ignatian spiritual practice. Androzzi, an Italian Jesuit, had entered the order in 1555 while its founder was still alive. Ignatius addressed one of his last letters to him, insisting on the effectiveness of the Spiritual Exercises and encouraging him to administer them, along with the various techniques of prayer, according to the needs of all who were willing and capable. He wrote, “Your Reverence knows that there is one outstanding means among those which of their nature are helpful to men. I mean the Exercises. I remind you, therefore, that you should make use of this weapon, which is such a familiar part of our Society. The first week could be given to many people, as well as some methods of prayer. But to give them exactly as they are, one should have retreatants capable and suitable for helping others as they themselves have been helped.”37 Barely six weeks after Ignatius wrote these words, he died, passing the task of “helping others” through the Exercises to Androzzi and the other Jesuits of the younger generation. The volume of Opere spirituali appears to have grown out of this final commission. It was a popular work throughout the rest of the sixteenth century and well into the seventeenth; its contents were already known among English Catholics even before it was published in their native language in 1606. Androzzi offers a practical introduction to this method of slow reading. Each word of the prayer—two words are occasionally taken together when one makes little sense alone—is given first in Latin, then in the vernacular, followed by a group of suggested reflections on its meaning and application. Let him [i.e. the reader] consider and meditate on the Pater noster in maner followinge, makeinge as it were a Comentary on every worde, therby the more to inflame his affection. As for example. Pater. Father. Mightie in creation. Sweete in Love. Rich in inheritance. Noster. Our. Of Christ by nature. Of mortall men by grace. Of the blessed by glory. Qui es. Which art. In continuance, eternall In substance, infynite. In goodnesse, the best. In coelis. In heaven. The myrrour of eternity. The crown of Joy. The treasure of felicitie.

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Sanctificetur. Hallowed be. Through lively faith. Through firme hope. Through fervent charity. Nomen. Name. The glory of thy Sonne. The maiesty of the holy Ghost. Thy everlasting Father-hoode. Tuum. Thy. That it may be sugar in the mouth. Melody in the eare. Jubilye in the harte. Tuum. Thy. Againe. That thou only be glorified. Thou only desired. Thou only loved, as the last end.38

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“Meditate These Wel”  •  29 The process here appears to be a hybrid of the second and third Ignatian modes of prayer. There is no requirement to dwell on a single word until its associations are exhausted, but the reader is told to linger, “makeinge as it were a Comentary on every worde,” with the explicit purpose of building affective intensity, and, ultimately, drawing something deeply felt out of what could otherwise be regarded as the most ordinary of rote prayers. A small percentage of words, such as tuum here and da (“give”) later, receive six or even nine comments rather than the usual three. This material had already appeared on the recusant book market, in a simpler version, as part of the Manuall, or meditation compiled and printed secretly at an English press in 1580 or 1581.39 Although the “I.R.” who assembled the book cannot be identified with any certainty, he clearly had access to at least basic Jesuit sources. The Manuall, or meditation has a fair amount of material in common with the more conventional Manual, the basic prayer book for the devout Catholic laity who could read English but not Latin: elementary instruction in the faith, vernacular collects and antiphons, rhymed translations of common hymns.40 As the title of the newer work suggests, it also includes some instructions on meditation, including a demonstration of the word-by-word method of prayer. The first phrases of the Pater noster are treated this way: A Briefe meditation on the Pater Noster. Our Father: High in Creation. Sweete in love. Rich in Inheritance. Which art in Heaven: The spectacle of eternity. The crowne of iocundity. The treasure of felicity. Halowed be thy name: That it may be hony in our mouthes. Melody in our eares. Devotion in our harts.41 “I.R.” uses the same material as Androzzi, but it is telescoped here by nearly two-thirds into a much shorter version. Whole phrases are reflected on rather than single words. The Latin text is left out, and the gradual unfolding of the prayer happens in English only; the commentary is offered as a self-contained “briefe meditation,” not as an instructive “example” of how to meditate “in maner following.” Despite the differences in presentation, the basic structure, as well as the subject matter, is the same: Ignatian reading techniques are

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30  •  Liturgy and Contemplation in Byrd’s Gradualia introduced to beginners on the most accessible level. The year 1580, in which the Manuall, or meditation was likely published, also saw the entry into England of Edmund Campion and the first wave of Jesuits. Whether or not this book was directly associated with the Jesuit missionary endeavor, it reveals spiritual tendencies that were very much in the air as the second generation of Elizabethan Catholics reached maturity. Such word-by-word contemplative techniques became so well known that they were even used in anti-Jesuit satire. One such parody survives among the Ellesmere papers, a set of manuscripts compiled largely by Thomas Egerton (Baron Ellesmere), a distinguished lawyer who was appointed lord chancellor under James I. The papers include—understandably, considering his important judicial position in these difficult years—a fair amount of material associated with recusancy and the debate over Catholicism.42 Among these papers is Le Pater Noster des Jesuites, a manuscript copy of a French anti-Jesuit pamphlet printed in the early seventeenth century. The topic is the assassination of the French king Henry IV in May 1610 by François Ravaillac, a deranged fanatic who had at one point tried to enter the Jesuit order. The Jesuits were inevitably linked to the assassination, and there was a movement to have them banished from France in its aftermath. In this satire, they address King Philip III of Spain, gloating over Ravaillac and the implications of his deed for the future of Catholic rule in Europe. Le Pater Noster des Jesuites, dedié a Philippe III, Roye d’Espagne, pour les estreines de l’année 1611 Philippe, Roy de tous les hommes, Nous ne serons jamais muets De confesser tous que nous sommes Tes cheres enfans et que tu es Pater noster. Assuy le troupe Jesuitique Pour les bien faicts receus de toy, Chant incessement ce Cantique: Bien heureux Philippe, ô Grand Roy Que es in caelis. Que Ravaillac Maudite engence Par nous si bien chatechisé Pour massacrer le Roy de France Au lieu d’en estre misprisé Sanctificetur. Ce coup, Philippe, te faict apprendre Que nous sommes tes vrais amis,

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“Meditate These Wel”  •  31 Et qu’en tous lieux ferons estendre En despit de tes ennemis Nomen tuum. Que ton desir insatiable D’engloutir tout ce que tu vois, Que ton dessein plus qu’admirable De dominer sur tous les Roys Adveniat.43 The Pater Noster of the Jesuits, Dedicated to Philip III, King of Spain, as a New Year’s Gift for 1611 Philip, King of all men we all shall never cease to confess that we are your dear children and that you are our father. The Jesuit band for the good it has received from you sings this song incessantly Blessed is Philip, Great King in heaven. That ill-born Ravaillac so well catechized by us instead of being scorned for massacring the King of France is to be hallowed. This blow, Philip, has taught you that we are your true friends and that we shall despite your enemies spread your name through all lands. O, that your insatiable desire to swallow up all you see your more than admirable plan to dominate over all Kings may come to pass. The anonymous author continues in this vein through the rest of the Pater Noster and the Ave Maria, the latter directed to the queen. Several other French pamphlets of the period are written along the same lines. Anthony Petti, the modern editor of the Ellesmere recusant papers, remarks on the

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32  •  Liturgy and Contemplation in Byrd’s Gradualia common theme of these satires: “In the burst of anti-Jesuit propaganda in France after the death of Henry IV, this technique of verse satire (a macaronic parody based on Latin prayers, which poked fun at the Jesuit method of meditation) was especially popular.”44 It is interesting that a manuscript copy of Le Pater Noster des Jesuites seems to have been made in (or at least brought into) Jacobean England. More important, though, is the fact that it takes the wordby-word method of reading and praying as a known commonplace on which to build a parody. By the early seventeenth century, these “modes of prayer” were so closely associated with the Jesuit order that they could be treated satirically in mass-produced pamphlets. The English Protestant scribe who appears to have made the copy in the Ellesmere collection also shared this familiarity. Jesuit contemplative methods had found their way into a number of assorted devotional sources by the turn of the seventeenth century. Some English-language books attempted to make a yet more general and systematic presentation of the Ignatian Exercises to a lay audience. The number of Jesuits active in England was never particularly large in proportion to the number of Catholics.45 Although each Jesuit did his best to associate with as many people as was practical and reasonably safe, many recusants (perhaps even the majority) never had the chance to consult one in person, much less receive detailed spiritual guidance or go through the full round of the Exercises. Nicholas Hart, in his 1599 application to the English College in Rome, states that he “had never seen or spoken with any of the Society” until his long-awaited meeting with John Gerard.46 In such an environment, a volume of straightforward, detailed instruction on the art of meditation, written in English for the broadest possible access, could be a resource of great value. One such book is The practice of meditating with profit the misteries of our Lord, the blessed Vergin and Saints, a translation printed in 1613 of Nicolao Berzetti’s Pratica di bien meditare li misterii di nostro Signore.47 The title page claims only that it was “translated into English by a Father of the Society of Jesus”; the translator can be identified from external references as the Jesuit priest Thomas Talbot.48 In his preface, the printer Henry Jeay shows considerable familiarity with the work, and states that he had “perused” it before deciding on publication. This may be a hint that the English version of the Pratica, and presumably other materials like it, circulated in manuscript for some time before being committed to print. The book offers us a snapshot of the Ignatian ideas that were circulating in England by the early seventeenth century. Unlike similar sources discussed later in this chapter, the Directorium and the English Annotations, it does not have to do with the giving of the Exercises in their full traditional form; it offers the relevant methods to be followed by lay readers at their own pace. A detailed account of its contents would be outside the scope of this study, but a few characteristics are worth mentioning. First among them is the very detailed application of contemporary meditative techniques to the

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“Meditate These Wel”  •  33 series of scenes in the church year. The most explicit instruction, as usual, is given for the first “mystery,” in this case that of the Annunciation. Berzetti takes the famous Annunciation text from Luke 1 beginning Missus est Angelus Gabriel—“the Angel Gabriel was sent” to give the good news to the Virgin Mary—and proceeds to lead the reader through a sort of inner dialogue reflecting on the meaning of the passage: “Here shall the memory suggest. . . . Hereof the understanding shall inferr. . . . Here finally the memory shall adioyne. . . . Then the understanding shall say. . . .”49 Readers are led from simple reflection on the passage and the feast day to a carefully constructed polyphonic discourse within their own minds, for which Berzetti gives richly detailed instructions. Another characteristic of The practice of meditating, following and expanding on the traditional Ignatian model, is the association of a specific emotion with each scriptural or liturgical event. For the Nativity of Mary, as well as for Candlemas, the reader is instructed to concentrate on and emulate her “inward joy and exultation”; for the Annunciation and the Visitation, the proper affect is one of “great humility.”50 Much of the book is in fact taken up by Berzetti’s set of instructions on “certayn ways to stirr up, continue, and dilate the affections”; this is given as a series of thirty rhetorical devices, in alphabetical order from “Affirmation” to “Zeale,” so that “he who cannot find such facility in using one as he desireth, may use some of the others, and may keep them by that method better in memory.”51 These devices are lavishly illustrated with Latin scriptural phrases, almost all of them liturgical. Berzetti also offers advice for meditative reading based on the Ignatian “three ways”: “how to employ our selves profitably when we meditate eyther one only word of the holy scripture or els some sentence of the same.”52 He recommends this kind of reading specifically “for those, that will first meditate uppon the Psalmes, that he may afterwards say them with more devotion, eyther in his canonicall houres, or in the office of our B. Lady, etc.”53 He also advises the reader that a given “mystery” is best of all explored on the relevant feast day, “fitly done the day yt self, that any particular mistery shall occurr, of which the holy church doth solemnize the feast.”54 Here, as throughout the work, there is an emphasis on integrating these methods of reading into the wider experience of the liturgy and the liturgical cycle. Administration and Reception of the Spiritual Exercises in England As soon as the Spiritual Exercises became a widespread phenomenon, a demand arose for written advice on how to practice them more effectively. This need was even more acute in territories far from the Catholic countries of Europe, where missionaries often worked alone or in small groups, deprived of libraries and the spiritual counsel of their fellow Jesuits. The growing popularity of the Exercises among a diverse clientele—non-Jesuit clerics, women, youth, the uneducated, those who were married or held important positions and

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34  •  Liturgy and Contemplation in Byrd’s Gradualia could not choose to relinquish everything in the course of their meditations— demanded some additional guidelines. Ignatius provided a few practical notes on the matter before his death in 1556. The following years saw a number of “directories” published by his successors.55 Claudio Aquaviva, the head of the order from 1581 to 1615 (and the supervisor of the English mission), brought these sources together with his own insights and what appears to have been a flourishing oral tradition in the 1599 Directorium in Exercitia Spiritualia.56 The Directorium both reflected and determined the practice of the Exercises in the Counter-Reformation years. Multiple copies were sent to every province in which Jesuits were stationed, including England. Aquaviva discusses a number of questions and problems in the treatise: How should the general public be introduced to these techniques? How does a director deal with a person of little or no education? Is it sometimes appropriate to give only selected parts of the Exercises and leave out others? What should exercitants do after finishing the monthlong cycle of meditation if they do not perceive the call (as, it must be admitted, some early Ignatian directors saw as almost a given) to leave “the world” and enter a religious order? All of these were live issues at the turn of the seventeenth century, and the advice given in the Directorium reveals much about the reception of Ignatian spirituality at the time. Two matters seem to have been of special concern to directors, judging from the frequency with which they come up in the book: how to adapt the raw material of the Exercises to the needs of each person and how to teach Ignatius’s contemplative techniques most effectively. Both of these topics are relevant to the study of Ignatian influences on general Catholic populations. As we turn later in this chapter to actual accounts of an English Jesuit teaching the Exercises and related practices to an eager recusant community, a number of Aquaviva’s instructions will reappear in specific practical contexts. Ignatius intended his method to be a flexible one, a technique that could be adapted to suit different temperaments and states of life. He remarks in his opening annotations that “the Exercises must be accommodated to the disposition of the one receiving them, namely his age, education, and ability; nor should things be imposed on an uneducated or weak person which he cannot bear, or from which he cannot profit. In a similar way, each one should be given as much as he is willing to prepare himself to receive.”57 The Directorium, following Ignatius, firmly rejects the notion that people “should think the Exercises are appropriate for only clerics, or those who want to become clerics. Since all require the grace of God—not just clerics, but especially laymen, because of the hazards among which they constantly live— laymen need all the more to seek an increase of it.”58 The invitation to try the Exercises should be made “discreetly and modestly, at an appropriate time and place, without any annoyance or offense; and being particularly careful that no one imagines we want to drag people into becoming clerics [ad religiosum statum trahere velimus].”59 For those who are already married or have charge

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“Meditate These Wel”  •  35 of a family, “the Exercises are to be directed to this end, that they should lead their households according to the divine precepts, instruct their children and servants,” and eventually “reform their entire life” according to the principles taught in the course of their retreat.60 Women were also included in this practice. Nancy Pollard Brown, in her edition of Southwell’s Short Rule of a Good Life, writes that the administration of the Exercises was restricted to men alone.61 M. Ruth McGee says the same while discussing the spiritual life of English Catholics: “in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries women were not given the Spiritual Exercises.”62 Firsthand accounts from England reveal the contrary, as the northern recusant Dorothy Lawson makes a retreat with the Jesuit priest Richard Holby (and goes on to be a great patron of the order),63 or John Gerard instructs Elizabeth Vaux “how to meditate,” showing her systematically how to “follow as closely as possible the pattern of our Lord’s life and of his saints.”64 The internal evidence of the Directorium also proves that women participated in the Exercises, each according to her talent and level of education. The relevant chapter lists “the various sorts of people to whom the Exercises can be given”; the paragraph on female exercitants is worth quoting in full, if only to dispel the myth: Women, who sometimes request the Exercises, also fall under this heading. They should be dealt with in the same way as uneducated men [as instructed in Exercises §18, giving them a shortened or modified version of the full retreat], unless one is of good enough judgment, capable enough in spiritual matters, and has enough leisure at home that she can carry out everything properly, or at least the greater part of it: then nothing would impede doing so. But it must be noted that it is more prudent for women to come to our churches to receive their meditations; and that should be done carefully, so that no suspicion or scandal follows. For this reason it is probably better to give the meditations vocally, not in writing, lest people assume they are some sort of private letters [ne homines existiment aliquas esse epistolas]. If they are given in writing, let it be done discreetly.65 Of course, some of these suggestions were impractical in England. The Jesuits there had no churches of their own where people could come discreetly to receive instruction. They shared in the common life of large private houses, associating freely with both men and women, and they gave spiritual advice in writing when physical proximity was impossible; see, for example, Henry Garnet’s correspondence from prison with his close friend and associate Anne Vaux, which can only be described as “some sort of private letters.”66 The complete round of the Exercises, according to the Directorium, can be adapted to suit the needs of each individual. “Those who already have an established state in life” need not be taken through the process of “election,”

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36  •  Liturgy and Contemplation in Byrd’s Gradualia although they should be given “the ordinary exercises of the mysteries of the life of Christ.”67 In place of the dramatic vocational choice that traditionally stands at the center of the Exercises, they should be offered a series of formal meditations on the main points of their daily life, “such as their family or their expenses,” discerning what is to be done in each area. This reflects Ignatius’s own statement that people in such a situation should “consider and work out in detail” how they are to manage their households in the future.68 Even those who can receive comparatively little of the Exercises, through lack of either time, status, or ability, should be well-instructed in one thing: the “three modes of prayer.” “The full Exercises should be given [as Ignatius says in the Constitutions of the order] only to a few; the first week, along with these three ways of praying, can be communicated to many.”69 The Directorium elaborates on the three methods at more length than Ignatius’s original text, giving advice on their practice and application. Aquaviva begins his section on the second method (unlimited reflection, one word at a time) with a remark on the proper division of the text. Where Ignatius had simply recommended word-by-word meditation, the newer approach is more complicated. As Aquaviva explains, “In the second mode of prayer, it should be noted that, when one word makes no sense, several should be joined together, such as Qui es in coelis, or Sanctificetur nomen tuum. Other words provide matter for meditation on their own, such as Pater, or Noster.”70 Words can be grouped into short phrases for reflection, but the test for choosing phrase length should be more than grammatical coherence. Some phrases or important single words, such as the Our of “Our Father,” are to be isolated and reflected on when they offer “matter for meditation on their own,” even if they “make no sense” standing alone. The text is divided by strength of affect, and relative weight of words, as well as by grammar. Such practical division of the text is already evident in the two English adaptations of Androzzi’s method of reading the Pater noster; by the turn of the seventeenth century, it appears to have become well-established in Ignatian spiritual instruction throughout Europe. The Directorium goes on to say that the “second mode of prayer” can, and should, be extended to texts beyond the handful of set prayers discussed in the Exercises: “What is said here about these prayers can also be understood to apply to the other parts of Scripture, and especially to the psalter, from which whole psalms can be chosen, or those verses which most richly feed both the intellect and the emotions [qui uberrime pascunt et intellectum et affectum].”71 The third mode, meditation on each word for the space of a single breath, is a variation on the second. Aquaviva’s remarks underscore the fact that it, unlike the second, is a more controlled technique of reflection, moving through the text at a set speed rather than lingering over it indefinitely (even spending a full hour on one or two words!) It is the method specifically recommended for closer engagement with liturgical texts. “If someone wants to dwell longer on

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“Meditate These Wel”  •  37 the words for his devotion,” Aquaviva writes, “he certainly can; but that pertains more to the second mode of prayer”; the third mode “helps us become accustomed to say our audible prayers with attention and due devotion, that we might keep to what the Apostle said: ‘I shall pray with the spirit; I shall also pray with the mind.’72 For that reason, this exercise is very useful for those who are obliged to the the canonical office or other vocal prayers.”73 Office texts are recommended elsewhere in the Directorium. People going through the Exercises were generally told not to keep any books in their rooms, to avoid distraction and the cross-pollination of ideas or mental images. They should even avoid passages of the Gospel if they do not pertain to “the mystery which is to be contemplated that day, or at that hour.”74 The major exception to this ban is “the breviary, if he be a priest, or the office of the Blessed Virgin.”75 The reading of office texts was an accepted part of the Ignatian method by 1599; the insistence at the Council of Trent that priests fulfill their daily obligation to recite the office may well have contributed to this, since they were not dispensed from it even during an intensive retreat of this sort. Reading of the Little Office, the corresponding practice for the devout laity and members of some orders, was also allowed, even encouraged, during the course of the Exercises. It is apparent that liturgical texts were the raw material on which these meditative techniques were often practiced. Advice for those who have finished their retreat, the last chapter of the Directorium, is brief and simple. “Just as a person easily gets chilled when he steps out from a warm place into a cold place,” Aquaviva writes, “so there is nothing easier for one who returns to his usual life and business after the Exercises than to lose his enthusiasm and illumination in the shortest time.”76 Three points are directed against this unfortunate entropic tendency. The first two are sobering reminders: first, that having discerned what is right, exercitants will now be held fully responsible if they go on to choose what is wrong; second, that good intention is only the beginning of what is expected, “nothing or almost nothing by itself,” and that we are obliged to cultivate this seed, nourishing it and protecting it from the proverbial birds and choking weeds.77 The final point is an exhortation to go on doing daily, though in a modified way, what has been done in the Exercises. “First of all,” the final note encourages, “let him keep the practice of meditating for half an hour every day, or even for a full hour if he can.”78 The earlier chapter on the three modes of prayer also mentions the ongoing usefulness of the skills learned during the formal sequence of meditations, especially the reading techniques, the colloquies, and the “composition of place”: “The same person will sometimes be more inclined to one, sometimes to another, in different dispositions of the soul and body”79: they are tools to be applied in whatever situations arise. Both the Directorium and the original text of the Exercises affirm that Ignatian methods are ultimately meant for long-term use, not just for a single thirtyday retreat. Despite the inevitable rate of attrition and apathy, we can be sure

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38  •  Liturgy and Contemplation in Byrd’s Gradualia that they were a continued influence throughout a great number of lives, in England as elsewhere. Among the surviving printed materials associated with the Jesuit mission to England, there is even an early-seventeenth-century series of English leaflets for administering an Ignatian retreat. A. F. Allison and D. M. Rogers state in the standard bibliographic entry that these materials “were intended for retreatants making the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius of Loyola, but do not form part of St. Ignatius’s original work.”80 This statement is inaccurate. The leaflets are a slightly adapted and abbreviated version of the entire original text, with assorted pieces of advice from the Exercises—the three modes of prayer, notes on almsgiving and the consumption of food and drink, and so on—interpolated among the meditations, sometimes in their original locations and sometimes elsewhere. When the contents of this series are compared with the standard trajectory of the Exercises, it becomes clear that it is the standard round of meditations and counsels, translated literally from the Latin, with minor adaptations for practical use in England. Comparison of the English and Latin texts shows that the leaflets do in fact present “St. Ignatius’s original work.” The following representative passage is taken from the Christmas meditation.81 Punctum primum est, aspectus personarum, ut Virginis Deiparae, et Ioseph coniugis, cum famula, et Christi Domini, ut infantis nunc primam nati: inter quos me adesse fingam, tanquam pauperculum, eorum utcumque necessitatibus, cum reverentia maxima, famulantem. Ac inde quid ad me redire emolumenti, ex tali spectaculo, possit, dispiciam.82 The first point is: a view of the Persons, as of the Virgin Mother of God, and Ioseph her Husband, with a mayd, and of Christ our Lord as an infant, now first borne: amongst whom I will fayne my selfe present, as a poore body, serving in some manner their neccessityes with greatest Reverence; and thence I will consider what profit may return unto mee by such a spectacle.83 The fullest existing copies of this series contain one hundred pages, or fifty leaflets.84 There is no reason to believe they are incomplete. As well as being successively numbered in a manuscript hand, the leaflets are labeled in print according to the day of the Exercises and the number of the meditation, from 1.a. (the opening Annotations) to 25.b. and 25.c. (the climactic Meditation to stir up in us Spirituall Love and some practical notes on the handling of scruples). Leaflets such as these follow the advice of the Directorium, which states clearly that each day’s material is best given in unadorned written form; they also provide an added convenience for the director, who is spared having to write out each exercise before presenting it:

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“Meditate These Wel”  •  39 In proposing the points of meditation, it is not fitting to exaggerate them greatly, or draw them out so much [ita enucleare85] that the one meditating can find nothing new on his own, or find it only with difficulty. Experience teaches that all enjoy, and are more affected by, those things they discover themselves. Therefore it is enough to show, as by pointing with your finger, the quarry where each one can dig for himself. . . . These meditations are generally given in writing, so that the memory of the exercitant is not wearied, a state that tends to impede devotion; all his strength should be reserved for his intellect and will.86 There is yet another argument for this somewhat unconventional format. A person going through the Exercises was, if possible, not supposed to know what was to come in the following days and weeks.87 The meditations were to be dispensed one by one: recall Ignatius’s ban on reading even scriptural passages that are not associated with the day’s topic. This unusual situation meant that the Exercises were disseminated in a somewhat different way than the main body of recusant devotional material. Unlike other treatises of prayer and meditation, they were not produced and shipped in large quantities to be spread among English Catholics. They came only among the personal effects of missionary priests, or perhaps imprinted firmly in their minds—though the Directorium insists that anyone giving the Exercises to another must “have read carefully through the entire book, and have it at hand.”88 The fact that a systematic English translation was made and printed is itself evidence that a substantial number of lay people were being given the Exercises in England (or, to a limited extent, in exile abroad.) Clerics, even novices, would have been able to manage the Exercises in the original Latin: the often excellent, and almost always serviceable, Latin of the young men entering the English Jesuit college in Rome is ample proof of this. Each leaflet in the English series is a self-contained item offered for reflection. We can see from them how much the early-seventeenth-century Ignatian director thought appropriate to give as a single meditation. They vary somewhat in scope. The amount of content in each one determines the size of the typeface and whether the contents spill over onto the outside of the folded page. Ignatius’s relatively brief instructions on the third manner of prayer, for example, take up less space than the detailed opening meditation on the Incarnation, and thus are printed in larger type; a few particularly elaborate topics, such as the meditation on the nature of God and the general examination of conscience, are divided between two leaflets. Comparison of the Exercises and the English Annotations reveals a number of small but telling differences. The “three modes of prayer,” which are emphasized in the Directorium as valuable at all stages of spiritual development, are deliberately scattered through the series of meditations, rather than being relegated to the end as in Ignatius’s text. There is occasionally elaboration of a

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40  •  Liturgy and Contemplation in Byrd’s Gradualia point beyond the original text: the well-known medieval prayer Anima Christi sanctifica me is only named by Ignatius, for example, but it is given in full in the English leaflets (in fact the only Latin printed there), perhaps for the convenience of uninitiated readers in a largely non-Catholic country. Several meditations are added to the first “week” in accordance with the advice in the Directorium, such as the “parable of the prodigal son, to be applied to [the exercitant] himself.”89 The “election,” the set of contemplations used to discern one’s proper state in life, comes between the call of the Apostles and the public ministry of Christ—not between Palm Sunday and Holy Week, as it does in Ignatius’s original plan. The refinement (or, perhaps, the simplification) of reasoning is clear: Christ’s encounter with the apostles, inviting them to leave their secular business and follow him, is to be considered as a model of one’s own calling—a model followed by the numerous English recusants who left home and family to take up a clerical or monastic life in the more sympathetic atmosphere of Catholic Europe. John Gerard and the Late-Sixteenth-Century Ignatian Movement in England The autobiography of the Jesuit priest John Gerard is a particularly valuable source of information on the use of the Exercises among the recusants.90 Gerard worked as a missionary in his native England from 1588 to 1606. These were formative though difficult years for English Catholics, framed by the infamous events of the Spanish Armada and the Gunpowder Plot; they were also the years in which Byrd became deeply engaged with music for the Roman liturgy. Gerard’s motives, like those of other missionary Jesuits, were twofold: to provide much-needed spiritual services for the existing Catholic community and to make converts among the rest of the populace. It was a risky way of life. Gerard moved through a tenuous network of noble houses more or less equipped to hide priests. At one point he was captured and imprisoned in the Tower of London, where he was brutally tortured in an unsuccessful attempt to gain information about these safe houses and the whereabouts of his companions. He eventually escaped from the Tower via an elaborate plan involving weighted ropes and messages in invisible ink. After his escape, he continued his ministry for nearly another decade, until he was compelled to leave in the aftermath of the Gunpowder Plot (“seeing it was a time for lying quiet, not for working”).91 Once he had arrived safely at the Jesuit college in Louvain, Gerard began to write a lengthy account, in Latin, of his adventures over the past two decades. He was in charge of a group of novices at Louvain, and his modern editor and translator Philip Caraman suggests that he wrote primarily for the inspiration of his young students, many of whom were themselves preparing for a career on the English mission.92 As a first-person narrative of everyday life in a (mostly upper-class) Catholic milieu, Gerard’s memoir contains a wealth of helpful detail. The closest parallel is probably with the Responsa Scholarum of the English College in Rome,

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“Meditate These Wel”  •  41 the collection of short autobiographies submitted by new students as they entered the school. Unlike the stories in the Responsa, though, this account is book-length, and as such gives the modern reader an unusually keen perspective on recusant life. It is an intimate document, written to work up the interest and fervor of Jesuit novices, and not made for large-scale distribution as a number of similar narratives were. Modern accounts of Gerard’s work have concentrated on the prison, torture, and escape scenes, but the more prosaic majority of the text has much to say that is not often said elsewhere. The book is not a work of hagiography, for obvious reasons; it makes no effort to idealize its main character, and little effort to idealize the others. Gerard discusses bitter internecine feuds among groups of priests, accusations of lewd conduct and illegitimate children fathered by itinerant Jesuits, even recusants who simply gave up their cause and joined, or rejoined, the established religion. The first English translation, made by John Morris in the nineteenth century, censored out (without commentary) a number of passages that dealt with such matters.93 The book was written to inspire committed young people who had already taken the decisive step of going abroad and entering a seminary, not to impress the wavering or convert the skeptical. Its frankness only underscores a number of known facts about English Catholic life: how fiercely the clergy would defend what they saw as proper hierarchical order, for example, or how profoundly women were involved in the fabric of the recusant community, even at the risk of misunderstanding or scandal. Although Gerard laments in passing that “what I achieved is insignificant,” and that “my unworthiness robbed me of the crown of martyrdom,” he reveals some important aspects of English Catholic identity through an account of his own day-to-day experience.94 He speaks for the majority of his coreligionists, who could hope neither for a dramatic death nor for a career of magnificent works. The martyrdom narrative had its conclusion cut out for it; even the standard recusant biography ended with an edifying deathbed scene and a eulogy.95 Gerard, unlike Lady Montague and Philip Howard, lived to write his own story. The prevailing theme is one of recurrence and perseverance; his friends are marched off to the scaffold, or forced back into exile, while the same feasts and fasts come around year after year, requiring his services once again. Precisely these circumstances make his memoir such a valuable primary source for details of worship and the observance of the liturgical calendar. It was in this atmosphere that he also taught the Spiritual Exercises and related forms of meditation. His account reveals much about the reception of Ignatian practices among the recusants. The Exercises appear early and often in Gerard’s narrative. During his first months in England, he met a young Catholic nobleman from Suffolk. Seeing that “his only desire was to lead a more perfect life,” Gerard told him of “certain spiritual exercises that could lead a generous soul on that way.”96 He administered the Exercises to the young man, who was so impressed by the end of the

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42  •  Liturgy and Contemplation in Byrd’s Gradualia four weeks that he insisted Gerard give up his transient missionary life and come to live with him and his widowed mother at their large country estate. Gerard decided this would give him a chance to work in relative safety, and moved in, where he soon embarked on a sweeping reform of the household. The family was being served at the time by an elderly Catholic chaplain (presumably ordained during the reign of Mary Tudor or even Henry VIII) who had been with them for a number of years. This chaplain was set in his ways, and refused to pay attention to things such as the domestic “altar furnishings,” which were “old and worn and anything but helpful to devotion.”97 Gerard “saw to it that all the changes I thought urgent were proposed and carried out by the master of the house himself. Then I brought out some fine vestments, which were a gift to me, and in this way encouraged the good widow to make others like them.” The old priest, who had watched (perhaps unwillingly at first) this reordering of domestic worship, and heard Gerard’s host praise Ignatian spiritual practices at length, eventually asked to go through the Exercises himself. This was a success, and appears to have changed the prevailing atmosphere of the house. “In fact,” Gerard remarks, “he said afterwards in the hearing of others that he had never before realized the full obligations of his priesthood.”98 The trend caught on rapidly among the members of the household and their associates. Gerard remained there for two years. He gave the Exercises to two good friends of his host, well-educated brothers who both went on to leave the country and enter the English Jesuit novitiate in Rome. As a tribute to their teacher, they escaped under the assumed names of Starkie and Standish, the aliases Gerard had used during his early years in England. “Apart from these two,” he writes, “I gave the Exercises to others during my stay here, and all drew much profit from them.” He tells a number of anecdotes about the process. The Exercises sometimes brought unexpected results, as in the case of this wealthy landowner: [He] got as far as the last day but one in the second week [i.e. the meditation on the raising of Lazarus from the dead, John 11:1–44] without any spiritual emotion: then suddenly the south wind (so to speak) blew over the garden of his soul and brought down such copious showers of tears that he went on weeping for three or four days without stopping. Even when business forced him to go out, he could speak only in a voice broken with sobs. He followed me everywhere like a one-year-old, and the chaplain, to whom I referred above, used to call him “the weeping one” and write in letters to me, “John, the weeping one, wants this or that” or “presents you with such and such a thing.” But henceforth his life was full of good works, and he died a happy death.99 Gerard speaks of another local gentleman, the older brother of “Starkie” and “Standish.” He was a recusant who had avoided the worst of the persecution by living deep in the country, steering clear of public controversy, and

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“Meditate These Wel”  •  43 “keeping at a distance from the seminary priests,” preferring instead the services of “the old men ordained before Elizabeth came to the throne.”100 He began the Exercises with some skepticism, but “after the first or second day,” when he had “thoroughly turned over in his mind God’s purpose in creating him and all things else”—the similarity to Byrd’s well-known phrase hardly needs comment—his opinions were transformed: From that time he made all the meditations with great care, as you could see from the benefits he derived from them. . . . Moreover, he decided to take in two more priests, and insisted that one of them be a Jesuit, who would have the direction of him and his household. If he had any time left over from the administration of his estate, he would devote it to reading and translating ascetical books. He was a scholar, and he did in fact translate many useful works, including the life of our blessed Father [i.e. Ignatius], the Dialogues of St. Gregory, Jerome Platus’ De Bono Statu Religiosi and others as well.101 “When all this was done,” Gerard concludes, “he begged me very earnestly to move to his house.” Since his former host was about to leave the country, and the new house was conveniently located closer to London, Gerard accepted the invitation. The scene that followed was a familiar one. Despite his new host’s promises to change his ways and those of his household, there were some difficulties: most of the servants were Protestants, his wife was skeptical of the endeavor and “could not be expected to fall in with his plans,” and the elderly chaplain was not comfortable with such innovations. Gerard stepped in and took charge: I was careful to see that all the readjustments in the new house were made, as far as could be done, before I arrived. A good and capable staff of servants was assembled. . . Nor was it anything like as difficult as I had feared to bring the mistress of the house and the old priest to agree to the changes: they even lent a hand in them, particularly the wife, who surpassed everyone in the care she lavished on the chapel. As for the chaplain, he became very friendly . . . it was, of course, only to be expected that reverence for him should grow with the increased devotion and piety of the household.102 Once these matters were settled—though, one suspects, with slightly more difficulty than Gerard described—he went on to his usual work in and around the house. He made sure that the entire household approached the sacraments every week (they had been accustomed to taking communion “perhaps four times a year at most”), he began the practice of reading devotional books aloud at the dinner table when no guests were present, and he “instructed all how to examine their conscience, and taught those who had the leisure for it the way to meditate.”103

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44  •  Liturgy and Contemplation in Byrd’s Gradualia He stayed at this house in Essex from 1591 through 1594, devoting himself to writing and translation (“when the family had settled down into this new life, I was able to find time for study”) and giving the Exercises to a number of people, including a professional musician named John Bolt. “His musical talent was outstanding,” Gerard writes of Bolt, “and won him the affection of a very powerful patron. But he laid all this aside and with it all his hopes of fame, in order to attach himself to me and to follow the counsels of our Lord explained in the Spiritual Exercises.”104 Born around 1563, Bolt was a distinguished member of the Elizabethan court who chose to leave his position on grounds of conscience when he became a Catholic. When Queen Elizabeth heard the news, she is said to have scolded her “Master of Music”—presumably Byrd, who was notorious in later years for “persuading to recusancy”—and threatened to “throw her pantoufle at his head for looking no better unto him.”105 From around 1586 through 1593, Bolt was household musician to John Petre, to whom Byrd dedicated the second book of his Gradualia.106 Bolt escaped to the Continent in 1594, and spent some time, as the composer Richard Dering later would, as a musician at the English Benedictine convent in Brussels. He was ordained in 1605, and eventually became the organist and resident chaplain at another English convent, St. Monica’s in Louvain, where he served until his death in 1640. Gerard’s statement that Bolt sacrificed a promising musical career for the sake of his recusancy, “laid all this aside and with it all his hopes of fame . . . to follow the counsels of our Lord explained in the Spiritual Exercises,” recalls the Jesuit author William Weston’s overenthusiastic claim that Byrd “sacrificed everything, both his office and the Court” for his beliefs.107 In Bolt’s case, the break was in fact much more complete. Byrd, who never went into exile or completely disentangled himself from court affairs, belonged to a very small minority among committed recusant musicians. Nonetheless, it is intriguing to hear of a professional musician for whom the Exercises were a turning point in career and outlook. It is also notable that, unlike many of Gerard’s impressionable young charges, Bolt did not immediately turn around after his intensive exposure to Ignatian spirituality and become a Jesuit (or even a cleric), but instead kept his old trade, adapting it as necessary to Catholic circumstances. It is not difficult to imagine a similar scenario occurring with Byrd during the transitional years of the early 1590s, when he began, under the influence (as he says in the second Gradualia preface) of Petre and his milieu, to take a serious interest in composing liturgical music for the Roman rite. The first-person accounts in Gerard’s autobiography paint a lively picture of Ignatian spirituality as it took hold in recusant England. He reveals a sense of urgent need for renewal, often accompanied by impatience with the older generation of clergy, who tended to cling to different priorities—“those old priests,” as he calls them with surprising frankness, “who were always at odds with the young men, especially the Jesuits whom they looked on as meddle-

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“Meditate These Wel”  •  45 some innovators.”108 Even a lone missionary such as Gerard could affect whole communities with his eager, widespread administration of the Exercises, in an atmosphere of modernized devotion and domestic liturgical reform. It was in precisely this sort of intense and enthusiastic environment, the circle surrounding the Petre household in Essex around the turn of the seventeenth century, that Byrd’s own liturgical project took shape and flourished. The Rosary in Recusant Meditation Even as Jesuit meditative techniques took England by storm, more traditional methods retained their popularity. There was also a considerable amount of cross-fertilization between the two groups. An ideal meditative method, on the model of the Spiritual Exercises, was expected to provide three things: a well-defined but rich topic; a technique for exploring it; and physical, temporal, and conceptual guidelines within which to explore it. The Rosary fit those requirements well. It was the most popular extraliturgical devotion among recusants in Byrd’s day, and one sometimes overlooked by historians of liturgy, although there are numerous intersections between the two. Almost half of the topics in the Rosary correspond directly with feast days in the Gradualia cycle.109 It is a simple technique: a number of reflections on events in the lives of Christ and Mary, each reflection accompanied by a series of short prayers. These prayers were most often recited with the help of a specially designed string of beads, though that was itself incriminating evidence if a person’s belongings were searched on suspicion of Catholic sympathies. What had begun in medieval times as an illiterate (or busy) layman’s alternative to reciting the psalter—the 150 salutations to the Virgin standing in for the 150 psalms—was ubiquitous among all classes of Catholics by the sixteenth century. The reading at Matins on the feast of the Holy Rosary, the first Sunday in October,110 gives a concise description: “The Rosary is a form of prayer in which we say fifteen decades of [i.e. sets of ten] Hail Marys, with an Our Father between each set, while at each of these fifteen decades we recall successively in pious meditation one of the mysteries of our Redemption.”111 Thirteen of these “mysteries” are events described in the New Testament. The fourteenth, the Assumption of Mary into heaven, belongs to the earliest layers of Marian devotion and was celebrated liturgically by the sixth century. The fifteenth and last, her crowning as queen of heaven, was more a pious legend than a matter of doctrine, but it had become a commonplace in devotional works and religious drama by the time of the Reformation.112 The fifteen topics for contemplation fall into three sets of five, traditionally labeled as “joyful,” “sorrowful” and “glorious.” In contemporary treatises, they were sometimes allegorized as three garlands of white, red, and damask roses. 1. Annunciation (Luke 1:26–28) 2. Visitation (Luke 1:39–45)

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46  •  Liturgy and Contemplation in Byrd’s Gradualia 3. Christmas (Luke 2:1–20) 4. Candlemas (Luke 2:22–35) 5. Finding of the child Jesus in the temple (Luke 2:41–50) 6. Agony in the garden (Matthew 26:36–46) 7. Scourging at the pillar (Mark 15:15) 8. Crowning with thorns (Matthew 27:29) 9. Carrying of the cross (John 19:17) 10. Crucifixion (Luke 23:33–46) 11. Resurrection (Matthew 28:1–10) 12. Ascension (Acts 1:6–11) 13. Pentecost (Acts 2) 14. Assumption of Mary 15. Coronation of Mary The basic outline of the Rosary fits easily on a single sheet of paper, but the method can be adapted and expanded to fit the user’s preferences. A number of printed recusant handbooks on the Rosary have survived. All of these handbooks include notes on the fifteen mysteries, with the relevant biblical quotations, and more or less detailed suggestions of how to reflect on each topic; several even provide pictures. This complex of verbal and visual prompts was reflected on, to some extent subconsciously, while the subject repeated the round of set texts. As Ceri Sullivan, in her study of English Catholic rhetoric, explains the basic technique, “The minimum time-limit imposed by reciting the entire decade means that a meditator cannot quickly ‘tick off’ in his mind the points of the picture. Instead, the image becomes increasingly sodden with feeling, moving him away from the terse style of the actual meditation points made.”113 English Rosary handbooks emphasized the fact that this was (at least ideally) a process of true contemplation and not simply of rote prayer. As Henry Garnet described in his Societie of the Rosary, in this devotion of the Rosary is daily with great fruit remembred, the principall pointes of the life of our Saviour, and of his holy Mother, in so much that the daunger of which the Prophet complaineth, when he saithe, (Hier. 12) that the wholle earth was brought to desolation, because there was not who did meditate, or ponder in his hart, by this devout exercise of Christian duety, is by all estates of men utterly avoided: whilest every devout Catholicke, dailye when he saieth his beades, doth as it were in a booke, read and reverently laieth before his eies, Christ our Saviour incarnat in his Mother, sanctifying John Baptist his holy Precursor, lying in a manger, offered up to his Father in the Temple, teaching the Doctors, praying in the Garden, cruelly whipped, crowned with thornes, carying his Crosse, and exalted theron for our redemp-

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“Meditate These Wel”  •  47 tion, rising againe, ascending into heaven, sending his holy Spirit and gratious giftes unto men, taking up with childly affection his most holy Mother, even corporally unto heaven, and exalting and crowning her over all his holy Saintes and Angells.114 “With great fruit remembred”; “meditate, or ponder in his hart”; “doth as it were in a booke, read and reverently laieth before his eies”: all of these expressions evoke the contemplative practices of the day, especially the Ignatian Spiritual Exercises, which could hardly have been far from Garnet’s mind as he described this “devout exercise.” Gaspar de Loarte, an Italian Jesuit contemporary of Garnet whose Rosary treatise was printed in English translation in 1597, discusses the Rosary in much the same terms.115 He had published a book of meditations on the passion of Christ, which met with great popularity, and he began to plan a similar book covering all the events of Christ’s life: Notwithstanding, when I afterwardes had perceaved, how to write al that might be gathered out of the holy Gospels touching the life, preaching, and miracles of our Lord, would be a very long thing, and require a just volume, I determined with my selfe to write only upon the misteries of the Rosarie of the moste blessed virgin Mary; sithens, besides that it is so godly, renowned, and approved, a devotion as is abovesaid in the Prologue: therein, in my fancie, are the chief points of the life of Christ conteined, from the time of his incarnation, until the sending downe of the holy Ghost; insomuch as whosoever he be that shal meditate these wel, may assure himselfe to have meditated the greater and more principal part of his most sacred life.116 The advice offered in English Catholic Rosary treatises, both original and in translation, was systematically designed to help the reader “meditate these wel.” Loarte’s own handbook is a useful place to begin examining the genre. His guided reflections are in fact a detailed application of Ignatian techniques to the forms and topics of the Rosary, the clearest example of a trend that influenced much recusant writing on the subject. Loarte offers the same scheme for each of the fifteen mysteries: a short poem (two rhymed quatrains) summarizing the event and its meaning, a woodcut illustration depicting it, a descriptive title, three brief (and generally scriptural) “pointes . . . wherupon thou maiest meditate,” some detailed and imaginative ways to “amplifie” each point, and a final prayer. This corresponds to the structure of the Ignatian exercise, with a single historical subject, a set of short biblical texts for reflection, a more extensive meditation involving speculative matters and the application of the senses, and the final prayer or colloquy. Loarte’s meditation for Christmas, the third of the joyful mysteries, begins with these three “pointes”:

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48  •  Liturgy and Contemplation in Byrd’s Gradualia The First is how our Ladye meaning to obey the Emperor Caesar Augustus his proclamation, went from Nazareth to Bethleem (Luc. 2.a.), where not finding any convenient lodging, she withdrewe her selfe into the publike and common Inne, or (if you thinke good) into the hovel and shroud that was there made with bowes for poore folkes. Secondly, consider howe the houre of the glorious child-birth of the most sacred mother being come, she brought forth the Saviour of the world and with a wonderful great reverence adored him, swaddled him up in suche poore cloutes as she had, and laide him in a manger. Thirdly, consider the angels songes (Luc. 2.b.), and the joye and triumph they made in this most happy child-birth, wherof one anounced the same to the Shepherdes that in that coast did watche over their flocks; who speedily came to see and adore this celestial Infant.117 These three paragraphs of Loarte match the “three points . . . to meditate and contemplate on” chosen by Ignatius to represent Christmas in his Spiritual Exercises: Of the birth of Christ our Lord: St. Luke speaks in the second Chapter. First: Our Lady and her husband Joseph go from Nazareth to Bethlehem. “Joseph went up from Galilee to Bethlehem, to acknowledge subjection to Caesar, with Mary his spouse and wife, already with child.” Second: “She brought forth her first-born Son and wrapped him up with swaddling clothes and laid him in the manger.” Third: “There came a multitude of the heavenly army, which said: ‘Glory be to God in the heavens.’”118 In his Instructions, Loarte, like Ignatius, goes on to suggest more detailed reflections on the three points given. After presenting the Nativity scene, he invites the reader to “amplifie his meditation, by weighing the circumstances that happened in the voiage which our Lady undertooke”; he recalls “the sharpnes of the season. . . sith this jorney was performed in the verye hart of winter”;119 “how this most mightie monarche, this King of all kings, he whom neither the heavens nor the earth can holde and comprehende, hath in such wise debased, humbled, and thrown himselfe downe in a hard manger upon a litle haye; he, whom the Angels doo adore, and in whose presence the powers of heaven doo quake againe, lieth quaking himselfe for colde betwixt two brute beastes.”120 The two sets of “points” continue, for the most part, to overlap through the narratives of Loarte and Ignatius. Some of the topics in the Rosary (the sending of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, the apocalyptic scenes involving Mary)

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“Meditate These Wel”  •  49 are not included in the Ignatian cycle, and the last two of the fifteen topics do not lend themselves to the sort of straightforward historical quotes Ignatius uses to illustrate his Exercises.121 In such cases, Loarte is forced to use his own creativity. His short texts introducing the first topic, “of the incarnation of the sonne of God,” are not the same as Ignatius’s short texts on the Annunciation. Those three points in the Exercises are purely narrative, recounting the dialogue between Mary and the Angel Gabriel; Ignatius moves on to the more speculative details in his “contemplation” on the texts, one of the few (because it is one of the earliest in the book) to be written out in full detail. Loarte starts out immediately in the speculative vein, with a reflection on “that Cordial charitie of God, who vouchsafed to be incarnate, and to make himselfe man, as we are, to repaire thereby the fal of miserable mankinde, delivering us by this meanes from the slaverie of Sathan, and this without any merite of ours going before, woorthie the receeving of so great a benefite.”122 Loarte begins his Rosary by essentially giving the reader the Ignatian exercise on the Incarnation. As a Jesuit trained in administering the Exercises, he knew that important passage well; it begins the second phase of the method, the meditation proper on the life of Christ, and sets the scene for all that is to come. Ignatius draws the reader into a vertiginous heavenly perspective on the whole series of events: First Point. . . . To see and consider the Three Divine Persons, as seated on the royal throne of their Divine Majesty, gazing on all the face and circuit of the earth, and seeing all the people in such blindness, and how they are dying and going down to hell. . . . Second Point. To hear what the persons on the face of the earth are saying, that is, how they speak with one another, swear and blaspheme, etc.; and likewise what the Divine Persons are saying, that is: “Let us work the redemption of the human race”. . . . Third Point. To consider . . . what the Divine Persons are doing, namely, bringing about the most holy Incarnation; and likewise what the angel and our Lady are doing, namely, the angel carrying out his office of ambassador, and our Lady humbling herself and giving thanks to the Divine Majesty; and then to reflect on these matters, in order to draw some profit from each of them.123 In his eight pages of more detailed commentary on the Incarnation, Loarte continues to echo Ignatius, asking the reader to consider “the pitiful estate which the world was in, when God vouchsafed to bestow this his so bountiful a benefite upon it . . . the qualitie of the Ambassadour which God sent downe . . . the excellencie and sovereign dignitie of her, whom this ambassage was sent to . . . thou shalt never want matter, meditating the thinges that tooke effect pres-

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50  •  Liturgy and Contemplation in Byrd’s Gradualia ently after the Queene of heaven had given her consent . . . seing that by means of this Fiat, the same God became himself man, and man was made God.”124 It is clear that Loarte, in his Rosary treatise, is aiming to present some sort of accessible digest of the Spiritual Exercises for general use among those who lacked the time, privacy, inclination, social status, or access to a priest necessary to make the full month’s retreat. Such a work filled an important need in Catholic countries such as his native Italy; in England, under conditions of secrecy and persecution, it was an even more valuable resource, and would not have gone unnoticed by the thousands of recusants who were ministered to by Jesuit missionaries. Native English handbooks on the Rosary show similar affinities with formal methods of meditation. The anonymous Methode, to meditate on the psalter, or great rosarie of our blessed Ladie, printed secretly in England in 1598, follows the Ignatian scheme as Loarte did, but in a more concise and didactic manner. The first meditation in the Methode, on the Incarnation, is worth quoting in full. The first joyous Mysterie. Here Gabriel the Archangel doth our blessed Ladie greete: Who with consent conceived Christ, our soveraigne Saviour sweete. [woodcut of the Angel Gabriel appearing to Mary] God graunt the power and strength of God My soule may dayly haile: That it conceiving Christ may bring Forth teares of good availe.125 Prepare Blessing your selfe with In nomine, Mother of God, pray for me now and ever. Then reade The verses written over the picture. And meditate 1. On Gods great mercy and infinite charity, who vouchsafed so humbly to incarnate himselfe to redeeme mankinde from the miserie of original sinne, without any foregoing merit worthy of it. 2. In the exceeding love which our Ladie bare toward God from her very infancie, and the great care she had to performe hir vow of Virginitie,

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“Meditate These Wel”  •  51 and imitate her in love and care to performe all thy lawful vowes and good purposes. 3. Of the greatnesse of the Ambassadour, importance of his embassage, worthinesse of our Ladie, the entertainement she gave the Angell, their interparlie, and and [sic] the wonderful worke that was wrought at the very instant of her consent, assuring thy selfe, that God both can and will as effectually resigne thy will to his. Give thankes For these, and all other benefites with Alleluia or Laus tibi Domine. And make request Either for some gift of grace your present necessitie requireth, or with the verses written under the picture. Then begin your beades.126 The English Methode to meditate on the psalter is clearly a close relative of Loarte’s Continental treatise, though with a number of differences. The two rhymed quatrains are identical in both books, but the Methode gives more direct instructions for when and how to use them: the first as an introduction to the topic, to be followed implicitly by contemplation of the woodcut printed just below it, and the second as a “request . . . for some gift of grace,” the equivalent to the Ignatian colloquy at the end of an exercise. Some of the material in Loarte’s elaborate scenarios has been collapsed by the anonymous English author into the three “points”; much of it is simply missing, or to be filled in by the reader’s imagination. The English treatise, on the other hand, includes more direct advice on what to do at each stage of the meditation—“prepare,” “reade,” “meditate,” “give thankes,” “make request,” and finally “begin your beades”—as well as verbal instructions for prayer. These instructions also show some concern for liturgical propriety. The reader is told to give thanks “with Alleluia or Laus tibi Domine”; Laus tibi Domine, Rex aeternae gloriae is the official substitute for Alleluia in the Office during the penitential season of Lent, when the word is temporarily forbidden. It is telling that English recusants were following, or were at least expected to follow, this prescription even in their private devotions; it is less surprising in this context that Byrd provided carefully for Lenten versions of his Mass propers, eliminating the word alleluia wherever necessary. Yet another English approach to the Rosary and related practices is found in a little book by Henry Garnet entitled The Societie of the Rosary. It was among the very first volumes published (in 1593–94) by the secret Jesuit press set up in Elizabethan London. A second edition, “newly augmented,” came out in 1596–97, and a third (“newly augmented . . . with the life of the Glorious Virgin Marie”) was issued in 1624, nearly two decades after Garnet had been executed on charges of complicity in the Gunpowder Plot. As its printing history alone shows, it was a popular and enduring work among English Catholic audiences.127

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52  •  Liturgy and Contemplation in Byrd’s Gradualia The Society (or “Confraternity”) of the Rosary was a loosely knit group, scattered across all of Europe and even the New World, that amounted to a pious mutual aid organization: each member agreed to pray the Rosary several times a week for the well-being and the personal needs of all other members. The society itself began life on the Continent, but unlike a number of other recusant devotional books, Garnet’s Societie is not merely a translation of a foreign work. He compiled it especially for his fellow Catholics in England, with substantial material added as he saw fit for use in their specific situation. Instructions for membership could easily have been presented for English audiences in a small pamphlet. There was no practical need for him to publish this full-length book. Even the extra requirements of joining a Catholic organization in a hostile environment were relatively simple, if crude: Garnet says that the enrollment pledges of new members should immediately be torn up and disposed of, “for respects too well knowne.”128 When he wrote and published the Societie, at great personal risk, he was creating more than a book of English vernacular instructions on saying the Rosary or joining a devotional guild; it is essentially a do-it-yourself devotional kit for Catholics who were isolated from most communal expressions of worship. Garnet’s intention of providing useful devotional materials is clear from the beginning, even in his Preface to the Reader with its laments over “our miserable countrey.”129 He continues throughout the book with practical counsels, such as this note on the Continental tradition of dedicating “oratories”— that is, special chapels—to the use of the society: “so long as our Countrey remaineth in the present estate, it is good and sufficient that every houshold procure their ordinary Altar stone to be deputed unto this Society.”130 (This statement is most striking because it assumes “every houshold” that chose to participate would have an “ordinary Altar stone” at hand—which says something about the prevalence of private Masses in recusant houses.) In a similar vein, Garnet somewhat grudgingly admits that the society’s tradition of public commemorations on the “four principall festivities of our Blessed Lady, the Nativitie, Purification, Annunciation, and Assumption . . . cannot (as it is manifest) be performed in our Countrey.”131 We know that Garnet was a musician himself—described as having “exquisite knowledge in the arte of musicke”—and that he was involved in musical celebrations of the liturgy.132 One of the most typical phrases in the Societie of the Rosary shows his sensitivity to this tradition: he writes of liturgical texts as not merely spoken or written, but as texts set to music, “as the Church singeth.”133 Speaking of Mary’s conception, he explains that “there wanted not the speciall cooperation of the holy-Ghost, preparing (as the Church singeth) the habitation of the sonne of God.”134 He discusses Christ’s apparition to her after Easter in the same terms: “of this affection to his loving Mother we need not doubt, but that as the Church singeth, Prima meretur gaudia, quae plus ardebat ceteris: she deserved the first Ioy, which did love more than the rest.”135

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“Meditate These Wel”  •  53 Even in reference to the text on the title page (Gaude Maria Virgo, cunctas haereses sola interemisti in universo mundo), Garnet writes that Mary “is in special maner a rainbow against Heretickes: wher-as the Church generally singeth, she hath destroyed all heresies in the whole world, and therefore is a particular signe and aboade of the ceassing thereof.”136 The norm is liturgical performance in concrete space and time—“as the Church singeth”—even under the difficult conditions Garnet addresses in the Societie. He reveals the same attitude elsewhere in the book when he prints a list of all the Roman stational churches, ordered by the calendar. The people to whom he ministered were lucky if they could celebrate all or even most of the holidays in his list, much less make a pilgrimage to Rome and visit the relevant buildings on those days, yet he offers them as a much-needed link (as the society itself was) to the diaspora of Counter-Reformation Catholicism. In addition to the standard layout of the Rosary, with its fifteen topics, Garnet suggests other ways of meditating on the lives of Christ and Mary. “For they that have knowne the manifolde use of the Rosary are not ignorant,” as he writes near the conclusion of the book, “that the number of beads therin contained do serve to renue the memorie of all the misteries of the life of Christ and of the blessed Virgin.”137 Chapter 7 is a guide to “the maner of distribution of the life of our Saviour and of our Lady for the Corone of 63. Aves.” This “corone” includes all of the feasts commemorated in the Gradualia, with the exception of All Saints’ Day and Sts. Peter and Paul. Chapter 9 is “another like exercise of the life and Passion of Christ,” with many of the same events and an added devotional emphasis on the events of Good Friday. Garnet makes a number of changes in the second edition of the Societie that further increase the reader’s options. Notable among them is a chapter on “Another maner of deviding the Rosary of 150. Ave Maries, according to the misteries of the life of our Saviour,” which first appears in this “newly augmented” edition.138 Instead of the usual fifteen brief meditations on the life of Mary, Garnet offers a more detailed tour through the “misteries” of Christ’s life. Here each Ave Maria comes with instructions to reflect on a short scriptural text in Latin and English; there is considerable overlap (as can be expected) with both the cycle of liturgical texts and Ignatian readings. The accounts are mostly historical, with some interpolations from elsewhere in the scriptures: the Ascension story, for example, is punctuated with the well-known verse Ascendit Deus from Psalm 46, and the coronation of the Virgin Mary is liberally illustrated with bridal imagery from Psalm 44 (Eructavit cor meum) as well as excerpts from the lives of royal women in the Old Testament. Near the beginning of the second edition, Garnet even makes a change in the text to reflect his assertion that these alternative methods are just as valid for fulfillment of a member’s obligation as the more traditional Rosary. The first edition reads, “yet is there no generall bond, but only to the rehersing of the Rosary thrice a weeke.”139 In the second edition, this is changed to

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54  •  Liturgy and Contemplation in Byrd’s Gradualia “the rehersing of the Beades”; notably, in the copy of the first edition at the Huntington Library in San Marino, California, a careful contemporary hand has crossed out “Rosary” and substituted “Beades.” This change is not in the errata of the first edition, so the reader of the Huntington copy must have had access to the second. Perhaps more likely (why else would one apparently insignificant word be singled out for updating?), he had contact with Garnet or one of the other priests who were spreading these devotional practices, and had it explained to them that numerous methods of meditation on the lives of Christ and Mary—not just saying the Rosary in the strict sense—could fulfill the commitment to share in these “misteries” with the other members of the Society throughout the world. These were also the exact years in which Byrd began his project of providing music for clandestine celebrations of the same “misteries.” As the interest in such topics grew during the 1590s, Garnet, who certainly had his finger on the pulse of recusant devotional practice, appears to have adapted and expanded his book to further accommodate them. Reading the Marian Litany Another group of short texts popular for reflection among English Catholics was the Litany of Loreto. This is a famous litany of the titles and attributes of the Virgin Mary, formally approved for the whole Roman church by Pope Sixtus V in 1587. It was ubiquitous during the later years of the Counter-Reformation, and devotional books such as Garnet’s Societie of the Rosary gave it a place of honor. The English composer Peter Philips made numerous settings in the early seventeenth century, from the simple, repetitive four-part version in his Rossignols spirituels to the extravagant double-choir Litania duodecima for nine voices that concludes his 1623 Litaniae Beatae Mariae Virginis. This litany is even provided for, though indirectly, in the first book of Gradualia. Byrd’s Laetania contains all of the necessary responses for the Litany of the Saints sung during penitential seasons and at the Easter vigil, a more extensive set than that required for the Litany of Loreto. When a handful of the responses are left out (nos. 11 through 16), the Laetania is fully suited to the latter use. Its place near the end of the four-part fascicle, in the heart of the Marian office music, and its carefully nonspecific title are further suggestions that Byrd also offered it for use as a Marian litany. The majority of the responses, whether to invocations of various saints or to titles of Mary, are covered in either case by repetitions of the single phrase (no. 10) “Ora pro nobis.” Brett begins his preface to this part of Gradualia by recalling the pious Lady Montague’s (and her household’s) “mortifying round of spiritual observance,” which included daily repetition of “the common litanies”—that is, both of the Virgin and of the saints in general.140 Byrd’s simple but elegant setting can be used for both purposes. The most detailed and systematic set of meditations on the titles of the Marian litany was written, perhaps not surprisingly, by a Jesuit. John Sweet-

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“Meditate These Wel”  •  55 nam published his reflections in 1620, at the press of the English College in St. Omer, under the title of The Paradise of Delights, or the B. Virgins garden of Loreto, with briefe Discourses upon her Divine Letanies, by way of Meditation.141 Sweetnam (who chose to be identified in the book only as “I. S. of the Society of Iesus”) dedicated his work to his countrymen in exile, the “English Gentlemen” of the Sodality of the Immaculate Conception in Leuven. It opens, after the preface and introduction, with a bilingual version of the Oratio Sodalitatis, the official prayer of the society, invoking the Virgin in both English and Latin. The title page bears the Jesuit monogram IHS with cross and nails, a symbol seen in numerous recusant publications, as well as in Henry Garnet’s famous last letter to Anne Vaux.142 The epigraph is from the Song of Solomon: Fulcite me floribus, stipate me malis—“Sustain me with flowers, comfort me with apples”—“because,” as the well-known verse concludes, “I languish with love.” Sweetnam treats each title in the litany under a separate heading, beginning with “the first meditation” and ending with “the forty-fifth meditation.” Each chapter offers several points for reflection, and ends with a direct address to Mary labeled “Colloquium,” the technical term used by Ignatius and his followers for the imaginative dialogue at the end of a spiritual exercise. The first “Colloquium” is the most explicit about method, instructing the reader directly: “Heerupon I wil in most humble manner desire of the glorious Queen of heaven. . . . “143 The later chapters, for the most part, simply suggest a prayer to her: “O ever Blessed, and most happy Mother of God. . . .”144 Most of the chapters conclude with a hymn, short prayer, or antiphon selected from the Marian office.145 Salve Regina is given fourteen times; Ave maris stella eleven times; O gloriosa domina seven times; Ave Maria twice; Mater Christi once (for the eponymous title); Ave regina caelorum once (for the title Regina angelorum); and, unusually, the Pater Noster once (for the title Refugium peccatorum.) These Marian liturgical texts, and others like them, are also woven into the meditations themselves.146 As Sweetnam notes, He that pretendeth to enter into the glorious Citty of the heavenly Jerusalem, must knock at this beautifull gate the Blessed Virgin, who therefore by the holy Church is so intytled, as in that divine hymne Ave maris stella, she is said to be Felix caeli porta, the happy gate of heaven: and in the Anthym Ave regina Coelorum, we say, Salve radix, salve porta, ex qua mundo lux est orta: All hayle o B. roote, all hayle o heavenly gate.147 We are to consider how the infinite wisedome of God found out so sweet meanes to communicate himselfe to man, as to shut himselfe within the B. Virgins sacred wombe, whereby we worthily say, Quem caeli capere non poterant, tuo gremio contulisti: he whome the wide heavens could not contayne, thou hast inclosed in thy sacred wombe.148

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56  •  Liturgy and Contemplation in Byrd’s Gradualia Of this most pure Virgin the holy Catholic Church singeth: Benedicta et venerabilis es Virgo Maria, quae sine tactu pudoris inventa es Mater Salvatoris. Blessed and venerable art thou, O Virgin Mary, who without any touch of thy chastity didst becom the Mother of God.149 Sweetnam uses similar imagery throughout the book. The whole of his Paradise is steeped in liturgical and scriptural citations, along with the usual Ignatian emphasis on imagination and cultivation of the affects. The reflection on the twenty-third title of the Virgin, “Cause of Our Joy,” illustrates his approach to the short texts of the litany. His first remark, after introducing the title in Latin and English, is on a relevant Office text; he then goes on to propose a three-point “contemplation,” invoking both the experience of the senses (such as the delight of feeling the warmth return in spring, or seeing the light return after a stormy night) and historical precedents of great rejoicing (such as the Old Testament heroine Judith delivering the Israelites from siege). The chapter finishes with a “Colloquium,” encouraging confident invocation of the Virgin, and the Marian antiphon Salve Regina: The XXIII. Meditation. Causa nostrae laetitiae, ora pro nobis. Cause of our Joy, pray for us. Heere we are to consider the great joy which the B. Virgin brought into the world at her sacred birth, according to that which we read in the office of her Nativity, Nativitas tua Dei Genitrix Virgo, gaudium annunciavit universo mundo: They Nativity, O Virgin Mother of God, hath been the long desired messenger of joy to all the world: for of thee is borne the some [sic] of Justice, who destroying the former curse, brought a generall blessing unto us all.150 Yet of the better understanding of the greatnes of the joy we all received by her happy comming, it will be good to make use of this contemplation. 1. Imagine how after a long and tedious winter, how gratefull the approach of a pleasant spring doth seeme, not only unto man, but even unto . . . the earth it self, who vesteth herselfe in new apparell to welcome the neere approach of the gladsome Sunne, and the pretty birds in their language do the like, to shew the greatnes of their joy, with their best musicke. 2. Or els consider how gratefull is the beautifull breaking of a fayre morning after a darke tempestuous night. . . . 3. Ponder moreover how comfortable was the comming of Judith to the sorowfull gates of besieged Bethulia, when she brought them certaine newes of their present delivery, and future safety. Then apply all this to the B. Virgin, cause of our joy, who after so long and tendious [sic] a

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“Meditate These Wel”  •  57 winter of sinne, and wickednes, by her happy comming into this world, did signify unto us that the Lambe of God who taketh away the sinnes of the world, was now neere at hand, & that the bright shining lampe of heaven, would spread ere long his beautiful beams of light upon the earth, & that the Sunne of Justice would shortly appeare unto us. . . . Colloquium. Let us therefore not only acknowledge this great benefit, but let us encourage our selves, with greater confidence to invocate her blessed Name, and say, Causa nostrae laetitiae, ora pro nobis: Cause of our joy, pray for us: that as by her person, the Sonne of God became man for our redemption; so by her holy intercession we may profite ourselves by so priceless a ransome. Salve Regina.151 Another set of English reflections on these short Marian texts is the anonymous Virginalia, or spirituall sonnets in prayse of the most glorious Virgin Marie, upon everie severall title of her litanies of Loreto.152 The author, who identifies himself only as “I.B.,” offers a series of heavily annotated sonnets, praising the Virgin and defending these praises with references to the writers of the early church. His subtitle to the collection captures the peculiar mixture of devotion and polemic: “All or most part of the principall passages therein confirmed by the evident testimonies of the auncient Fathers, to prevent the obiections of such, as usually detract from her deserved prayses.” Each of the titles in the Litany of Loreto has a corresponding sonnet in Virginalia. The verse is somewhat leaden in the opening sonnets, but it slowly begins to come into its own around the twenty-fifth as the famous poetic titles begin: morning star, tower of ivory, gate of heaven, mystical rose. Sonnet 29, Domus Aurea, is typical of I.B.’s style and habits of annotation: O house of gould, as wisest Salomon Th’Allmighty’s temple did with great respect Adorne with gould, so thy farr wiser sonne With gould of virtue, thee (a), his temple, deckt. Thou art that rare, then gould farr brighter, house, Where the two (b) natures both united were, Where our (c) humanity Christ did espouse, And first beganne our miseries to beare. Thou art the mansion both of heaven and earth, Thou art (d) Gods living temple, hee who was Before ought was, of thee receav’d his birth. Invite my soule unto this glorious place, That there she may with fruitfull wonder gaze Uppon thy merits gould-surpassing rays. (a) Reioyce ô most beautifull temple of devine glory. Andreas Cretensis. Or. in Annunc.

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58  •  Liturgy and Contemplation in Byrd’s Gradualia (b) This is the shopp where the Natures were united. Proclus Constantinopolitanus. hom. de Nativit. Christi. & Sergius Hierapolita. Or. in nat. B.V. (c) This is the bed-chamber in which the word espoused humane flesh. Procl. Const. hom. de Nat. Christi. & Andr. Cret. Or. in Ann. B.V. (d) Hayle ô living temple of God: hayle ô mansion both of heaven and of earth. Io. Chrysostomos Or. in Annunc. B.V. The other forty-three sonnets fall into the same form, with eleven lines praising the Virgin, followed by three addressing her, asking for help and intercession. This final address is always set off from the main body of the poem by the space of an extra line. As in Sweetnam’s Paradise of Delights, the treatment of each topic in the litany concludes in the Ignatian manner with a “colloquium,” a direct invocation of the main character in the scene. Every poem in Virginalia is annotated (as Domus Aurea is) in its own defense. The single exception is the sonnet on Mater Christi, “Mother of Christ,” which “I.B.” presumably realized was a scriptural title (Matthew 1:16) and needed no support from other sources to make it palatable to skeptical Protestants. Most of the images and their annotations, as this example shows, come from the feast-day homilies of the first Christian millennium. The book even includes a “Catalogue of such Fathers, as hereafter are alleadged; together with the age, they lived in.”153 These authorities, all cited in the poems, are arranged chronologically from Justin Martyr and Origen in the early centuries of the church to Anselm of Canterbury and Bernard of Clairvaux well into the Middle Ages. The author of Virginalia is, on the whole, more inclined toward the Greek Fathers than toward the Latin. Whether he does this for reasons of impartiality in the eyes of suspicious anti-Roman readers, or because he is attracted to their imagery, his sources give a distinct flavor to what could otherwise have been a series of fairly routine devotional poems and commentaries. Although Sweetnam’s Paradise of Delights and the near-anonymous collection of Virginalia take two different approaches to the colorful titles of the litany, the works share a common background in the strong Marian devotion of the English Catholic community. Both authors also show ties with the recurring topics of meditation and concern for liturgical material. The Paradise of Delights was written by a well-known English Jesuit who also translated and published a Spanish work on meditation, the Tratado tercero de la meditacion from Antonio de Molina’s Exercicios espirituales. The author of Virginalia cannot be identified with much certainty; it is unlikely that he is the same “I.B.” who compiled the recusant liturgical manifesto A treatise with a kalendar, since the latter claimed around 1608 to have been studying “the auncient customes of our Countrey” regarding feast days for “the space of these 40. yeares past and more.”154 It is possible that Virginalia was associated

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“Meditate These Wel”  •  59 with “John Brereley” or “I.Br.”, pseudonyms used by the Jesuit James Anderton, author of the 1620 treatise The lyturgie of the masse and a highly polemical account (Luthers life. . . together with a further short discourse, touching. . . the late pretended reformers of religion) of the lives of the Reformers. It is clear in any case from internal evidence that the “I.B.” of Virginalia was a priest who had studied in France and was still living in exile outside England.155 Both of these meditations on the Litany of Loreto undertake a systematic, somewhat stubborn artistic journey through a long cycle of set texts and topics. Both invoke a long tradition of worship, using the full range of imagery associated with the liturgical celebration of the Virgin. Neither shows any sign of shrinking from the feasts and observances most despised by the Protestants. It will become clear in the next chapter, with a closer look at polemical works concerning the Mass and the church year, that some authors take this almost defiant approach to controversial materials while others steer clear of them when possible. What nearly all have in common is a deep concern for preserving and defending their traditional ways of prayer. Peter Moule’s Commonplace Book A particularly interesting cross-section of English Catholic reading and writing practices, and their relation to liturgical and meditative culture, is found in the commonplace book of the recusant Peter Moule (born c. 1555), which he compiled between 1583 and 1605—years more or less coincidental with the production of Byrd’s major Latin works.156 This handwritten book contains a great variety of material: homegrown English devotional verse, assorted liturgical and paraliturgical Latin tags, pieces of well-known recusant poetry (including Southwell’s “St. Peter’s Complaint”), records of gifts and letters sent, instructions on how to behave at Mass, reflections on human mortality, and other “sundrie godlie and devout matters out of divine learned and godlie authors collected unto this volume by me Peter Mowle.”157 Moule was well acquainted with the devotional literature of his day, and he appears to have enjoyed bestowing literary gifts, especially religious books and poetry, on noble ladies. We see him sending out several books of meditation one New Year’s Day: “Anno 1595. I dedicated to the Right Honourable the Lady Viscount Hereford of Parham in Suffolk and to the Right Honourable the Lady Pawlett of Borley in Essex and to the Right Worshipful Mrs Yaxley of Yaxley in Suffolk widow to eyther of them a book for New Years Gift conteining 5 principal meditations.”158 A few pages earlier, he copies out a different sort of New Year’s present: “An Epistle consolatorie to a Catholic Gentlewoman whose husband (amid all their Christmas cheare) was taken from her by Pursuivants and comitted close prisoner with divers other troubles then happening her.” He addresses his letter on January first, 1592—the news of her husband’s arrest appears to have traveled quickly—to the “right worthy and worshipful Mrs. G[ray].” After some words of encouragement, Moule presents

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60  •  Liturgy and Contemplation in Byrd’s Gradualia his gift: “I have the rather to make you delight amid your sufferings presented you with a toy of my fond invention, discoursing though abruptlie of the whole course of your troubles though not of all yet of such as I thought most meetest for my purpose sarvinge, to the tune of Fortune my Foe.”159 The poem, which does indeed fit the tune of Fortune my Foe (a piece set by Byrd in the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book) rehearses her recent difficulties. There is a certain poignancy in the combination of a well-known secular complaint to Fortuna—“Fortune my foe, why dost thou frown on me? . . . And wilt thou ne’er restore my joys again?”—with a lament over a household persecuted for its recusancy. Moule concludes by praising Mrs. Gray’s young son, who appears to be growing up in the mold of his (unfortunately absent) father: In whose young years as in a glass I see the fathers face, a joy full sight to mee God in his Grace him arm for all affairs that he may live an honnor to the Grayes.160 As consolatory verse, this is perhaps not on a level with the great authors of the English Renaissance, but Moule enjoyed composing as well as reading poetry, and a number of what appear to be his own devotional poems are also scattered throughout the manuscript. This short prayer is typical: From Satan’s Guyle O Jesu myle Preserve this soul of me Which thy dear Blood Shed on the Rood Did ransom and set free I thee Adore O Christ therefore Which by thy holy Crosse From endless thrall [line missing]161 Restoring Adams losse Adoro te Jesus Christe [sic] With hartes mindes accord Ave Maria O Mater Pia The Mother of the Lord. Amen.162 Moule’s naive poem evokes the macaronic style of pre-Reformation carols and religious poetry, in which English verse passes freely into and out of related Latin phrases. There are echoes of a number of traditional texts here, including the set of prayers on the Passion beginning “Adoro te, Domine Jesu

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“Meditate These Wel”  •  61 Christe,” which can be traced in England back to Anglo-Saxon times. It was incorporated into the Good Friday liturgy by the tenth century, but, as Eamon Duffy notes, “the prayer also had a continuing existence as a devotional rather than a liturgical text,” and it was included as such in the primers, often illustrated by a picture of Christ displaying his wounds.163 “Adoro te” occurs here as the archetypal salutation to Christ, in parallel with the “Ave” addressed to his mother Mary. Similar Latin and English material is collected in groups throughout the book, more or less haphazardly, as an aid to memory and devotional browsing: In te Domine Speravi non confundar in eternum. I adore thee O Christe and I worship thee Which by thy holy Cross hast redeemed me. Sis Jesu nostrum gaudium Qui es futurus premium. Ps 50. Sacrificium deo spiritus contribulatus.164 The brief phrases in this group are all liturgically marked in some way. “In te Domine speravi . . .” is the concluding verse—taken from Psalm 30—of the Te Deum. “I adore thee . . . “ is a conflation of the Adoro te tag with a first-person adaptation of the versicle and response Adoramus te Christe (set in its original version by Byrd in the 1605 Gradualia; that reading runs “we adore . . . and we worship . . . hast redeemed the world.”). “Sis Jesu nostrum gaudium . . . ” is the first half of the doxology to the hymn Jesu dulcis memoria. “Sacrificium deo . . . ” is a half-verse from the psalm Miserere, the keystone of the seven penitential psalms (its opening also set by Byrd) and one of the most common texts in recusant devotion: Thomas More, whose writings figure prominently elsewhere in Moule’s commonplace book, was the first of many English Catholics to recite it aloud on the scaffold when he was executed in 1535. It is noteworthy how often these lines, or variants of them, occur in Elizabethan and Jacobean martyrdom narratives as what Craig Monson calls “gallows texts.”165 Thomas Cottam prayed “In te Domine speravi, non confundar in aeternum” after the rope was put around his neck.166 Henry Garnet repeated the lines “Adoramus te” at his execution, which happened to be on May 3, the Feast of the Finding of the Cross.167 Alexander Brian, like several others, “with a constant mind and pleasant countenance said the Psalme Miserere” as he was being tortured; he died with the same psalm on his lips.168 Phrases of this sort occur readily in contexts as disparate as a devotional commonplace book, a public execution, and a refined musical setting. Their ubiquity further illustrates what is clear about such paraliturgical texts: they were present at all levels of the recusant milieu, and were called upon in moments of both triumph and uncertainty.

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62  •  Liturgy and Contemplation in Byrd’s Gradualia Other liturgically associated texts in Moule’s book, such as this quatrain on the Nativity, can be traced to more specific origins: In Nativitate Christi. Behold o thankeless wretche, behold How to repair thy fall The body that rules the rowlinge skies Lyeth borne in Brutishe stall. This is the little poem (with only one minor difference, “God” for “body”— might Moule have intended to write “boy”?—in the third line) that opens the 1579 English adaptation of the Jesuit Gaspar de Loarte’s Exercise of a Christian Life.169 It is printed under a simple woodcut of the Nativity scene; above the picture is a Latin epigram on essentially the same subject (see fig. 2.2): Nascitur, & iacet in stabulo qui torquet Olympum: Pastorum, & Superum cantibus antra sonant. [He who rules Olympus is born, and lies in a stable: the caves resound with the songs of the shepherds and heavenly host.] On the facing page is a longer Latin Christmas poem, “Carmen in Nativitatem Christi,” also in elegiac couplets. It takes the form of a dialogue. The astonished speaker asks the Christ child why he is willing to undergo the hardships depicted in the woodcut: descending from heaven to earth, lying on sharp straw in a cold stable, sleeping between two animals. As in the Ignatian meditation on the Nativity, and the associated poems by Southwell and other recusant authors, the physical circumstances of Christ’s birth are invoked in detail to add to the affective response of the reader. The child answers again and again with only one word in Latin—Amo, “I love”—and adds, in the last couplet, that he will have to suffer much greater things once he has grown. Cur petis humanas puer o bellissime sedes A superis factus sedibus exul? Amo. Cur tua panniculos molles quibus implicet artus Non habet in tali tempore Mater? Amo. Cur geminas inter pecudes decumbis, & udas Lachrimulas madido lumine fundis? Amo. Cur rigidae stimulis paleae mordacibus urunt Et tenerum ledunt frigora corpus? Amo. Cur stabulis sacris durissima robora membris, Et lapis heu capiti sternitur asper? Amo. Pauca modo patior, sed postquam adoleverit aetas, Verbera, vincla, vepres, roboraque alta feram.

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“Meditate These Wel”  •  63

Figure 2.1  Nativity scene from Loarte’s Exercise of a Christian Life

[Why, O most beautiful child, do you seek human dwellings, exiled from heavenly thrones? I love. — Why does your Mother have no soft clothes to wrap you in such weather? I love. — Why do you lie down amid the animals, shedding little tears from your wet eyes? I love. — Why does the harsh straw chafe you with its biting ends, and the cold afflict your tender body? I love. — Why is the rough wood of the stable laid out for your holy limbs, and a harsh stone, alas, laid out for your head? I love. I suffer little now, but after I have matured in years, I will bear blows, shackles, thorns, and the wood of the cross.] This single opening, from a book Moule or at least his associates knew, shows a glimpse of the recusant devotional world in microcosm. One topic from the liturgical calendar, the nativity of Christ, is presented in a number of different ways. There is something for everyone: the admirer of humble English devotional verse (as Moule seems to have been); the collector of epigrams; the reader who enjoys contemplative dialogues in humanist Latin; or the person, whether uneducated or merely given to nonverbal reflection, who prefers to gaze at a picture. A small item in such a collection finds its way here into the everyday milieu of a literate Catholic—it appears to have been quoted from memory—and, eventually, into his written miscellanea. Moule’s commonplace book reflects, though on a modest scale, the reading and writing culture of the recusant community: he hands out books of

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64  •  Liturgy and Contemplation in Byrd’s Gradualia meditations as holiday gifts, copies out familiar Latin liturgical phrases and builds poems around them, draws on the imagery of secular music to console a recusant friend in her misfortune, and borrows “sundrie godlie and devout matters” from whatever sources were available to him. The famous last prayers of Thomas More and the poetry of Southwell rub shoulders with Moule’s own compositions. The whole assemblage, though often haphazard (after the fashion of its genre), is unified above all by its allegiance to a threatened form of worship and a devotional tradition already generations old. Liturgical Poetry: The Osborn Manuscript and Southwell’s Moeoniae Some collections of English Catholic literature are yet more explicitly fashioned to fit the church year. This final section takes a closer look at two such cycles. One notable example of liturgically ordered recusant poetry is a latesixteenth-century manuscript now in the collection of Yale University.170 This volume, traceable to London in the 1590s, consists of a series of fifty-eight anonymous devotional poems on the feasts of the Roman calendar, from Trinity Sunday in late spring to St. Catherine’s day on November 25. From internal evidence and a signature on the bottom margin of the first page, the book (and very likely the authorship of its contents) can be traced to Peter Martin, a graduate of the English College at Valladolid, Spain, who was sent back to England as a missionary priest in 1597. Michael Suarez, who brought the volume to the attention of scholars in 1994 after it was acquired by Yale, points out that it must have been half of a complete set spanning the entire year.171 It would be yet more interesting to have the other half of the collection, including the great solemnities of the Christmas and Easter cycle, but the care lavished on the summer and fall feasts—both the major ones such as All Saints or the Assumption (which merit two poems each) and the relatively minor ones such as Sts. Cosmas and Damian—shows that the poet’s concern for the events of the calendar was not restricted to a handful of central occasions.172 There are also blank pages following half a dozen of the most important feasts, including Corpus Christi (the largest blank section of the manuscript is the empty space following it), the Assumption, and the Nativity of Mary. It is clear that the scribe hoped eventually to add more material for these occasions, and made provision for keeping the liturgical order of the poems by reserving extra room wherever it seemed necessary.173 The poetry itself has a good deal in common with the artless devotional effusions of Peter Moule’s commonplace book, though, as Suarez notes, it betrays the influence of at least “the rudiments of classical rhetoric.”174 This stanza from “Of ye presentation of our B. Lady” is typical: O blessed woman than sayde hee O holy roote of regall race

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“Meditate These Wel”  •  65 This noble Nymphe shall goe with me Sancta Sanctorum is her place. . . . 175 Political sentiments are also common. Later in the Presentation poem, the author breaks off his praises of the Virgin to make explicit reference to her veneration and her feast days, now out of favor in England: Blessed are they who keepe thy dayes, Cursed are they who breake the same, Dame Heresie shall cursed bee And all her crewe which envye thee.176 The manuscript is written out in a fine professional hand and bound in a vellum leaf from a late medieval sacramentary.177 This latter detail speaks volumes about the mentality of the poet, compiler, and/or owner of the collection: a pre-Tridentine liturgical source, now obsolete among Catholics and forbidden among Anglicans, is taken apart and used with apparent lack of compunction as binding material for a book of devotional verse structured around the new Roman calendar.178 The contents of the Yale manuscript reflect the same determined, if sometimes awkward, mixture of old and new. A much better known poet in this recusant devotional tradition was Robert Southwell, whose often-anthologized poem The Burning Babe is an apt introduction to his treatment of liturgical topics179: As I in hoarie Winters night stoode shivering in the snow, Surprised I was with sodaine heate, which made my hart to glow; And lifting up a fearfull eye, to view what fire was neare, A pretty Babe all burning bright did in the ayre appear; Who scorched with excessive heate, such floods of teares did shed, As though his floods should quench his flames, which with his teares were bred; Alas (quoth he) but newly borne, in fierie heates I frie, Yet none approach to warme their harts or feele my fire, but I; My faultlesse breast the furnace is, the fuell wounding thornes: Love is the fire, and sighs the smoke, the ashes, shames and scornes; The fewell Justice layeth on, and Mercie blowes the coales, The mettall in this furnace wrought, are mens defiled soules: For which as now on fire I am to worke them to their good, So will I melt into a bath, to wash them in my blood. With this he vanisht out of sight, and swiftly shrunk away, And straight I called unto minde, that it was Christmasse day. The attention here to both sensory detail and emotion is fully characteristic of the Ignatian tradition in which Southwell was trained.180 Also noteworthy is the gesture of the last line, which places the poet’s experience firmly within

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66  •  Liturgy and Contemplation in Byrd’s Gradualia the narrative of the church year. Martin Elsky, while contrasting poems on the life of Christ by Southwell and his Protestant counterparts, remarks on the immediacy—indeed, the intrusion—of the liturgical event itself in The Burning Babe: “Moreover, after the vision vanishes, the poet suddenly realizes that ‘it was Christmasse day.’ In a typically liturgical manner, the Nativity is made present to the poet on the very day that the Church celebrates that event.”181 The visionary and creative experience is directly conflated here with ritual observance; this reflects the instruction in a seventeenth-century book of meditations, prepared for the use of the English College in Lisbon, that they should not merely be dipped into at random but rather put into practice through “the whole yeare in due and right order, for the great Feasts thereof, as well moveable as immoveable.”182 Southwell’s most immediate parallel with Byrd’s liturgical project is a substantial cycle of poems, transmitted together in manuscript and published immediately after his death in 1595 under the title of Moeoniae. One perceptive if slightly overenthusiastic critic has called it “a complete plan for meditation on the lives of Christ and the Virgin Mary.”183 The book is hardly a “complete plan” along the lines of either the Ignatian exercises or the yearly round of liturgical observance, though it liberally borrows subject matter and techniques from both of these sources. Louis Martz, in his Poetry of Meditation, gives a more balanced account, identifying it as a cycle of “sacred epigrams,” following the main events of the church year, each poem consisting of “three or four witty, pious meditations on a given mystery.”184 He goes on to identify some possible influences on the style and conception of the work: “What we have here seems to be a work in which the continental art of the sacred epigram (as found in Crashaw’s Epigrammata sacra) is combined with meditation on the life of Christ after the manner suggested by Southwell’s fellow-Jesuit [Gaspar de Loarte] for meditation on the rosary.”185 The narrative sequence of poems in Southwell’s own manuscript is as follows: The Conception of our Ladie Our Ladies Nativitye Our Ladies Spousalls The Visitation The Nativity of Christe The Circumcision The Epiphanye The Presentation The Flight into Egipt

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“Meditate These Wel”  •  67 Christes Retorne out of Egipt Christes Childhoode The Death of our Ladie The Assumption of our Ladie In the 1595 publication of Moeoniae, the editor inserts four additional poems by Southwell at various points in the narrative, one following the Annunciation (“Josephs Amazement”) and three concerning the Passion (“Christes Bloody Sweat,” “Christes Sleeping Friends,” and “The Virgin Mary to Christ on the Crosse). The Christmas poem is printed out of Southwell’s liturgical order. The book ends with nine more poems, related to the liturgical topic in a more general way; these include a verse translation of the sequence Lauda Sion (“Saint Thomas of Aquines Hymne read on Corpus Christy Daye”), two pieces on St. Peter (“Saint Peters Afflicted Minde” and “Saint Peters Remorse”), and another meditation on the Passion (“Man to the Wound in Christs Side”). These poems were circulated systematically in numerous manuscripts (five of which have survived) while Southwell was in prison during the early 1590s, and they were in print only months after his execution in 1595—two volumes, in a total of five separate editions, appeared within the year. Nancy Pollard Brown describes his publishing drive late in life: “In his care to revise texts, and to control, as far as he could, their distribution among the faithful, Southwell foresaw the way in which his work was to extend beyond his death.”186 Even under difficult conditions, with his execution impending, he worked to preserve and transmit a body of sacred art that he thought would help his fellow-recusants in their ongoing struggle.187 Notably, his posthumous publications used (as Byrd’s Latin prints did) the services of openly engaged printers rather than Jesuit secret presses. One result of this process was, as in Byrd’s Gradualia, a certain level of internal censorship for the sake of prudence and safety—clearly the safety of the publishers and editors in Southwell’s case, since the artist himself had already paid the ultimate penalty for his religious dissent. The two poems at the end of Southwell’s Marian sequence in the original manuscript, “The Death of Our Ladie” and “The Assumption of Our Ladie,” disappeared altogether from the printed Moeoniae series and remained unpublished until the antiquarian editions of the less scrupulous nineteenth century. Martz comments on the omission of these two topics: “Anyone can see, I think, why they were not printed in the early editions, for their hyperbolic praises of the Virgin go beyond anything allowed by even the most conservative Anglican orthodoxy.”188 He even attributes the editor’s misplacement of the Christmas poem—a mistake difficult to justify otherwise—to “a certain caution with regard to a poetical sequence so obviously Roman in inspiration.” The censorship in Moeoniae of the most controversial Marian texts is certainly part of the same phenomenon seen in the

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68  •  Liturgy and Contemplation in Byrd’s Gradualia Gradualia with the missing texts for Sts. Peter and Paul, or the tiny expurgations of troublesome concepts such as “meruerunt” and “tuos captivos redimens.”189 Such precautions aside, the concentration of Marian poetry—and specifically liturgical Marian poetry—in Moeoniae certainly reflects, as the opening fascicle of Gradualia I does, a prevailing concern of the recusant community.190 Southwell’s cycle of poems circulated in several manuscripts while he was in prison in the early 1590s, and it was in print only months after his execution in 1595. That same year Byrd saw the last of his three Mass ordinaries through the press and, we can assume, began to turn his attention to the Gradualia cycle. The chronology may be coincidental to some extent, but it appears to illustrate a larger trend in English Catholic art and devotion at the end of the sixteenth century. In two very different sets of circumstances, the best-loved recusant poet and the most renowned recusant composer—Southwell living as a fugitive priest and then as a prisoner in the Tower of London, Byrd in a more or less comfortable self-imposed retirement from court life—turned almost simultaneously to the same methods and subject matter. Concern for the events of the liturgical cycle is also evident throughout Southwell’s poems. John Busby, the first publisher of Moeoniae, even included instructions for the reader to restore the proper narrative order by supplying material that had already been published in a previous volume: “Having in this Treatise read Maries visitation, the next that should follow is Christs nativity, but being afore printed in the end of Peters Complaint, we have heere of purpose omitted.”191 This recalls Byrd’s directives to the reader in the Gradualia prefaces, describing the contents and, at least to some extent, explaining how to assemble the necessary music for various feast days. Both collections go out of their way to address the same concerns: maintaining the integrity of the liturgical (or, in Southwell’s case, quasi-liturgical) cycle, and following what Jackman called a “principle of economy,” avoiding the needless repetition of printed material.192 This sort of nonlinear reading would have been second nature to a literate post-Tridentine Catholic who was already familiar with the disjunct process of reconstructing services from the missal or breviary. In both cases, the compiler is actively concerned with the integrity of the whole as well as the presentation of individual items. Both Southwell and Byrd, working under similar influences, created what amounts to a series of sacred epigrams. There is no better definition for the pieces that make up the two books of Gradualia: concentrated, often paradoxical, some lasting barely a minute. Byrd’s basic set of propers for each feast-day Mass—the introit, the gradual/alleluia group or its equivalent, the offertory, and the communion—can be described just as Martz describes Southwell’s poems: “three or four witty, pious meditations on a given mystery.” This is, of course, the technique cultivated by Ignatius and his Jesuit followers, a technique that pervades English Catholic devotional practice, from the simplest Rosary treatises to the most elaborate meditative schemes: a group of three

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“Meditate These Wel”  •  69 or four intense, specific contemplations, each within a set framework, on different aspects of the same supernatural event. Byrd took this technique a step further in his Gradualia, using it to provide for the needs of his community and its living liturgical tradition.

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3

Liturgical Practice and English Catholic Identity

When he composed the Gradualia cycle, William Byrd invested a good part of his mature artistic career in the Tridentine liturgy and the events of the Roman church year. Both the musical content of the two books and his own words in their prefaces reflect his commitment to well-ordered worship. He was far from alone in this commitment. Other Elizabethan and Jacobean Catholics were quick to appeal to liturgical practice as something vital to their existence, both when defending their cause against opponents and encouraging perseverance among their own ranks. This chapter explores a number of primary sources on the topic. These include English didactic works on the Mass; polemic (from both sides) concerning the liturgical year and its observances; contemporary documents relating to two specific holidays featured in Byrd’s Gradualia, All Saints’ Day and Corpus Christi; firsthand accounts of feast-day celebrations; and some surprising parallels drawn between the struggle over ritual practice and the threatened existence of the English Catholic community itself. There will be no attempt here to retrace the widespread controversies over the Mass, the nature of the sacraments, the priesthood, transubstantiation, and similar topics that dominated much of the religious discourse of early modern England. These debates, and the intellectual currents behind them, have been discussed elsewhere in detail.1 My purpose is simply to show through new documentary evidence how recusants saw, heard, wrote about, and identified with the liturgy and its music around the turn of the seventeenth century. It can be an elusive topic. In English Catholic memoirs and letters, one constant (and somewhat exasperating) trait is the high degree of anonymity, concentrated especially around the priesthood and liturgical activity. The memoirs of the Jesuit missionary John Gerard, for example, contain hundreds of anecdotes about his friends and associates, but very few of these people are identified by name or place.2 Modern editors are left with the task of checking the available sources and untangling the web of pseudonyms and allusions, and many characters remain anonymous despite all efforts at identification. The problem only gets worse in a specific study of recusant liturgical practice. The exact details that would be most useful—the times and places where Mass was celebrated, the people who took part, their connections and 71

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72  •  Liturgy and Contemplation in Byrd’s Gradualia circumstances—would have been the most incriminating of all, and therefore tend to be the most obscure. Even the physical description of these meetings reflects the same reality. Recusant worship was elaborate in some places, but also, by its very nature, ephemeral; it was something that could physically vanish in moments if discovered or attacked. In a typical scene from his autobiography, Gerard describes an early-morning raid on an illegal service: “Father Southwell heard the din. He guessed what it was all about, and slipped off his vestments and stripped the altar bare. While he was doing this, we laid hold of all our personal belongings: nothing was left to betray the presence of a priest . . . some of us went off and turned the beds and put the cold side up, to delude anyone who put his hand in to feel them.”3 After disposing of the evidence, Gerard, Robert Southwell, and their friends had just enough time to “stow themselves and all their belongings into a very cleverly built sort of cave,” where they hid until the searchers gave up and left. English Catholics were accustomed to this sort of surprise. It was a realistic possibility every time they met for worship, even at well-hidden locations deep in the countryside. What we know about the material culture of their religion, the “personal belongings” that might “betray” their practices, reflects a climate of caution. Priests often carried their own altar furnishings from house to house, unobtrusive items that might pass if necessary as normal household linen and silver. They generally traveled light, knowing that their papers and possessions could be abandoned, confiscated, or destroyed at any moment. Gerard himself was forced to leave behind all his books and ten years’ worth of manuscript notes while escaping a police raid. William Allen, in his Apologie for the English missionary colleges (and, by extension, for the entire English recusant endeavor), addresses the problem of religious items such as beads, medals, devotional books, and the like, which consecrated creatures. . . are great helpes to devotion, and special badges of our Catholike communion with one another: yet not being so necessarie as to incurre the extreme rigor of lawes therfore, or to bring our Catholike friends into peril for them, we have tempered the affection and zeale of some Priests and yong gentlemen (otherwise most commendable) al that we could possibly, requiring them to carie rarely and sparingly such things with them: that the forces of our patience and sufferance may be entiere and whole for such brunts as may fall unto us and our brethren, in matter of greater importance for our faith and salvation: though he be happie that dieth for the lest moment of our Catholike religion.4 The same could be said, mutatis mutandis, for elaborate liturgical music. The normative model of the Mass, at least on important occasions, was the chanting of all audible texts by the priest and his attendants, but it is hard

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Liturgical Practice and English Catholic Identity  •  73 to deduce directly from surviving accounts how much singing, not to mention polyphonic singing, normally took place. The few more-or-less explicit historical reports of recusant music-making have often been brought up in connection with Byrd. They are worth revisiting briefly here. The composer was present to welcome the Jesuits Henry Garnet and Southwell when they reached England in 1586. Reporting on this famous meeting, Southwell mentions plans for a “sung Mass with all solemnity, accompanied by choice instrumental and vocal music”; the Catholic chronicler William Weston writes of “an organ and other musical instruments” at the same house, “and, moreover, singers of both sexes belonging to the family, the master of the house being singularly experienced in that art.”5 Only a few months before he was captured for alleged complicity in the Gunpowder Plot, Garnet “kept Corpus Christi day” at a house in Essex “with great solemnity and music.”6 This was in the early summer of 1605, the same year the Corpus Christi set of Gradualia was published. The pious recusant Lady Montague (for whom Byrd later composed an elegy) built “a Quire for singers” in her domestic chapel, where “on solemne feasts the sacrifice of the Masse was celebrated with singing, and musicall instruments.”7 Beyond this handful of well-known passages, the additional evidence falls into two broad categories: firsthand statements about recusant experience of the liturgy, and descriptions (either catechetical or polemical) of its contents. Although these sources do not, as a rule, answer our most pressing questions about musical practice, they combine to draw a portrait of corporate worship and loving concern for detail that is entirely at home in the artistic world of the Gradualia. We know that English Catholics valued the Mass itself very highly, and were often willing to risk their lives and fortunes to gain access to it. Allen’s Apologie named its scarcity as the first and most important reason for educating English-speaking priests abroad and sending them back home as missionaries: “the universal lacke then of the soveraine Sacrifice and Sacraments catholikely ministred, without which the soule of man dieth, as the body doth without corporal foode.”8 These clerics, once they arrived, appear to have been in the habit of saying Mass daily, even in uncomfortable or dangerous circumstances. Some statements, such as a passage from a letter sent by Henry Garnet to his superior Claudio Aquaviva in 1596, imply that it was an unusual privation not to be able to celebrate the liturgy, especially on feast days: one of his fellow Jesuits complained that he “had spent several holy days staying at an inn in London, without the Mass.”9 Recusants were eager even for detailed descriptions of elaborate worship, being generally unable to participate in it themselves. Their interests are reflected in an anonymous English pamphlet on the Roman Jubilee Year ceremonies of 1600. The Ceremonies, solemnities, and prayers, used at the opening of the holy gates of foure Churches, within the Citie of Rome, in the yere of

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74  •  Liturgy and Contemplation in Byrd’s Gradualia Iubile was published in London for Catholic consumption—openly and with an accurate imprint, though this, like the publication of Byrd’s Mass ordinaries, is difficult to believe under the conditions of the time.10 Ceremonies, solemnities, and prayers re-creates the ritual for the opening of the symbolic Jubilee doors in Rome “after dinner” on Christmas Eve 1599, with the Latin texts, parallel English versions, and a lavish description of the ceremony—a procession of distinguished cardinals, clerics, musicians, and acolytes in their ecclesiastical finery, bearing candles “being white wax and waying 3 pounds, singing “Iubilate Deo omnis terra . . . Let all the inhabitants of the earth rejoyce in the Lord.” This psalm is followed by “other Canticles of praise & thanks giving” and a solemnly sung Te Deum. The booklet concludes with an English translation of the decree of Pope Clement VIII granting indulgences and various spiritual benefits to those who undertake a pilgrimage to Rome in the course of the holy year. For recusants who were separated from such ceremonies by both geographical distance and political turmoil, reading this sort of account, and the promises attached to the celebration of the Jubilee, must have produced mixed feelings. Other accounts of pilgrimage, such as Gregory Martin’s 1580 Roma Sancta, fulfill a similar role—taking the reader on a virtual tour through the city and its churches, describing the Jubilee celebrations of 1575 in glowing terms.11 Elizabethan and Jacobean Catholics relished descriptions of this kind, not least because they were almost entirely cut off in their home country from such comfortable displays of piety. Even as the second and third generations of English Catholic loyalists were developing an intensive routine of domestically based worship, they still appear to have longed for the public splendor of the continental Counter-Reformation. It is no surprise that recusants also undertook detailed written explications of the Mass itself, though they were forbidden to take part in it under penalty of imprisonment or even death, and were rarely in a position to perform all of its rubrics perfectly. Such works are a useful introduction to the liturgy as perceived by Byrd’s Catholic contemporaries. They also provide valuable information on the context and possible use of the Mass propers that make up the bulk of his Gradualia. I will discuss two of the most popular accounts in some detail: the final chapter of Laurence Vaux’s Catechisme and John Heigham’s Devout exposition of the holie Masse. Recusant Descriptions of the Mass and Its Proper English recusant commentaries on the Mass did not develop in a vacuum. They drew on the robust tradition of similar didactic and allegorical works, popular throughout the later Middle Ages and into the early modern era. The most famous is undoubtedly Guillaume Durand’s thirteenth-century Rationale divinorum officiorum, a systematic treatise on liturgical matters ranging from church buildings and vestments to the computation of the calendar.12 It

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Liturgical Practice and English Catholic Identity  •  75 also includes a step-by-step explanation of everything done, sung, and said in the Mass, with a commentary and allegorical notes on its meaning. It combines a synthesis of already existing ideas with Durand’s own distinctive view, and informs almost every subsequent work of its kind up to the time of the Reformation.13 Prosper Guéranger, the nineteenth-century medievalist and liturgical reformer, claimed in his Institutions liturgiques (perhaps a shade too enthusiastically) that “one may consider this book the last word from the Middle Ages on the mystery of divine worship.”14 Both of the English treatises discussed below draw extensively on Durand’s work and the tradition surrounding it. The Rationale appears to have enjoyed wide circulation in Elizabethan and Jacobean Catholic circles, where it was used for a number of ends. One of the Jesuit William Weston’s acquaintances, a Catholic by conviction who conformed outwardly to the Anglican establishment to avoid being punished for recusancy, had a copy of the Rationale in his house. He cited it to justify his attendance at the services of the established church (though Weston, rather frustratingly, does not specify which passages he used in his defense).15 Allegorical writings along these lines had come under severe attack from the Protestant Reformers. Martin Luther’s comment in his 1520 treatise On the Babylonian Captivity of the Church is a typical objection to the genre. “In the Ecclesiastical Hierarchy what does Dionysius do but describe certain churchly rites and amuse himself with allegories without proving anything? . . .” he complains, “just as has been done in our time by the author of the book entitled Rationale divinorum. Such allegorical studies are for idle men. . . . Who has so weak a mind as not to be able to launch into allegories?”16 A number of English Catholic authors cultivated “such allegorical studies” in a post-Reformation age, though generally mingled with more straightforward didactic accounts of what took place at services. According to the allegorical model, even the most seemingly insignificant action in the Mass was invested with scriptural and doctrinal gravitas, and should be preserved at all costs. Lucy Wooding, in the final chapter of her Rethinking Catholicism in Reformation England, discusses the slow entrenchment of such traditionalism during the Elizabethan years. “An emphasis upon ceremonies,” she remarks, “gradually reappeared as a more major concern of Catholic works concerning worship, and often with the justification that they could be of use to the simple and uneducated. . . . The reappearance of ceremonies in Catholic writing was sealed with a new dogmatism, and rendered an essential part of the faith.”17 Both ritual actions and their explication became important tools in the recusant project of self-definition. Along with the obvious similarities between sixteenth-century English Mass commentaries and their standard late-medieval counterparts, there are also some notable differences. The English sources include signs of congregational participation not evident in earlier works. They also take in pointed

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76  •  Liturgy and Contemplation in Byrd’s Gradualia references to the history of the English church and show a taste for politically charged examples—such as Heigham’s definition of the tract discussed below, which isolates the papist proof text Tu es Petrus and the contentious Gaude Maria Virgo, cunctas haereses sola interemisti (both set at length by Byrd) as representative of the genre. The first major recusant commentary on the Mass appears in the final section of the Catechisme or Christian doctrine of Laurence Vaux. This catechism was among the most influential and widely distributed works of English Catholic apologetics. It was first published in 1568, and had gone through at least nine editions by 1620.18 Vaux had spent some time as a schoolmaster at Louvain, where he instructed the children of exiled recusant families. His catechism was directed specifically at “the youth” of England—both the uncatechized Catholic youth and the curious non-Catholic youth, as well as other people who were unfamiliar with the laws and ceremonies of the old religion. His work achieved almost immediate notoriety. When he returned to England in 1580, he was asked, “What relation are you to that Vaux who wrote a popish catechism in English?”19 When he confessed to being the author, he was arrested and imprisoned; he died in prison five years later, while his book continued to sell in large quantities and appear in new editions. The Vaux catechism discusses the Ten Commandments, the Apostles’ Creed, the standard Christian prayers, the seven sacraments, and the “offices of Christian justice,” or prayer, fasting, and almsgiving; it concludes with a chapter on “the use and meaning of ceremonies,” including a step-by-step account of the Mass. This chapter is a practical resource on the liturgy as well as an allegorical explanation of it. Vaux appears to have written the didactic part of his account more or less consciously in the long tradition that had begun with Justin Martyr’s first Apologia, which gave a frank explanation of what went on at a second-century eucharist, as much to avoid speculation and slander as to instruct the ignorant.20 Vaux asks the reader “to be humble and rather to seeke what an unknowen Ceremony meaneth, then to laugh at that which he knoweth not.”21 Alongside his brief description of the rites and of the texts which accompany them, Vaux also allegorizes the entire Mass as a microcosm of the life of Christ, through the predictions of the prophets, his incarnation, ministry, passion, death, resurrection, ascension, and sending of the Holy Spirit on Pentecost: the raw material of the church year as well as of each individual service. “We offer in the morning,” he explains near the end of his essay, “to shew, that we take hold of Christs resurrection also, and live now in a newe state of grace. And in deed the very receaving & consuming of the Sacrament by the faithfull is a remembrance also of Christs ascension, wherein he was taken from your sight into the heavens, whence he sent the holy Ghost. . . .”22 He describes all five Mass Ordinary items in turn within this allegorical framework of the life of Christ. He introduces the topic while discussing the

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Liturgical Practice and English Catholic Identity  •  77 Kyrie, in which the priest “cryeth out for mercy nine times, giving us to understand, that his Sacrifice dependeth upon Christ, and not upone our merits.” Then the narrative starts: “he beginneth the Gloria in excelsis Deo: Glory in the highest unto God, putting us in minde of the hymne and praise which the Angels sang at Christs birth.”23 “The creed witnesseth what great fruit of professing the true faith insued upon Christs preaching”; after the Sursum corda and the preface, Palm Sunday is recalled, as “all the people, or such as supplie their place, doe sing in honour of the blessed Trinity three times, Holy, Holy, Holy, the Lord God of hostes, blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord, Osanna in the highest.”24 Finally, “the kisse of peace being sent to the faithfull that are present (whilest they call for mercy and peace at the hands of the lambe of God) the whole Sacrifice is receaved either by the priest alone, if none other be prepared thereunto (as Christ on the Crosse ended his own Sacrifice alone) or if others be ready, they receave also with the priest even as Christ at his supper gave his Sacrament to others also.”25 The proper is not as well accounted for as the ordinary, though Vaux does mention the first three items: “He [the priest] beginneth the Masse with some part of a Psalme, which he repeteth twise or thrise, in shewing the Prophets and Patriakes to have prayed for, and to have rejoyced at the day of Christs incarnation, which they saw in spirit”; “the mourning song of the Graile, sheweth that penance which insued among the good men at S. John baptists preaching”; “the joyfull songe Alleluya betokeneth the spirituall joye, which after their penaunce done they obteined, partly in this life, and specially in the life to come: for those who mourne in God, shalbe comforted.”26 The musical evidence of these passages is slim but compelling. Both the gradual and alleluia are discussed as “songs,” with no suggestion that the singing is purely allegorical. The priest appears to be saying or singing the Kyrie, and at least intoning the Gloria. Most surprisingly, “all the people, or such as supply their place”—the congregation, or a choir of some sort—sing the Sanctus and Benedictus, and at the Agnus Dei “the faithfull that are present” likewise “call for mercy and peace at the hands of the lambe of God.” Polyphonic ordinary or proper settings, such as those composed by Byrd, would be entirely at home in such a context. Equally relevant to the musical structure of both the Gradualia and Byrd’s three ordinaries is the progressive nature of the Mass narrative, as Vaux traces the journey of the priest and congregation through the service as a parallel of humanity’s (and the individual soul’s) journey through the events of salvation history.27 A much more detailed recusant explanation of the Mass, and especially of the proper, is found in John Heigham’s 1614 Devout exposition of the holie Masse, with an ample declaration of all the rites and ceremonies belonging to the same.28 Heigham was a prolific author and translator who was deeply involved with the Counter-Reformation traditions of catechesis and meditative reading.29 He produced, among a number of other works, English adaptations of

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78  •  Liturgy and Contemplation in Byrd’s Gradualia Luis de Granada’s Meditaciones de los mysterios de nuestra santa fé and of the Meditationes vitae Christi attributed to St. Bonaventure.30 Unlike many English Catholic apologists, he was a married layman. He spent most of his adult life, from 1603 to his death in about 1632, in Douai and St. Omer, working for the recusant book trade. A. F. Allison describes him as a well-educated, persuasive figure who “directed his energies to furthering Catholic propaganda in England, preparing English texts for publication, employing foreign printers to print them, and organising the dangerous trade of smuggling them across the Channel.”31 Heigham’s Devout exposition is a collection of short essays on the complete text of the Mass and the ceremonies accompanying it. Each discrete item in the service, from the actual words of consecration to physical minutiae such as kissing the altar or turning to face the assembly, receives its own explanation. Most of the essays are laid out as a series of numbered “reasons,” describing and defending what is done at each point in the Mass. This tabular format is familiar from the classic works of recusant apologetics, with Richard Bristow’s Motives and Edmund Campion’s Decem rationes being among the best-known and most widely circulated examples. Despite the prevailing conciliatory tone—the Devout exposition lacks the constant invective against “heresy” and inappropriate liturgical practices found in so many recusant books—Heigham sometimes walks the thin line between “devout exposition” and polemical defense of what was at the time a thoroughly illegal activity. This will become clear in his treatment of several of the proper items. The proper, as the variable part of the Mass text, is of course the most problematic subject matter for a running commentary. Without a specific set of texts to gloss, Heigham takes the opportunity to discuss the individual items by genre (though he does go on to discuss a number of specific pieces in the course of the book, such as the tract Gaude Maria and the four sequences retained after the Council of Trent). His account of the Mass proper begins with a definition: The word Introit, is borrowed from the Latin, as those that are but meanely learned, cannot but know, and signifyeth with us, A going in, and entrance, beginning or proemium. . . . This Introit, mysticallie signifyeth the earnest desire of the people of all ages, for the comming of Christ. . . . The double repetition thereof: signifyeth the greatnes of the necessitie, and the fervour of the desire: together with the great joye and exultation which was in the world, when he afterwardes came himselfe in person. The Gloria Patri, which is annexed unto the same Introit, is a most humble, and heartie thankesgiving unto the blessed Trinitie, for so singular a benefite bestowed upon us. Almaricus Bishop of Treues, testifyeth of a myracle which Almightie God shewed in approbation of this part of the Masse. Who writeth, that he heard sung by the Holy Angels, for the

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Liturgical Practice and English Catholic Identity  •  79 Introit of the Masse upon the feast of the Epiphanie, in the Church of S. Sophie, at Constantinople, the 94. Ps. Venite exultemus, &c.32 These notes on the introit show Heigham’s typical mixture of sensitivity to the nature and form of the text, strategic citation of historical precedents, and somewhat breezy allegory. This is not too promising a beginning for an account of sung propers: there is no mention of singing, except by the angels on the feast of Epiphany, who, presumably not being bound to human liturgical norms, sing a psalm unrelated to the usual introit of the day.33 Heigham nonetheless casts the introit as a joyous, exultant piece, which is certainly most true when musical settings are taken into consideration; the intensifying repetition after the Gloria Patri is emphasized, as Byrd himself pointed out in one of his rare rubrics, for the introit Rorate caeli of the Advent Lady Mass.34 With the description of the gradual and alleluia, we begin to hear more explicitly about music and singing. Heigham also begins, as Vaux did, to trace a positive progression through the service: Concerning the Graduall, it is first to be noted, that the verie worde it selfe, is not without some special mysterie: signifying, Steppes, or Degrees, to wit, of perfection. . . . As also to signifie, that the end of the doctrine of the Apostles or Prophets, whereunto wee have hearkened a little before, is to leade us, by little and little to perfection, that wee ascending from vertue to vertue, as the Kingly Prophet saith, Psal. 38. May see the God of gods in Sion. This Graduall, doeth yet further signifie, manie other notable mysteries. As for example, in an heigh Masse, it is alwaies song, with a grave and heavie voice: to signifie the great paine and difficultie there is, in ascending from virtue to virtue, and in advancing our selves in a spirituall life. . . . To conclude, this Graduall or Responce, is nothing else, but a briefe spirituall song, composed of two or three verses at the most, commonly taken out of the psalmes of David.35 The Alleluia is immediatlie song after the Graduall, to witte, the song of joye and of mirth, after the song of Penance and mourning. . . . Alleluia is composed of two Hebrewe wordes, Allelu, which signifieth in Latine, Laudate, in English praise yee: and of Iah, which is one of the ten Hebrewe names belonging to God, and signifyeth in Latine Dominum, Lord. So that the whole worde, is as much to saye as, Praise yee our Lord. . . . That this Alleluia, is sometimes twice repeated, is to signify a double joy of the blessed Saintes. . . . Finallie, this Alleluia, our Apostle S. Aug. used when he first entred into our country, to convert the same, as witnesseth S. Bede l. 1 c. 25. whose prayer was in this wise. We beseeche thee o Lord, for thy great mercie sake, that thy furie and thine anger, may be taken from this cittie (to wit, Canterbury in Kent) & from thy holie house, because we have sinned, alleluia.36

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80  •  Liturgy and Contemplation in Byrd’s Gradualia Like Vaux, Heigham refers to the gradual and alleluia as real songs; he also uses one of the same commonplaces, the shift from pensive reflection to rejoicing as the clergy, or musicians, progress from one piece to the next. His historical illustration of the alleluia, to which he gives the marginal title “Alleluia, confirmed by miracle,” is hardly a neutral one. The invocation of St. Augustine of Canterbury, the missionary archbishop who officially converted England to Catholicism around the year 600, was a common device among recusant apologists whose arguments so often rested upon claims of antiquity (or, as Allison has described it, “the perennial question ‘Where was your Church before Luther?’”).37 The language of this unusual alleluia verse—“we beseeche thee o Lord, for thy great mercie sake, that thy furie and thine anger, may be taken from this cittie, & from thy holie house, because we have sinned”—of course recalls Byrd’s numerous Cantiones on the persecution and desolation of the “holy city.” Heigham was not alone among recusants in bringing up this part of the Mass as a point of sectarian controversy. His contemporary Henry Fitzsimon speaks of it in a similar fashion in another Mass commentary, the 1611 Justification and exposition of the divine sacrifice of the Masse.38 Fitzsimon says of the alleluia that “to infernal spirites, and heretikes, it is displeasant. . . . The English bible would not have it at al, but first in lieu thereof, prayse yee the Lord; next in their bible, anno 1577. they have wholy shuffled it away.”39 He also notes, reflecting Heigham’s defense of the sung tract (and Byrd’s defense of his own controversial works on scriptural texts), that the alleluia and “graduel” consist almost exclusively of “sentences of scripture . . . having their approbation in them selves.”40 “In solemne Masse,” he adds, “they are by way of aunswer song by the quier.”41 Next comes the sequence, which Heigham calls the “Prose.” He makes specific mention of the four sequences spared in the Tridentine reform, each with an account—sometimes accurate, sometimes less so—of its authorship and provenance:42 The first invention therof, is attributed to Nocherus, Abbot of S. Gaule in Swisse, afterwards elected bishop of Liege. Durandus li. 4 cap. 22. de ritibus Ecclesiae. And Pope Nicolas the first of that name, greately moved with the devotion of this holy man, as also with the rithme, sound, and pleasant melodie of the song, permitted the use thereof. But amongst many, composed also by others, the Church of Rome, hath especially retayned in the holy Masse, four for their excellencie. 1. The first is, Victimae Paschalis laudis [sic]. The which is sayed upon Easter day, in testimony of the joyfull resurrection of Jesus Christ, and thanksgiving for the redemption of mankind, wrought by his blessed and holy death. The author is somewhat uncertain, but undoutedly a man endued with notable pietie and devotion.

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Liturgical Practice and English Catholic Identity  •  81 2. The second is, Veni sancte Spiritus. And is sung upon Withsunday, to crave of the holy Ghost, to send from above, the beames of his celestiall brightnes, to illuminate the mindes of those, which are covered with darknes. Robert, King of France, surnamed The great Cleark, composed it: the Church having since approved it, and sung it universally thoroughout all the partes of christendome. As witnesseth Paulus Aemilius, writing of his life. 3. The third is, Lauda Sion Salvatorem. Composed in praise of the most B. Sacrament by S. Thomas of Aquin, admirable for his learning to the whole worlde, which was rather divinly infused into him, then ether attained unto by nature, travaile, or the labour of studie. Who treated so sublimely of the holy Eucharist, as never any since did more set foorth, & illustrate the same: so that God seemeth proposely, to have chosen this great and learned Doctor, for a convenient remedy against the heretiques of our times. 4. The fourth is, Dies illa, dies irae [sic]. And this is said in the holie Masse, for the soules departed. The Canticle is verie lamentable, and the discourse ful of Christian contemplation, touching the apprehension and feare, of the day of generall judgment: and was composed by a noble, famous, and religious Cardinall.43 Heigham begins by invoking the “rithme, sound, and pleasant melodie” of these unusual pieces. The four sequences retained after Trent are listed in their liturgical order, passing through Easter, Pentecost, and Corpus Christi to All Souls’ Day at the dark end of the year. The account of Lauda Sion contains one of his rare references to the “heretiques of our times”; he also characterizes the Pentecost sequence in somewhat polemical terms, as invoking the Holy Spirit “to illuminate the mindes of those, which are covered with darknes.” This controversial edge continues through his description of the tract: The tract, is so called, of this Latin word tractus, à trahende, bycause (saith Durandus, li. 4 cap. 41 num. 1) it is sung tractim, and as with a trayling of the voice: as those may easily discerne, who understand playnesong. This tract, is a spirituall songe composed of sundrie verses, usually taken out of the psalmes of David, and sometimes out of certaine other places, of the holy Scripture; as that upon the feast of St. Peter’s chayre. Tu es Petrus & super hanc petram aedificabo ecclesiam meam. Matth. 16. And sometimes also, composed by the Church, conformable to the holie Scripture, as Gaude Maria Virgo, cunctas haereses sola interemisti in universo mundo. Off B. Virg. Next it is to be noted, that this tract, is alwayes soung, either after the Alleluia, or sometimes onelie in the steede thereof. And further, from Septuagesima till Easter, the Alleluia, which is a song of jubilation, alltogether ceaseth, both

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82  •  Liturgy and Contemplation in Byrd’s Gradualia in the Masse, and also in the Canonicall howers; The reason wherof is, that by the tyme of Septuagesima, the Church would represent unto us, the miserable estate of mans nature living, in this wretched world, and therefore ceaseth to sing the song of joye, and onelie singeth the song of sadnesse and sorrow.44 Some liturgical mistakes have crept into this passage. The Gaude Maria text he cites is in fact one of the antiphons at Matins of the Little Office, also familiar to recusants from the title page of Garnet’s Societie of the Rosary; the tract in question begins “Gaude Maria Virgo, cunctas haereses sola interemisti, quae Gabrielis Archangeli dictis credidisti.”45 A tract is never sung after the alleluia, but only as a substitute for it during Lent, the Rogation Days, and at Masses for the dead; the two never occur in the same service. Heigham is correct in saying that the tract is, like other proper items, usually composed on a scriptural text, though the two representative tracts he chooses for illustration are anything but neutral. The nonscriptural Gaude Maria, referring to the Virgin who has “destroyed all the world’s heresies,” is a marked text, all the more when it is claimed somewhat testily to be “conformable to the holie Scripture.” The tract Tu es Petrus, with its controversial claims regarding the papacy, is the fullest single liturgical citation of the relevant passage in Matthew 16: Tu es Petrus, et super hanc petram aedificabo Ecclesiam meam: et portae inferi non prevalebunt adversus eam: et tibi dabo claves regni caelorum. Quodcunque ligaveris super terram, erit ligatum et in coelis: et quodcunque solveris super terram, erit solutum et in coelis. You are Peter, and on this rock I will build my Church: and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it: and I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven. Whatever you bind on earth shall also be bound in heaven: and whatever you loose on earth shall also be loosed in heaven. Byrd encountered many of the same issues regarding the use of, and “conformity to,” received scriptural texts, passages (as Fitzsimon put it) “having their approbation in them selves.” His concern for the matter is evident throughout his career, from the coolly evasive title of the 1575 Cantiones quae ab argumento sacrae vocantur to his 1605 insistence that the questionable extra pieces in the first book of Gradualia were “taken from the fount of sacred scripture.” He simply avoided printing nonscriptural texts referring to the primacy of St. Peter in the 1607 book, however “conformable” they may have been to the familiar passage cited here—though he printed the tract Gaude Maria in full, which is surprising given his apparent censorship of rather more subtle pro-Catholic texts (e.g., tuos captivos redimens or cuius viscera meruerunt portare Dominum).46

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Liturgical Practice and English Catholic Identity  •  83 Heigham discusses the offertory only briefly. His full “exposition” is as follows: First the Offertorie taketh its name, Ab offerendo, Of offering; because in this part of the Masse, the people are wont to make their temporal offeringes at the Altar. Which, in a solemne Masse, is most melodiouslie soung, because as the Apostle saith: Our Lord loveth a cheer full giver. 2 Cor. 1. Because also it is convenient, that after the gospel, there should follow faith in hart, praise in mouth, and fruit in worke, as testifieth Innocentius tertius. Secondly, it is called the Offertorie, because at this time, the priest doth take into his handes, and maketh an oblation, of the Hostes that are to be consecrated. As also, because it is a most immediate preparation and disposition, to the holie Canon.47 This is a yet more explicit mention of music. Heigham notes, as he does for the gradual, that the piece is to be sung rather than said at a high Mass, and describes its “most melodious” nature: a fair description of the exuberant modality and figuration of chanted offertories. Heigham considers the offertory a “post-Gospel” chant, just as the gradual/alleluia/sequence/tract complex is a “post-Epistle” chant; it is sung in response to the Gospel, and also, by extension, to the Creed that follows the Gospel. Its special beauty is a function of its place in the liturgy, at the exact point of transition where the second and most important act begins. The communion appears at first glance to be the most problematic proper item in Heigham’s account. He calls it the “Anthem or post communion,” and places it in his sequence of events after the priest has received communion, cleaned the sacred vessels, washed his hands, and returned to the opposite side of the altar. It becomes clear in the course of his description that he is in fact speaking of the fifth and last piece of the Mass proper—which is, strictly speaking, called the antiphona ad communionem—and not a freely chosen additional “anthem” in the Anglican tradition: It is more then manifest, that the custome and use of reciting a hymne, or Canticle in the end of the Masse, is come unto us, from Christ him selfe, and his Apostles: for after our Lord had communicated his bodie and blood to the Apostles, the Scripture presently addeth. Et hymno dicto, exierunt in monte Oliveti. And an hymne being said, they went foorth unto mount Olivet. This is most evidentlie to be seene in the Liturgie of S. James, wherin you shall find these four psalmes following, to have bene songe in this part of the Masse. Dominus regit me. Benedicam Dominum in omni tempore. Exaltabo te Deus meus rex. And Laudate Dominum omnes gentes. These Psalmes, Canticles and hymnes aforesaid, were songe in the primitive Church during the time of the holie communion, in which time the Christians did communicate very often,

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84  •  Liturgy and Contemplation in Byrd’s Gradualia yea everie day, as divers histories doe testifie: For which cause the number of Communicants being very great, the Church retayned these longe Anthiemes, very agreable to the fervent devotion of that time. But since the Christians ceasing to communicate every day, and the number of communicants much decreasing, so longe Canticles were not thought expedient, and therefore in place thereof, are said these short Anthemes after the communion. Which is the reason and cause, that most now at this day, doe call them by the name of the post-communion.48 In the Roman rite, this “short Antheme” is to be intoned immediately after the priest makes his communion; if he is the only one present to do so, it becomes—de facto—a “post-communion.” The actual situation regarding lay communion among the English recusants was not quite as simple as Heigham makes it out to be. The Fourth Lateran Council of 1215 had ruled that every Christian who had reached the age of reason was bound to receive communion at least once a year at Eastertime. Despite Heigham’s complaint that the “fervent devotion” of early Christianity had given way to apathy, and the practice of frequent communion had vanished, there is copious evidence that recusants approached this sacrament, when it was at all possible, rather more often than was required to fulfill their “Easter duty.” Vaux certainly mentions the possibility of the congregation receiving along with the priest. On the same feast days that were most likely to be celebrated with elaborate chant or polyphony, there was often a large crowd of communicants: see, for example, the account of Lady Montague’s house, where “on solemn feasts the sacrifice of the mass was celebrated with singing and musical instruments . . . and such was the concourse and resort of Catholics, that sometimes there were 120 together, and 60 communicants at a time had the benefit of the Blessed Sacrament.”49 Southwell’s Short Rule of a Good Life, written for a lay readership, gives instructions for preparing oneself for communion on Sundays and holidays, and in fact advocates weekly communion. There is certainly nothing in the Rule to indicate that weekly and feast-day reception was considered unusual or excessive.50 John Faulkner, a young applicant to the English College in Rome, said in 1600 that he had spent his last two years in England living in a Catholic milieu, taking communion every week unless rare circumstances forced him to do otherwise.51 In light of such statements, we can be certain that a polyphonic communion, perhaps even followed by organ music or an additional sung piece, would not have been out of place at a recusant feast-day Mass. No matter how large or small the number of communicants, the general brevity of Byrd’s communions (some less than a minute long) could hardly have violated Heigham’s notions of propriety. Everything about these descriptions of the Mass in fact reveals a climate amenable to polyphonic propers of the sort found in the two books of Gradualia.

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Liturgical Practice and English Catholic Identity  •  85 The Calendar and Controversy The ongoing debate over the celebration of various holidays was central to the religious controversies of early modern England. Protestant polemic attacked “the different estimation of daies” as a prime example of what was wrong with the old order, while Catholic polemic defended it as a crucial manifestation of true religion.52 Some English recusants all but equated their cause with the observance (as much as was possible) of the traditional calendar. The surviving literature from both sides reveals much about perceptions of the Roman feast-day cycle at the time Byrd set it to music. The locus classicus for recusant defense of the church year is a 1574 work by Richard Bristow titled A briefe treatise of diverse plaine and sure wayes to find out the truthe in this doubtfull and dangerous time of Heresie.53 Bristow was prefect at the English College of Douai and coauthor, with William Allen, of the explanatory notes to the Douai-Rheims Bible. His book of Motives, as the Briefe treatise was generally called by his contemporaries, was a popular, indeed notorious, work of polemic. Even the Protestant chronicler John Strype mentioned it in his Annals of the Reformation: “About this year [1574] R. Bristow, of the English college at Douai, set forth his Motives unto the Catholic faith, to the number of forty-eight: a book of great vogue with the papists, which Dr. Fulk, of Cambridge, now answered in a treatise called The Retentive. In the year 1599 it was printed again at Antwerp.”54 It earned a large number of responses and counterresponses. As Peter Milward points out in his bibliography of Elizabethan religious disputes, it was also “further honoured by special mention in a royal proclamation of October 1584 ‘for the suppressing of seditious Bookes’; and it was frequently referred to in official interrogation of priests after their arrests.”55 A substantial amount of the English controversy over Catholicism during the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries took shape in a loose constellation around Bristow’s collection of “motives.” Bristow defends the liturgical year at considerable length in a chapter entitled “the annual celebrating of all Christes Mysteries.” “It is our Church,” he argues, that by her very Service doth every year praedicare annum Domini acceptabilem, preach the gracious yeare of our Lord, by yearely recording at most convenient times all that he did and suffered for us any yeare, and all his yeares that he was with us upon earth: his Precursour and Baptists Nativity, his owne Conception, his Advent, his Nativitie, his Circumcision, his Manifestation too and adoration of the Gentiles, his Presentation, his Baptisme, his Fasting, his temptation, his Preaching, his Miracles, his Passion, his Death, his Burial, his Resurrection, his Ascension, his sending of the Holy Ghost to be with us for ever, and again his Advent: besides the birth dayes (not into this world, but into Heaven) of his Apostles, Martyrs, Confessours, Virgins, and other most Holie witnesses.56

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86  •  Liturgy and Contemplation in Byrd’s Gradualia It is the task of the church’s “very Service” to present all of these things with dramatic immediacy. Bristow elaborates on this claim for a number of pages, and in the process mentions by name every one of the feast days in the Gradualia—except for the celebrations of Sts. Peter and Paul, perhaps censored out (as Byrd did with many of their proper texts in Gradualia II) because of their inevitable links to the papacy and to questions of church authority. Bristow’s arguments in favor of “the annual celebrating of all Christes Mysteries” fall under three broad headings: first, its didactic and narrative power; second, its antiquity and continuing relevance; and third, its beauty. He introduces his first point, on the didactic function of the church year, with a familiar image from the 24th chapter of the Gospel of Luke. He compares the use of liturgical texts (most of which are adapted from Scripture) to the exegesis performed by Christ himself after his resurrection, as he walked to Emmaus with two of his disciples and explained the bewildering events of the past days by invoking their allegorical equivalents in the Old Testament. “Al Heretickes [may be] of themselves ashamed,” he writes, “to see that done by Christes Church every yeare continually done without ceasing, which Christ afore did himselfe to his Disciples: Incipiens a Moyse, & omnibus prophetis, interpretabatur illis in omnibus scripturis quae de ipso erant. Beginning at Moyses and all the Prophets, he did unto them interpret & declare throughout all the Scriptures the matters, that to him belonged: as, his Passion, his resurrection, &c., his Catholike Church to begin at Ierusalem. . . .”57 By invoking this process in his defense of liturgy, Bristow is describing liturgy as itself a form of close reading, “every yeare continually done without ceasing”: a selected group of scriptural texts narrates the events of the year, and these events in turn interpret the relevant passages of scripture. It is clear from his work on the Douai-Rheims annotations that Bristow himself felt a pressing need to “interpret & declare” the meaning of “all the Scriptures,” and his concern for their liturgical function is clear from the ubiquitous marginal notes in the Douai-Rheims Bible pointing out the assigned “lessons” (lectiones, or daily readings) for each feast and votive Mass.58 These words intersect closely with specific liturgical events in the Mass proper, which weave together Old Testament and New Testament materials to illustrate the events and concepts commemorated on each day.59 The second point in favor of the festal cycle, according to Bristow, is its origin in a long tradition stretching back a millennium and a half to the days of the early Church. He sees the cycle as a complex, elaborately evolved whole, which cannot be reduced to a handful of feasts acceptable among Protestants (he cites Christmas, Easter, Pentecost, Trinity, and the Transfiguration) while the others are rejected.60 In a clever if somewhat circular argument, he claims that even the “very names of these Feasts,” which smell uncomfortably of “Papistrie” to his opponents, are proof for the supremacy of the tradition that founded them:

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Liturgical Practice and English Catholic Identity  •  87 By all which thinges the Church maketh her Spouse and Redeemer with all his Misteries, even to be seene, felt, and palpate of all his people. . . . Looke to the very names of these Feasts, & see whether they speake not our Church? Candlemas day, Corpus Christi day, Al-soules day, Al-hallowes day, Ash-wensday, Tenebre-wednesday, Maundy-thursdaie, Passion-sondaie, Passion-weeke, Goodfriday, Holyroode day, Shrove or Shrief-tide, fastinges Eave, Lent, Ember-dayes, or (according to the Dutch, the root of our English) Temper-days,61 Quatuor Temporum, Palmesondy, Dominica in Albis Sondaie in whites, with many more: speake they Protestancie, or speake they (as you call it) Papistrie? Or were not these Feastes by the same Church ordained, that appointed us to keepe Christmas, Easter, Whitsonday, Trinitysonday, the Transfiguration of our Lord, and the rest?62 Bristow invokes this long list of liturgical observances both for their antiquity (indeed extending, in some cases, to the very early church) and for their timeless recollection of the events they commemorate. The narrative and the characters of sacred history are not only recalled day by day: they are made “seene, felt, and palpate”—tangible in the most literal sense—through physical participation in the liturgy. The same argument recurs in equally concrete terms a few pages later, as Bristow praises “the Church, which with such daies & observations hath commended all christendome to be Regnum Sacerdotale, a Kingdome Priestlike, and heaven upon earth, Christ with his Saints & Angels being by such meanes continually seen here by representation and remembrance, as there in face and fruition.”63 For an author who meant such words literally, the reform of the calendar was a serious issue. Erasing the commemorations of the saints, “by such meanes continually seen here by representation and remembrance,” is equivalent to banishing them from their place of honor in human society and breaking off their intimacy with those who invoke them.64 Bristow objects at length to the sweeping abrogation of saints’ days, especially of Marian days. He remarks that no true Marian feasts have been kept in the new Anglican scheme: Of that same one Church therefore are not the Protestants, who have put downe S. Laurence day, & all the dayes of our B. Ladie, with very manie moe: all the dayes (I say) of our Ladie, every one, none excepted. For the Annunciation of our Ladie, is the Conception of our Lord: the Purification of our Lady, is the Presentation of our Lord: neither of them more properly our Ladies day, then Christmas day is our Ladies day, Christ being that day borne, & she delivered. But the proper dayes of our Lady are, her Conception, her Nativity, her Visitation, and especially her Assumption, which the Protestants have laid all away, as though Christ were worshipped by keeping his Precursors or Baptists Nativitie, and dishonored by keeping his Mothers Nativitie: honored by keeping his

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88  •  Liturgy and Contemplation in Byrd’s Gradualia other Saints Assumpting out of this life to heaven, and dishonored by keeping his mothers Assumption. . . .65 A similar statement appears in the Douai-Rheims commentary on Acts 1:14, the last clear biographical mention made of Mary in the Bible. The annotator takes the chance to discuss the rest of her life, her death, and her commemoration in the centuries to follow. Though it is uncertain which of the two collaborators wrote this note—Bristow or Allen—it recalls the language of Bristow’s Motives and bears the unmistakable stamp of his concern for “the proper dayes of our Lady”: The Protestants have no feast of her at al. . . Neither these holy Fathers, nor the Churches tradition and testimonie, do in any way now a daies with the Protestants, that have abolished this her greatest feast of her Assumption. . . they have blotted out also both her Nativitie, and her Conception: so as it may be thought the Divel beareth a special malice to this woman whose seede brake his head. For as for the other two daies of her Purification and Annunciation, they be not proper to our Lady, but the one to Christs Conception, the other to his Presentation, so that she by this meanes shal have no festivitie at al. Bristow’s final argument for the ritual year, concluding the relevant chapter of the Motives, appeals to the beauty of the service itself. He writes that if Protestants “might or would be but present once at the foresaide Catholike Service, specially at Christmas, Easter, & such other more festivall times, I doubt not but that most of their stony hearts would melt for joy with the love of Christ: so as Saule also himself did Prophecy, comming in place where the Prophets were: if (I say) they would come in and leave their standing without with him in the Parable, Qui audivit symphoniam & chorum, &c. & nolebat introire, who heard the singing & melody, &c. and would not come in.”66 These two biblical comparisons refer to King Saul (1 Samuel 10:10–13 and 19:20–24), who fell into a prophetic trance when he met a group of itinerant prophets along the road, and to the older brother of the prodigal son (Luke 15:25–28), who refused to join in the celebration of his brother’s safe return. Bristow paints the Catholic service, “specially at Christmas, Easter, & such other more festivall times,” as a joyous event that can change the heart (and the opinion) of an observer through mere attendance.67 A skeptic who refuses to “be but present once” at such a feast-day celebration—a surprising reversal of the usual debate on recusancy—is no better than the envious older brother who refuses to enjoy the music, the banquet, and the other delights set out for him. The Douai-Rheims commentary, citing Augustine, also interprets the festivities in Luke 15 as a figure of the Mass: “The fatted calfe. This feasting and festivitie (saith S. Augustine li. 2 qu. Evang. c. 33. to. 4.) are now celebrated throughout the whole world the Church being dilated and spred . . . the calfe

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Liturgical Practice and English Catholic Identity  •  89 signifieth the B. Sacrament of the body and bloud of Christ.” There is a clear link between this note, written or at least influenced by Bristow, and his comparison in the Motives of the feast-day Mass to the conversion and homecoming of the prodigal son with the attendant “singing & melody.” Surviving firsthand accounts show that a large number of conversions to recusancy did in fact occur on or around major feast days, and the festival atmosphere surrounding these days—including the singing and playing of music—surely did its part along with the more sober theological reasons behind the old calendar. Bristow’s argument in favor of the liturgical year is built on the “annual commemoration, and representing” of sacred topics and characters. This idea was not universally well received. Some Protestant critics claimed that the public celebration of feast days made a mockery of serious subject matter, that it ultimately reduced the narrative of the Bible to episodes in a crowd-pleasing play. The idea that such events could be made “seene, felt, and palpate” through ritual actions struck the more austere Reformers as no less than blasphemy. Such complaints had been popular in the early years of the Reformation, and they had lost little momentum by the turn of the seventeenth century. A typical exchange on the subject is found in an anonymous Protestant treatise of 1604 called The supplication of certaine Masse-Priests . . . published with a marginal glosse, and an answer to the Libellers reasons. The passage in question begins by quoting a Catholic defense of “a religion, whose publike, and Church-service is executed with that maiesty, honorable gravity, and reverence, and the severall parts, and ceremonies thereof so aptly and admirably composed, and ordered for annual commemoration, and representing of our Saviours incarnation, birth, life, passion, buriall, resurrection, ascention, of the comming downe of the holy Ghost, of the mystery of the Trinitie, and of other passages, as well as of Christ our head, as of his members the Saincts, as it begetteth, feedeth, and reneweth singular devotion in the actors, and hearers. . . .”68 The Protestant commentator adds one of his “marginal glosses” on the word representing: “These fellowes make playes out of Christian religion.” His extensive objection to the cited passage further develops this theme: “For nothing is more apish, foolish, ridiculous, or contrary to Christes institution, then the popish service. . . . On the Passion Sonday they turne Christes passion into a play. On Easter day they play the resurrection. On the Ascension day his ascension, at Whitsontide the comming of the Holy Ghost, on Corpus Christi day out commeth their Corpus Domini with all solemnitie.”69 This criticism reveals an important element of the Reformers’ skepticism about the old ritual year and its practices: their rejection of the idea that a liturgical act, especially the Mass, can in some way be equated with the event it commemorates. More is at stake here than a distaste for playacting or for naive representation of the kind that can be found in music as well as in ritual actions. The commentary in the Supplication recalls the small handful of occasions on which Byrd used overt madrigalian techniques to “play” his

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90  •  Liturgy and Contemplation in Byrd’s Gradualia subject matter—the earthquake of the resurrection on Easter Sunday morning or the endless climb “above the heavens of heavens” at the Ascension. It also mentions some true liturgical actions for which Byrd provided music, such as the procession with the Sacrament on Corpus Christi. The cause of the anonymous writer’s disgust becomes clear with the last example. Dramatic readings and reenactments could be dismissed as mere theater, but all “theatrical” boundaries were violated when the Eucharist was present, with the attendant claims to the real presence of Christ himself. Eamon Duffy remarks on this phenomenon in his study of the often savage Reformation-era attacks on Corpus Christi processions, “Easter sepulchers,” and other liturgical activities directly involving the Eucharist.70 Other objections to the old calendar were influenced by more obvious ignorance or misreading. Matthew Sutcliffe’s 1602 Challenge concerning the Romish Church, her doctrines and practices is addressed to the liturgical enthusiast Henry Garnet, the English Archpriest George Blackwell, and “all their adhaerents.” Sutcliffe attacks the decadence of the Roman calendar, writing, “The true church never had distinct masses, whereof some were ordinary, others proper for the times, others proper for saints. . . .”71 A few lines later, he claims that on Easter “the Romanists, according to the rules of their Missal do consecrate, and eat a paschal lambe, and pray thus: Deus, qui per famulum tuum Moysem.”72 Both passages include marginal references to Roman liturgical books. The latter argument founders on the idea of “consecration”: lamb was indeed blessed at Easter, as were eggs, butter, and other festive foods that had been missing from the Lenten diet, but their blessing was merely a prayer to be said by a priest, not a “consecration” as in the Mass. Sutcliffe’s first complaint (about “distinct masses”) supports the Protestant rejection of saints’ days, but it is clearly based on a casual reading of the missal—organized by the categories of ordinarium, temporale, and sanctorale—and an elementary misunderstanding of the difference between ordinary and proper. The liturgy of the Elizabethan Church, established for more than a generation when Sutcliffe’s Challenge was published, had kept a cycle of collects and readings but rejected all five of the traditional Roman proper items. His mistake is a reminder that the ordinary/proper distinction, and thus the drastic shift of genre Byrd undertook around the turn of the seventeenth century, appears to have faded from collective Anglican memory by the time the first book of Gradualia went on the market. The recusant apologist William Bishop, quoting a Protestant adversary named Perkins in the 1607 Reformation of a Catholike Deformed, mentions economic as well as religious arguments against the old calendar. Perkins sees the proliferation of feasts as violating the commandment to “keep holy the Sabbath day,” which “giveth a liberty to work six daies in the ordinary affaires of our calling, which liberty cannot be repealed by any creature: the Church of Rome therefore erreth, in that it prescribeth other set and ordinary festivall

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Liturgical Practice and English Catholic Identity  •  91 daies, to be observed as straightly, and with as much solemnity as the Sabbaoth of the Lord.”73 Both sides agreed on the importance of celebrating the Sabbath, but Protestant writers were offended by a calendar that they saw as intervening in ancient tradition by giving a large number of feast days as much (or more) weight as common Sundays—as Byrd did when he chose the former for his Gradualia at the expense of the latter. William Fulke’s Retentive . . . against the motives of Richard Bristow (one of the numerous challenges to the well-known Motives discussed above) repeats the charge of innovation, singling out both suspicious feasts and offensive liturgical texts as proof that these “solemnities” had no place in true Christian worship. He notes, “The names of a great number of the solemne feastes, (as Bristow sayth) doth argue in deede the Papists either to have invented them, or to have abused them, as Candelmas, Corpus Christi day, &c . . . That the feast of the assumption can not be very auncient, it appeareth not onely by the barbarous hymnes in the popish Churche that daye, but also by the lessons taken out of Bede, by which it was manifest, that the Church could be without that godly solemnitie, more than 700. yeares after Christ.”74 The title of Fulke’s book illustrates one of the ironies of contemporary debates over the liturgical cycle: it is presented as a Protestant “retentive” against Roman “motives.” Fulke takes a conscious stance of conservatism, of standing motionless against an onslaught of dangerous new practices. Even the titles that fill the calendar, he notes, are redolent of idolatrous practices and superstitions: Candlemas, Christmas, Ash Wednesday, Palm Sunday. Poetic texts such as the “barbarous hymnes” composed for the Assumption (the hymn Ave maris stella, or the Office antiphons and responsories, with their heady mixture of Old Testament sensuality and medieval Marian doctrine, could be the culprit here) are singled out for special criticism. These are recent accretions, according to Fulke, which have little or nothing to do with the “auncient” tradition of Christian worship. The Catholic response to such objections was, predictably, a yet more forceful appeal to tradition. The appeal could take several forms. One of these forms is epitomized by Henry Garnet in his English translation of Petrus Canisius’s catechism The Summe of Christian Doctrine. When Garnet published the Summe, he included a number of extra chapters not in the Latin original (“certain little kindled sizes, to lighten some secrete corners which might otherwise annoy thee”).75 His own “exposition of certaine questions not handled in this booke” opens with a defense of the Roman festal cycle, and he gives this matter more prominence than pilgrimage, indulgences, or a number of other issues more commonly associated with the Reformation controversy. Garnet begins by asking, “Is not the different estimation of daies contrarie to holy Scriptures? —No verely, for we account some daies holier than other, by the example of God himself who sanctified the Sabaoth, and commanded

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92  •  Liturgy and Contemplation in Byrd’s Gradualia also the same to be hallowed by his people, which he calleth holy, solemne and venerable daies: yea the people of God, did not only Religiously observe these daies, but also upon new occasions of singular benefites received from God, they instituted newe Feastes and devoutely observed the same.”76 His argument, like Bishop’s, is built on the ancient observance of the Sabbath, but he also allows for the addition of “newe Feastes,” as was in fact done in ancient Israel. The next set of biblical precedents, now concerning the practice of the early Christian church, is from the New Testament: “Neither did Saint Paul superstitiously judge between day and day, when he made hast if it were possible to keepe the day of Pentecost.”77 Garnet goes on to cite Augustine, who was considered a legitimate authority among the Reformers, at some length: “So do we also observe the Feastes of the Passion of our Lorde, of Easter, of Ascension, and others, which S. Augustine saith either undoubtedly to have proceeded from the Apostles themselves. . . . Of the holy-daies of our Lorde, thus saith St. Augustine: . . . but of Festivities of Martyrs, the same saith thus: . . . and of all Saints generally: . . .”78 After quoting a number of other early sources, he concludes that “some daies especially, and before others, according to the custome of holie Scripture, and the auncient Fathers of the Church [here Garnet prints a barrage of patristic footnotes], are truely called Holie, Sacred, Mysticall, and of religious solemnity.”79 Some things are conspicuously absent from his argument. Unlike the more systematic Bristow, he makes no attempt to discuss the holy days most attacked by Protestants (Corpus Christi, All Souls’ and All Saints’ Days, the feasts of the Cross, or the feasts of the Virgin Mary), although his description of the feast days of saints as celebrating “their Assumption to so high a dignity . . . and a newe patron in heaven, and a new cause of ioy to all the Celestiall Courte” has suspicious resonances of Marian devotion.80 He does not cite any authorities later than the first millennium, much less the debates of the Reformation or the canons of the Council of Trent. Although Garnet’s chapter on the “different estimation of daies” would surely have left a Protestant interlocutor with a number of questions, it is clear and closely reasoned, an effort both to encourage his allies and to persuade his adversaries from what he saw as common ground. Other recusant apologists used their own variations on the appeal to Jewish and early Christian history. Alexander Baillie, an exiled Scottish Benedictine living in Germany, wrote his True information to counter the “impoisoned fruits of our Scottish Calvinian gospel.”81 He was contending with a more sweeping reform of the calendar than the English recusants who were living under the relatively liberal Book of Common Prayer; the extreme Calvinist faction wanted to abolish all feasts without exception, “upon plane contempt yoking their ploughes upon yoole-day itself.”82 Like Garnet, he avoids discussing the most controversial days (though he does mention “sindry other feasts of our Saviour, [and] of his holy mother the blessed Virgin”83). He draws

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Liturgical Practice and English Catholic Identity  •  93 his arguments exclusively from the Bible and from early authorities such as Augustine and Jerome, the latter sources acceptable in all but the most radical Protestant circles. These early authors mention feasts such as Easter, Pentecost, and the commemoration of the martyrs. The observance of these and similar days, “upon which we sing praises and glorify God,”84 as well as avoiding the labor demanded by the Calvinist party even on Christmas, is depicted in True information as an integral part of religious practice and domestic identity. Baillie concludes with an appeal to emulate “the example of Christ & his parents, who yearly keeped the sollennity of Pasche in Ierusalem according to the custome of the feast [Luke 2:41–42], as the gospel witnesseth.”85 A similar appeal to tradition comes up in an unusual document, the anonymous Treatise with a kalendar compiled by a recusant author who identifies himself only with the initials “I. B.” The preface is dated 1598, though the text refers to Elizabeth as “our late Queene,”86 placing its publication in or after 1603. He remarks that he has been compiling information on the church year for more than four decades. At one point, he “made a table of the holy-days and fasting-days in England, and gave copies thereof to as many as desired them.”87 After this surprising work of private initiative, he went on studying all the books he could find on the matter, with the help of an elderly priest ordained during Mary Tudor’s reign. The Treatise is his summary of these years of study. It includes his “table of holy-days,” excerpts from relevant church documents, and his own earnest exhortations to Catholics to keep the full calendar if at all possible, even in difficult circumstances. John Radford’s 1605 Directorie teaching the way to the truth is a lengthy Catholic polemical work dedicated, in a preface dated six years before its publication, to the English archpriest Blackwell.88 Like Bristow, Garnet, and Baillie, Radford includes a chapter on the observance of the ritual year, but he goes on to extend his concern to smaller units of liturgical time. His chapter heading invokes “the goodlye order of the Churches service, praying, singing and praising God night and day in her canonicall houres, feastes, and times of the yeare.”89 He writes, Yea this godly order the Church observeth in the course of her service, vicissitude, & disposition of her feasts according to that hymne of hers, Temporum das tempora, ut alleves fastidium. Lorde thou art that givest us times upon times to lighten our wearinesse; yea the very appoynted houres of prayer in the night, and day in the Church, declareth the watch and ward, this holy mother (according to Christes and the Apostles counsels) hath over her selfe and children, as when shee prayeth, prayseth, & singeth to God most sweetly throughout the whole world, at the prime, early, in the dawning of the day, at the third, sixt, and ninth houres, in the evening, at midnight, and the like, as wee bee taught by the Scriptures the Apostles did, that went to prayer at the ninth houre,

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94  •  Liturgy and Contemplation in Byrd’s Gradualia and David rose at midnight, and in the morning to confesse the name of our Lord. . . .90 Radford here cites the opening stanza of the Ambrosian hymn Aeterne rerum conditor, sung during much of the year at Sunday lauds—like Bristow, he has no scruples about the circularity of using liturgical texts as evidence to defend liturgical practices—and locates the daily cycle of canonical hours, as well as the annual cycle of feasts, within the tradition of both the Old and New Testaments. He then goes on to offer yet more immediate reasons to observe ritual order, writing, “For though God may be served at all houres, times, and places, yet times appointed by the Church be best for obedience sake, and that we may joyne our selves togither, thereby in prayer tamquam acies bene ordinata, as true souldiers of Christ well armed, and in good array at all times, and against all assaults of the forraigne and common enemy.”91 Such order is perceived here as an outward reflection, and an effective defense, of corporate unity. Radford’s comparison to soldiers “well armed, and in good array”—tamquam acies bene ordinata—is adapted from a wellknown image in the Song of Solomon (6:3, 6:9). It occurs in the liturgy as the Benedictus antiphon on the feast of the Assumption: Quae est ista quae ascendit quasi aurora consurgens, pulchra ut luna, electa ut sol, terribilis ut acies ordinata?92 (Who is she that ascends like the rising dawn, beautiful as the moon, radiant as the sun, terrifying as an army lined up for battle?) Readers through the years had applied this verse freely as an allegory both of Mary and of the Church, and it was a welcome image for the beleaguered recusant community, which was all too conscious of the “assaults of the forraigne and common enemy.” The pigeons flight, from out of Noes ARKE, over the floud, into the Arke again, written by “N. C.” around the year 1603, takes a yet different approach to the Catholic defense of the feast-day cycle. It is an impassioned tract describing the author’s return to recusancy after a period of conformity to the established religion. In the third and last section, he urges his readers to do the same. After developing an argument for conversion, he breaks off his rhetorical sequence to print out a very long calendar of holy days: four pages’ worth of both male and female martyrs (including the notorious St. Thomas Becket) and one and one-half pages of confessors, all in calendrical order, with the addition of Epiphany, Candlemas, the Chair of St. Peter, the Finding of the Cross, the Assumption of the Virgin, All Saints’ Day, and All Souls’ Day. Unlike Garnet, “N. C.” is clearly making an effort to name the most controversial days in the calendar. He then goes on, like Bristow before him, to claim this extraordinary list itself as evidence for his cause: “To which may be added, the feasts of Angels, S. Michael, the dedication of churches etc., Lents, Vigils, Ember dayes, feasts of our Ladie days, etc. all which testifie our

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Liturgical Practice and English Catholic Identity  •  95 Romaine Church, none else allowing either Churches, Holie-daies, or honour to Saints, but wee, who put them in Kalendar.”93 His strategy may not have convinced the average Protestant reader, but “N. C.” obviously saw the recital of hundreds of feast days as a rhetorical barrage in favor of Rome. Instead of annotations pointing to the Church Fathers or passages of Scripture, he uses the names of the saints and their feasts to “testifie,” to invoke a vast “cloud of witnesses” for his argument.94 By recourse to the traditional calendar, he locates himself in a community much larger and more powerful—within the endless cycle of the liturgical year, fifteen hundred years of Christian tradition, and the company of all the saints. He invokes this community again a few pages later, at the climax of his peroration: Unam petii a Domino, &c. One thing I craved of our Lorde, and that will I crave still, that I may dwell in the house of our Lorde, and visit his holie temple, that paradise, that arke of salvation, that sinagogue of life, that place of refuge, &c. Now Ravens, scismaticks, heriticks, falling catholicks: What is your request? carrion for a few dayes on the flood? come, come and crave with the Prophet this one thing, to visit his holy temple, and dwel in his house al the daies of our life: for glory and riches are in his house, and glorious things are said of thee, O Ierusalem, all the titles of Paradise. . . .95 Unam petii a Domino is, of course, a familiar text from the Gradualia; the same lines from Psalm 26 commented on by “N. C.” were set by Byrd as one of the few freestanding pieces in his 1605 book. Philip Brett remarks that this passage, which the Douai-Rheims Bible annotates in what can only be called a “spirit of wishful thinking” (“How special a benefite David estemed it to be in the Catholique Church the only true house of God!”), “lend[s] substance to the militant outlook more discreetly indicated in the liturgical items themselves.”96 As The pigeons flight and dozens of other treatises show, the outlook of the recusants, both at its most conciliatory and at its most militant, was constantly being formed by their view of the liturgical cycle. Some writers concentrated more specifically on inidividual liturgical events. John Rastell’s discussion of the Corpus Christi services is a typical example. His Confutation of a sermon pronounced by M. Iuell (1564) was a published response to a famous Protestant sermon given in 1560 at Paul’s Cross in London and circulated widely in print.97 The preacher, John Jewel, had issued a list of “challenges” to English Catholics, offering to convert if they could show him evidence that any one of a list of twenty-seven controversial practices—such as prayer “in a strange tongue,” the primacy of the pope, or communion given in the form of bread only—could be traced to the Bible or the first six hundred years of church history.98 Most of Jewel’s challenges have to do in some way with liturgy or eucharistic piety. One of his major points for debate is worship of the Sacrament as

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96  •  Liturgy and Contemplation in Byrd’s Gradualia of Christ himself, which in his opinion was a medieval innovation, “for the space of a thowsand and two hundred yeares, after Christ his ascension in to heaven . . . never knowen or practised.”99 Rastell responds to this claim in the Confutation by defending the practice as an unbroken tradition extending back to the early Church. Along with citations from patristic authors such as Ambrose and Augustine, “calling it (as the holie doctors have done) the bread of liffe, the bread of divyne substance, the bread united to the divinitye, the pledge of everlasting lyfe,” he appeals at length to the feast of Corpus Christi, and in particular to the texts of its Office, as proof for the legitimacy of the practice.100 This day and its ceremonies, in Rastell’s view, epitomize the proper veneration of the Sacrament and are thus the most immediate defense for continuing the practice. It is, of course, a problematic argument. Rastell is aware that Corpus Christi was a thirteenth-century addition to the calendar, the feast day par excellence of high scholasticism, with propers compiled by Thomas Aquinas—though he complains that “the apointing of an holydaye in honor of the sacrament, ys so manifest an argument against them [Protestants], that they have no other remedie, but to saye, Urbanus [Pope Urban IV, who approved the feast in 1264] was not auncient inowgh for them.”101 He wrote this chapter of the Confutation during the octave of Corpus Christi, which prompted him to exclaim, “O S. Thomas Aquinas, whose labors in the makyng of the service for Corpus Christi daye, I can not but remembre, the octaves of that feast being now present, are thei all lost, and art thow thi self togeather with them condempned? It was not for a man alone, to compile out of bothe testamentes so manye testimonies, for the sacrament, and so compile them, that like two Cherubins, the old should looke upon the new, and the new answer the old: It was not of flesh so to doe, but of the spirit of God.”102 The celebration of Corpus Christi should not be traced back to medieval innovation, according to Rastell, but to a set of scriptural “testimonies,” compiled through the inspired efforts of Aquinas. The devotion to the Sacrament that scandalizes Jewel and his fellow reformers is simply the product of a dialectic between Old Testament and New Testament texts, where “lyke two Cherubins, the old should looke upon the new, and the new answer the old”: a juxtaposition of concepts that results in something more than the sum of its parts. Rastell goes on to offer a series of examples from the Office of Matins on Corpus Christi, showing how the texts interact with and “answer” one another: Read over the antempnes, the respondes, the versicles of that blessed daye, and by the verie sound and sense of them, thei declare plainlie from whence thei proceded. The first respond owt of the old lawe is this: The numbre of the childern of Israel, shall offer up a kydd, at the evening tyde of their passover, and thei shall eate flesh and unleavened bread. The versicle answering the same, out of Sainct Paules epistle, is this:

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Liturgical Practice and English Catholic Identity  •  97 Christ our passeover is offered up, therefore lett us eate in the unleavened bread of sinceritie and veritie. Againe, an other respond is: Helias looking back, dyd see at his head a cake, and rysing, did eat and drinck: and with the strength of that meate, he walked unto the hyll of God. This is the respond, but what is there in the new testament to answer this? It foloweth out of Sainct John his Ghospell. Yf any man eate of thys bread, he shall lyve for ever. It ys writen in Job: The men of my tabernacle have sayd, who might geve us of his flesh, that we might be satisfied? and the respond is, that whyles thei were at supper Christ toke bread, and brake it, and gave it, and sayed, take ye, and eate ye, this is my bodie. What could have been devysed more agreeable and comfortable?103 It is the dialogue between these different texts that gives scriptural authority to the feast—precisely the kind of evidence Jewel demands in his sermon. Rastell discusses only the set texts of the Office, not those of the Mass, though the Mass propers for Corpus Christi use the same dialectical technique as these excerpts from Matins. They alternate between Old Testament material (introit, gradual, offertory) and New Testament material (alleluia verse, communion), the new surfacing to “interpret” the old at the two climactic points of the proper narrative.104 The synthesis of old and new in the choice of biblical passages also lends its authority to yet newer words: the freely composed parts of the Office, such as antiphons and hymns. Fulke, responding to Bristow’s recusant Motives, could dismiss such pieces as nonscriptural or even antiscriptural, “the barbarous hymnes in the popish Churche.”105 Rastell, armed with a number of biblical precedents, cites the vespers antiphon O sacrum convivium as a further argument for the traditional view: Then, in other partes of the service, how playnlie ys the faith of the church, in how few wordes, declared? and how effectuallie be the effectes of the sacrament proponed? O holie feast (sayeth the antempne of the later evensong) in which Christ is receaved, the memorie of his passion ys repeted, the mynd ys filled with grace, and a pledge of the glorie to come, ys geven unto us. The heretykes say, that we must remembre Christ his passion, and that, that ys the verie some of the institution of the Sacrament. Bur they forget three partes of the whole: bycause, we not onlie remember his passion, but we receave hym also in deed, and grace presentlie is geven unto us, and a pledge of the glorie to come hereafter.106 Finally, the collect (prayer proper to the day), as part of this privileged set of texts, provides further proof for “the whole” of the doctrine in question: “The church tawght them, even that veretie which thei hold (as it appereth in the praier of corpus Christi daye) O God which hath left us the memorie of thi passion, under a wonderfull sacrament (but then she sayeth further) Grawnt

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98  •  Liturgy and Contemplation in Byrd’s Gradualia us, we besech the, so to honor the holie mysteries of thy body and bloud, that we may daylie feele in owr selves, the fruct of thi redemption.”107 Having passed through four major categories of proper texts for the Office—lesson, responsory, antiphon, and collect—Rastell ends by apologizing somewhat wryly for having lingered “to long” over his service books, yet insisting on the value of each word, grateful “that ever the holiday was made.” “I may seem to be to long in my service,” he writes, “but certenlie, if we should consider the marveilouse wisedome of almighty God, and the multitude of misteries, which by the mowth of S. Thomas, were uttered in that matter, it were argument inough that it came from God. . . . Thanked be God, that ever the holiday was made, in the worship of Christ his body in the sacrament . . . all yet be sufficientlie warned, what to think of the Churches sacrament, because they have compted it worthy of an especial holiday.”108 The discussion of Corpus Christi in the Confutation offers a surprising argument from—and through—liturgy in defense of a controversial liturgical practice. Its very circularity reveals something about the prevailing English Catholic attitude toward such evidence. We have seen throughout this chapter that close identification with ritual texts and practices was common among recusants, above all when threatened with heterodoxy or disorder.109 Rastell’s own concern for liturgical propriety is already apparent in the full title of his reply to Jewel: “A confutation of a sermon, pronounced by M. Iuell the second sondaie before Easter (which Catholikes doe call Passion Sondaie) Anno Dni. MDLX.” The original had been billed as “a Sermon pronounced by the Byshop of Salisburie at Paules Crosse the second Sondaye before Easter,” which Rastell corrected, restoring the date of Jewel’s famous public challenge (something of a legend among Protestant apologists in the 1560s) to its proper place in the old calendar.110 His appeal to the “marveilouse wisedome” of the Corpus Christi Office is likewise an appeal to textual and ritual order. The texts in question are not just an arbitrary collection of discrete items, but a complex set of sources that speak to, and read, one another antiphonally like the “two Cherubims” of Isaiah’s vision; what they speak and read is the subject matter of the feast itself. The documents surrounding the resolution of the “Wisbech stirs” around All Saints’ Day 1595 likewise reveal the typical recusant view of a major event in the ecclesiastical calendar as framing, and even affecting, the events of daily life. For much of the late 1580s and early 1590s, a large number of English Catholics, mostly clergy, were held captive in a castle in Wisbech. Some of the prisoners, wanting to make the best of an uncomfortable situation, decided to adopt a strict rule of life among themselves and turn their prison into what amounted to a collegiate or monastic establishment. Others refused to join in this effort and insisted on keeping what little personal freedom they had left. With already cramped quarters and an atmosphere of constant surveillance, this plan caused inevitable strife, and before long the separate factions refused

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Liturgical Practice and English Catholic Identity  •  99 to worship or even eat together. Outside arbitrators were brought in, but the troubles dragged on until the autumn of 1595, when the dissenting groups were (for a time) finally reconciled. Christopher Bagshaw, one of the Wisbech prisoners, sent a letter to Henry Garnet on November 8, celebrating the reconciliation: “We have gladly taken up the charity now revived, we will ask that our charity increase more and more daily, and I hope we will generously accomplish this. The feast of All Saints fosters this hope in me. I become more and more convinced that the saints have a love and care for us, in that your welcome approach to us, and the effect of your letters after two years, greatly desired beyond words, should fall about their festival. . . . On the octave of All Saints. Yours in truth, C. B.”111 A collective letter to Garnet signed by eighteen of the Wisbech residents, apparently in the hand of the priest and signator John Green and also dated November 8, shows the same identification between the heavenly community of saints, as celebrated in their annual feast, and the restoration of earthly community at Wisbech: “This day, the Octave of All Saints, with God’s face shining upon us as if pouring upon us his Spirit in abundance, relying in part on the prayers of his saints, and drawn in part by the words of our friends, we have all, as one man, signed the articles drawn with God’s finger.”112 A month later, on December 4, Bagshaw wrote to Garnet again, thanking him for a (now lost) reply and reiterating the theme of unity in even stronger terms. “If one member rejoices, the others share the joy,” he notes. “It was a further source of joy to us that while we celebrated the glory of the saints in heaven, we touched, as it were, and possessed with our senses the spiritual and abounding joy of the saints on earth.”113 In Bagshaw’s view, the annual recollection of the saints in heaven on All Saints’ Day was perfected by a very concrete “touching” and “possessing with our senses,” sharing in their joy and glory while still on earth. This emphasis on tangible, sensible experience of a sacred topic, alongside its liturgical commemoration, recalls the contemplative and exegetical techniques discussed in chapter 2. The feast of All Saints is not one of the subjects in the standard meditative cycles, either in the Ignatian tradition or in the variants of the Rosary; it recalls a heavenly and ecclesiastical reality, as Corpus Christi does, rather than a specific historical event, as Christmas and Easter do. Nonetheless, it is celebrated by Bagshaw and his associates in the same spirit as these more tangible commemorations, and in explicit reference to an earthly unity that was often difficult to achieve.114 It can hardly be coincidental that Byrd follows his All Saints’ and Corpus Christi music immediately with a cheerful setting of Ecce quam bonum: “Behold, how good and pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity.” The same sentiment is reflected in the letters of the community at Wisbech, reunited both at table for communal meals and at the altar for Mass, celebrating the feast of All Saints as a figure of the unity of all believers.

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100  •  Liturgy and Contemplation in Byrd’s Gradualia The story of Henry Chaderton, a student at the English College in Rome, gives a more modest glimpse into recusant celebrations of this day. While still living in England, he was put under a modified form of house arrest in his brother’s home, where he spent much of his time in study and prayer, following the Office and reading devotional books. His brother had invited a large group of friends for supper on All Saints’ Day 1599, as was his custom. Chaderton had just been saying vespers of the Office of the Dead (at its appropriate time on the evening of November first), and he and the local Protestant minister became embroiled in an argument about purgatory in front of his brother’s guests.115 The resulting scandal caused him to be reported to the local authorities, and eventually forced him to leave the friendly environment of his brother’s household and flee for his life. In light of such stories, it comes as no surprise that All Saints’ Day was also closely associated with the overwhelming recusant concern of persecution and martyrdom, and with the memory of the English martyrs. Recent discussion of Byrd’s music for this feast has concentrated on this topic, with its strong links to his earlier Latin works. Brett points out in his preface to the 1605 Gradualia that “the appearance of the All Saints Mass at the end of the fascicle . . . is greater reason to look for allegorical meaning. For the recusant Roman Catholic community, still reeling under the increased persecution of the later years of Elizabeth’s reign, this feast was a celebration of its considerable number of martyrs.”116 He cites the appalling odds of death and imprisonment on the English mission (more than a quarter of Elizabethan seminary priests were executed in the line of duty), and discusses the intensity of Byrd’s All Saints’ music, especially the communion Beati mundo corde, in light of the immediate possibility of “suffering persecution for the sake of justice.” It is still important to recognize that the observance of All Saints’ Day was, for Byrd and his fellow recusants, an affirmation of a living community as well as a painful reminiscence of those who had gone before. This feast looks forward as no other does. The texts surrounding it, with their mixture of rejoicing and exhortation, never lose sight either of the earthly present or of the eschatological future. Alison Shell, in a discussion of English Catholic poetic genres, recognizes two varying literary treatments of a familiar figure of speech, the “heavenly Jerusalem”: one laments for the loss of the holy city and the suffering of its citizens while the other looks ahead to regaining citizenship after, and through, the trials of this life. She cites an anonymous English adaptation of Peter Damian’s Ad perennem vitae fontem as an example of the latter genre, what she calls “speratory verse”: Christ, thou Crowne of Souldiers, Grant me this possession, When I shall have leave to quitt This dangerous profession;

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Liturgical Practice and English Catholic Identity  •  101 And vouchsave to lett me have, Amongst thy Saints, my session . . . Speratory verse, as this kind of text can be termed, stands in an antigeneric relation to elegy. Both lament, but whereas elegy aims only to console or exhort towards consolation, speratory verse emphasizes the objects of hope.117 While the broad range of subject matter remains constant, the writer’s orientation toward it, and artistic treatment of it, is open to change. Shell’s definitions capture something of the fundamental difference between Byrd’s depiction of struggle and martyrdom in the Cantiones (which falls easily into the “elegiac” genre) and his treatment of much the same subject matter in the propers for All Saints’ Day (which tends much more toward the speratory). The poetry of All Saints’ Day, and the problem of its intent, played an important role in the life and death of Henry Garnet after the 1605 Gunpowder Plot. He had heard the plot mentioned in July of that year while hearing confessions in a London jail. Unwilling to break the seal of confession, he did his best to dissuade the man in question, and sent a frantic letter to the pope, begging him to explicitly forbid violent uprising among his English subjects. He mentioned the plot to no one. When Guy Fawkes was discovered on November 5, moments away from igniting a basement full of gunpowder and destroying Parliament, Garnet was arrested and tried for treason as a fellow conspirator. One of the pieces of evidence considered most incriminating was the liturgical text upon which he had preached at a large gathering of Catholics on All Saints’ Day earlier the same week, urging the “removal” of unbelievers.118 His chosen text for the sermon was the final stanza of Christe redemptor omnium, the Lauds hymn for the day. After invoking the various categories of saints throughout history—prophets, apostles, martyrs, virgins, monks, confessors—the hymn ends with a plea to “remove the unbelieving people from the land of the believers, that we may swiftly carry out the praises due to Christ.” The opening of Parliament in 1605 was a time of great uncertainty and apprehension for English Catholics, who hoped for leniency but feared an onslaught of stricter penal laws. This hymn text reflected the recusants’ longing for a friendly religious climate and the liberty to worship as they saw fit. Recalled after the near success of the plot, it was, to say the least, an unfortunate choice. Sir Edward Coke, speaking for the prosecution, alleged that Garnet had most maliciously misapplied two excellent verses in his speech he made on Allhallows’ day last, which are these: Auferte gentem perfidam Fidelium de finibus, Ut Christo laudes debitas

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102  •  Liturgy and Contemplation in Byrd’s Gradualia Persolvamus acriter.119 And how did he apply this? Marry, to the blowing up of us all, I warrant you.120 Garnet’s original sermon has not survived, but we can reconstruct some of what he said from the reply he made in his own defense. “As for the prayer on All Hallows Day,” he writes, “wherein you note the words so precisely, Gentem auferte perfidam, you must understand that it was the hymn of the same feast. . . . I admonished the hearers to reiterate this unto Almighty God for the Catholic cause, the Parliament being then at hand, and great fears in us for more severity ensuing for us. . . . I meant to desire God that he would put in the mind of his Majesty and the Lords there assembled in the Parliament not to permit those rigorous laws to be passed against us.”121 He insists first of all that “you must understand that it was the hymn of the same feast”: a text proper to the day, not an arbitrary text chosen (after the fashion of numerous Catholic tracts and Byrd’s angrier motets) for maximum political impact. In his sermon, he was self-consciously drawing a parallel between current events and the material of the liturgy, speaking to a recusant audience already familiar with such parallels. In a case such as the Wisbech agreement, made in the conciliatory glow of All Saints’ Day, this approach is at worst naive, at best quite stirring. Even the Protestant Edward Coke considered the uncompromising sentiments of Gentem auferte perfidam to be “excellent verses” in their own right. When caught in the middle of an attempted act of political violence, Garnet’s equation between liturgical discourse and current events becomes threatening on a number of levels: the authorities were faced with a large crowd of Catholics gathered for illegal services under an illegal cleric, being exhorted by an illegal text to thoroughly illegal behavior.122 Garnet had used the questionable lines (and the general triumphalist overtones of All Saints’ Day) in a speratory context, hoping for eventual leniency at the hands of King James and his Parliament. After the events of November 5, they could not be read, even by an unbiased observer, as innocent of a more active meaning. In light of this scandal, it is not at all suprising that the first set of Gradualia, which prominently features the Mass proper for All Saints’ Day, was cited as incriminating evidence (“papist books”) in an arrest shortly after the plot was discovered.123 Nor is it surprising that Byrd’s printer appears to have held back the second half of the Gradualia cycle—“long since completed by me,” as Byrd would complain in 1607, “and committed to the press”—until the public situation had settled down. There are only a few detectable instances of political caution or self-censorship in the text of the Gradualia, despite its risky subject matter. The passages that Byrd (or his printer) did choose to suppress are, notably, liturgical rather than freely chosen. He included a number of more or less controversial pieces, apparently secure in the knowledge that they were direct quotations from the

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Liturgical Practice and English Catholic Identity  •  103 Bible. His note in the 1605 preface, acknowledging “some additional songs for five voices, with their texts drawn from the fountain of sacred scripture,” does not entirely explain away a lament such as Plorans plorabit or its words from Jeremiah 13: Plorans plorabit, et deducet oculus meus lacrimas, quia captus est grex Domini. Dic regi et dominatrici: humiliamini, sedete, quoniam descendit de capite vestro corona gloriae vestrae. Let my eye weep, and bring forth tears, for the Lord’s flock has been taken captive. Tell the king and the queen: be humbled, sit down, for the crown of your glory has fallen from your head. On the other hand, the three 1607 pieces in honor of Sts. Peter and Paul, with nonbiblical texts (Solve iubente Deo, Hodie Simon Petrus, and Tu es pastor ovium), are printed with only their incipits and, when applicable, final alleluias. One of the most important manuscript copies of the Gradualia (Oxford, Bodleian Mus. f. 1–6) includes, along with the music for Ascension and Pentecost, all of the six-part pieces except these three.124 It is also telling that one of the partbooks in the only surviving copy of the original 1607 volume (as opposed to the 1610 reprint) has the last two of these three pieces torn out.125 When recalcitrant English Catholics were jailed or executed, the official charge was treason, claiming the authority of the pope over that of the monarch; in such a political climate, nonscriptural references to the primacy of Peter were obviously too dangerous to print. A much smaller text omission, in the music for the Christmas season, reveals a similar concern on Byrd’s part. The responsory O magnum mysterium/Beata virgo, also on a nonbiblical text (though with scriptural undertones), has an empty spot in the underlay in all four parts where the word meruerunt should be: “beata Virgo, cuius viscera meruerunt portare Dominum Christum” (blessed is the Virgin, whose womb merited to bear the Lord Christ). Brett restores the correct word in his edition with this note: “The blank space in the underlay cannot easily be explained. The sequential pattern of the music perhaps implies an intention to repeat cuius viscera. If so, Byrd may have realized his mistake and eliminated the repetition without supplying the missing word meruerunt.”126 Although the two musical phrases are roughly sequential, the bass part has only four notes under the missing phrase: not enough for the five syllables of cuius viscera, but a perfect fit for the four of meruerunt (see fig. 3.1). It is unlikely that Byrd would have let a word get lost under all four parts in what is otherwise a painstakingly corrected set of partbooks. He clearly set the text in full, then simply left that one word out of the print. Byrd appears to be exercising the same caution here as he did in the six-part music. The Catholic doctrine of holiness by individual merit was the object of intense controversy at the time, and one of the teachings most despised by

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104  •  Liturgy and Contemplation in Byrd’s Gradualia

Fig. 3.1.  Text censorship in O magnum mysterium

the Reformers. In spite of the more lasting notoriety earned by such matters as indulgences and clerical corruption, the question of merit was in fact the primary issue that precipitated the whole Reformation: was it possible for any creature to merit the grace of God? The preface to the Douai New Testament revisits this issue while arguing that the Greek text of the scriptures, favored by Protestants, is even more partial toward traditional Catholic doctrines than the allegedly “papistical” Vulgate from which the Douai version is translated. Much of the discussion focuses on the word merit: the editors cite a number of verses (Luke 21:36, Luke 20:35, and 2 Thessalonians 1:5) that refer to a person’s merits in the original Greek but not in the Latin.127 The argument resurfaces even more plainly in the Douai annotation to Hebrews 13:16: “The Protestants avoid the word merit.”128 Especially when printing Gradualia II, after the events of November 1605, there were certain things Byrd was not willing to say. (He had printed the words “quia quem meruisti portare” as part of the Marian antiphon Regina coeli in the first book of Gradualia). Merit surfaces elsewhere in Byrd’s day as a controversial term. The single surviving copy of Edward Maihew’s 1613 Paradise of praiers and meditations has occasional annotations and underlinings in what appears to be either a searching Protestant hand or a defensive Catholic one, pointing out passages such as “Christ is worthilie called our one or onlie mediator” or the address of the Virgin Mary as “Queene.” The annotator also underlines the term in question three times in as many pages of liturgical translations during the Marian “Evening praiers”: “by whom we have deserved to receave the authour of life,” “he whom thou hast deserved to beare,” and “she deserved to be made

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Liturgical Practice and English Catholic Identity  •  105 the worthy dwelling place of thy Sonne.”129 The Latin originals of these three phrases read “per quem meruimus auctorem vitae suscipere,” “quem meruisti portare,” and “dignum Filii tui habitaculum effici mereretur.” Especially in the context of a piece praising the Virgin, it is difficult to imagine a more problematic word. Byrd seems to have shown prudence by choosing to “avoid the word merit,” just as he avoided printing nonbiblical references to the primacy of Peter. The final text omission in the Gradualia is also understandable in light of the contemporary religious and political situation. In his setting of the Ascension hymn Jesu nostra redemptio in the 1607 book, Byrd completely leaves out the line tuos captivos redimens (“redeeming your captives”). Brett remarks that neither this omission nor the absence of meruerunt in O magnum mysterium/Beata virgo “appears to be significant or explainable along the lines of the textual omissions in various items of the Masses of Sts. Peter and Paul and St. Peter’s Chains.”130 Hugh Benham follows him in a review of the new Gradualia edition, calling the blank spaces “inexplicable.”131 Joseph Kerman alone identifies the probable reason in a footnote: “In 1607 the freeing of prisoners was too sensitive a subject to be mentioned in a Catholic publication.”132 The omission of the line is a knowing nod to the informed reader as well as a gesture of self-defense. Like Garnet’s ill-fated hymn verse, it speaks in both liturgical and polemical terms. Every overt instance of censorship in the Gradualia is found in the second volume. Byrd’s willingness to print a clear reference to the “merit” of the Virgin in the 1605 book (in the well-known Regina coeli, one of the exact passages pointed out by the annotator of the Paradise of Praiers), and then his careful avoidance of the term in the 1607 book, suggests that this increased reticence is not merely coincidental. The extensive collection of Marian propers in the first volume, many of them (such as Assumpta est Maria or Felix namque) on nonscriptural texts that must have been distasteful to Protestants, is not censored in any way. The uncompromising Eucharistic doctrine of the Corpus Christi music is left intact, as is the reference in the All Saints’ proper to “those who suffer persecution for the sake of justice.” Byrd’s only gesture of self-defense in the 1605 collection is the remark that the handful of “additional songs for five voices,” with their politically charged content, are composed on ostensibly neutral material: “texts drawn from the fountain of sacred scripture.” As we look back on Byrd’s attitude toward controversial texts in his printed books, it is clear that he adapted himself to the existing climate as he published each volume. He seems to have agreed with his teacher Tallis that Marian piety was inappropriate in the carefully selected “sacred subject matter” of the 1575 Cantiones quae ab argumento sacrae vocantur. By 1591, he was comfortable enough to publish an elaborate Salve Regina. Given the tense situation as the early 1590s progressed, and the status of the Mass ordinaries as his first-ever published liturgical work for the Roman rite, it is not surpris-

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106  •  Liturgy and Contemplation in Byrd’s Gradualia ing that he eliminated all prefatory material from them—even the publisher’s name and the date. By the first years of the seventeenth century, when his liturgical project was well underway, things had begun to look brighter for English Catholics. They hoped for increased tolerance under James I, even for the possibility of full liberty and freedom of worship. Increased persecution soon proved them wrong, and their cause was dealt the decisive blow by Guy Fawkes and his associates soon after the first book of Gradualia appeared. A new attitude of reserve is apparent in the text omissions of the 1607 volume. The full complement of music for Marian observances, Corpus Christi, and All Saints may well have been edited down to lessen the controversial impact of the book if it had been published even a year later. We are fortunate that Byrd had already printed most of the problematic material in the first book of Gradualia, leaving his liturgical scheme intact. Biographical Accounts of the Feast-Day Cycle English Catholics may have been reluctant to spell out exact times and places when they discussed worship, but we can still discover how many of them contemplated and lived the liturgical calendar. Surviving accounts show a high degree of enthusiasm for even minor feasts, such as those of St. Ursula, St. Mary Magdalen, St. Dorotheus, and the translation of St. Stephen’s relics.133 Attachment to liturgical observance was a common indicator of piety in recusant hagiographies and other edifying books. Philip Howard, Earl of Arundel, was known for this during his long imprisonment. His Jesuit biographer notes that he fasted completely from both food and drink on the vigils of “some special days”: these were Ascension, Corpus Christi, All Saints’ Day, and the feasts of the Virgin, “to which he was particularly devout.”134 Doing so without being noticed by his guards required some deception, in the person of a friend who visited him on the days preceding these feasts and quickly consumed his ration of food. Howard had asked to be brought his copy of the Little Office when he was first taken prisoner, and “after some time he adjoined to his other devotions the saying of the Priestly Office,” the full annual cycle of the breviary, while further increasing his regimen of fasting.135 A number of first-person accounts describe feast days as points of both spiritual and social focus for the English Catholic community. A particularly rich source of such material is the Responsa Scholarum of the English College at Rome, the collection of Latin questionnaires filled out by newcomers as they entered the college. The questions cover the prospective student’s upbringing, education, health of body and mind, past religious activities, and, if a convert, reasons for becoming Catholic. Robert Persons began collecting these responses when he became rector of the college in 1597. The first twenty-five years of the series alone provide information on more than 250 students. Unlike hagiographical documents such as the vita of Philip Howard, these life stories can be remarkably candid: they are rife with embarrassing

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Liturgical Practice and English Catholic Identity  •  107 ailments, years spent idling at various academic institutions, unsavory family backgrounds, difficult conversions, and a number of Responsa filled out in questionable Latin, sometimes shored up with English words as necessary. They also provide a number of valuable glimpses into the mindset of young recusants and their experiences of liturgical life. Henry Chaderton tells in the Responsa of his conversion (which he says was prompted by his repeated readings—“legi et perlegi”—of Bristow’s Motives).136 He was formally “reconciled” one late November day by Thomas Pounde, a clandestine priest and friend of his family. Pounde’s first gesture toward his new convert was to hand him a prayer book to read while he prepared him letters of introduction to well-known recusant families.137 The upcoming festal season would call for yet another gesture of cultural assimilation: “This happened a month before the feast of the Nativity of our Savior, and he [Pounde] told me to come back to him around the feast of St. Thomas the Apostle [December 21], so that we could travel together to celebrate the whole feast of the Nativity of our Savior among Catholics.”138 The “whole feast” included the twelve days between Christmas and Epiphany. Returning home from the unnamed household after the celebrations were over, Chaderton and Pounde were surprised by the sort of ambush that was all too common at such seasons: “As we returned after the feast of Epiphany, the Bishop of Winchester robbed me of him on the way, and locked him in the prison of that city.”139 The schoolboy James Griffith, who had been raised in a Catholic milieu from the age of nine, was captured by the Bishop of Hereford in the midst of a similar gathering on the feast of Candlemas: “At the beginning of the reign of King James, I was seized with about a hundred and forty others, just about to hear Mass on the holy day of the purification of the Blessed Virgin.”140 He was expelled from his school at Hereford in the aftermath of this event, and went on to the Jesuit school of St. Omer, finally to enter the English College in Rome. Richard Huddleston was sent off to study in Grayrigg, Westmoreland, from the age of ten to about fifteen. During these years away from home, he was invited to spend Easter with well-to-do recusant neighbors. His own family was of mixed religion; he was converted more by stealth, or perhaps by mistake, than by a dramatic crisis. “Living in Grayrigg, and frequenting the house of the noble Mr. Francis Duckett (from which I did not live far off),” he writes, “I became joined to the Catholic Church. The wife of Mr. Duckett, a relative of mine, assuming me to be a Catholic (because my mother and almost all the others were), when I was invited to the Easter celebrations there, admitted me unknowingly to communion two or three times (as I recall) amid my young relatives, before I had made any confession of sins or declaration of faith.”141 He was not conscious of having done anything wrong, “because of my age and my ignorance.” When the adults asked him when he had made his last confession, he replied “never.” After being informed that this would not do, he gladly

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108  •  Liturgy and Contemplation in Byrd’s Gradualia met with a priest, was formally professed as a Catholic, and not long after was on his way to the Continent to begin studying for the mission. His account of the “pascalia” at Francis Duckett’s house evokes a large celebration amid a crowd of children and guests, a milieu in which a keen young visitor could easily fall in with the common religious observances. Thomas Hodgson, a medical student and protégé of John Gerard, was another feast-day convert. His story is particularly interesting because an account survives on both sides, in Gerard’s memoirs and in Hodgson’s own contribution to the Responsa. He had approved of Catholicism since the age of sixteen, and spent his time in recusant circles, but he continued to attend Anglican services as required, unwilling to take the social and financial risks of nonconformity. As Christmas 1599 approached, he was working as tutor to a number of children in the recusant household of Elizabeth Vaux. He spoke with a visiting Jesuit on Christmas Eve, who urged him to take the decisive step and break with the state church. He was shaken by the suggestion, and lay awake that night, listening to the sounds of the Christmas Eve liturgy drift through the house and reflecting on what he had heard. Gerard recounts Hodgson’s conversion as he saw it: On the very night of Christmas, while all of us [i.e. the Jesuits] and almost the whole household were together celebrating the birth of the Lord, he alone lay in bed. He could not sleep; and began to feel a sense of shame stealing over him when he realized that the three boys whom he taught were up and praising the Lord and teaching him, by conduct and not by words, a lesson which he should have been teaching them. Roused from sleep by the children’s cries, he began to reflect on all the time he had wasted and how children and unlettered folk were pressing before him into the kingdom. A trembling overwhelmed him. He fretted at the delay and got out of bed and came at once to the chapel and knocked. He asked to see me urgently. As I was engaged, I told the messenger that he must let his business wait until the morning, when I would gladly speak to him. But this did not satisfy him. He said he must speak to me now, so I told him to have a little patience; and when I had finished Matins, I came out to him, dressed just as I was in my alb. As soon as he saw me he threw himself down at my feet. “O Father,” he said with tears, “for the love of God I beg you to hear my confession.”. . . After a few days spent in a careful examination of conscience, he became a Catholic and joined us in celebrating the last days of the feast, the first of which he had missed.142 Hodgson begins his own story with the earnest discussion on Christmas Eve: “On the eve of the Lord’s Nativity a certain father of the Society [i.e. a Jesuit]. . . exhorted me, offering to set me free from the clear danger of eternal

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Liturgical Practice and English Catholic Identity  •  109 shipwreck and take me up into Noah’s ark.”143 He went to bed, but could not forget their conversation: After an hour or two. . . the immense mercy of God was poured out efficaciously into my mind by an internal light. As I persisted longer in contemplation of my own misery, and God’s love toward me, and those things, namely humility, poverty, and charity, which offered themselves as points of meditation especially at the time of our most kind Savior’s nativity, I wept over my sins and (alas) my great ingratitude with tears, sobs, and sighs. . . . Impatient with the delay, and jumping quickly from bed, seizing my robe, I hurried to the most holy priest. . . . Father Gerard, who by divine providence happened to be in the house at that time, along with the other priest just mentioned. Falling down at his feet, I could barely speak these words because of my great sorrow: “I have come to worship him, who did not disdain to be born for me in a lowly stable”; and I said I wanted to become a Catholic.144 He describes the quintessential Christmas topics of humility, poverty, and charity, the “points of meditation” (meditationis puncta) that “offered themselves” (sese offerebant) to him as he “persisted longer in contemplation” (diutius insistens contemplationi.) The events of the Nativity were “poured out” into his mind in a flash of intense imagination and affect, and he could no longer resist joining the community celebrating the feast at that moment. All this is highly reminiscent of Jesuit spirituality, with which he seems to have been well acquainted, certainly after, if not before, his conversion. A yet more striking similarity is with the first Gradualia preface, where Byrd explains how musical points “offer themselves” (sese offerant) to the mind “reflecting diligently and seriously on divine things” (divina cogitanti, diligenterque ac serio pervolutanti.) Hodgson, who moved in the same social and spiritual milieu as the composer, seems also to have been familiar with the same technical vocabulary regarding meditation and the life of the mind. “Roused from sleep by the children’s cries” on Christmas Eve, reflecting on these matters at the prompting of an overheard sacred song, he was partaking in the ideas and experiences that informed Byrd’s own liturgical project. The English Catholic author William Bishop, responding to an argument that the reformed communion service was essentially the same as the Mass, leaves us with perhaps the most startling metaphor used in defense of traditional worship. “‘They finally retaine the same forme of service’ [as his adversary claimed Protestants did], except that they have cut of the best parts of it, and as it were pulled out the hart and bowells, of the sacrifice and consecration.”145 No contemporary reader could miss the allusion to hanging, drawing, and quartering, the standard method of execution for traitors (a category which, for the Elizabethan and Jacobean governments, included religious dissidents). The sentence, as pronounced on Guy Fawkes and his fellow

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110  •  Liturgy and Contemplation in Byrd’s Gradualia conspirators after the failure of the Gunpowder Plot, reads, “He is to be cut down alive, and to have his Privy Parts cut off and burnt before his Face, as being unworthily begotten, and unfit to leave any Generation after him. His Bowels and inlay’d Parts taken out and burnt, who inwardly had conceived and harboured in his heart such horrible Treason. After, to have his Head cut off, which had imagined the Mischief. And lastly, his Body to be quartered, and the Quarters set up in some high and eminent Place, to the View and Detestation of Men, and to become a Prey for the Fowls of the Air.”146 An eyewitness account of the execution of the missionary John Nelson in 1578, as reported in William Allen’s Martyrdom of XII priests, tells the same story in plainer terms: “He was cut downe before he was halfe dead, dismembred and ripped up, and as the hangman plucked out his hart, he lifted him self up a litle, and as some that stode nere report, spake these words, I forgeve the Q.[ueen] and al that were causers of my death. But I, though I saw his lipps move, yet heard not so much: and the hangman had iii or iiii blowes at his head before he could stricke it of.”147 In a milieu where such executions were a common spectacle, Bishop’s claim that Protestant reformers of the liturgy “have cut of the best parts of it, and as it were pulled out the hart and bowells” is more than a colorful figure of speech. He identifies the assault on liturgical forms with the physical punishments carried out on religious nonconformists. This is, to borrow Ceri Sullivan’s memorable phrase, true “dismembered rhetoric.”148 (Recall that even the hapless publisher of the text to Byrd’s pro-Jesuit song Why do I use my paper, ink, and pen was punished, in a grim stroke of poetic justice, by having his ears cut off.149) John Rastell used a very similar metaphor, also while responding to a Protestant defense of the reformed service: “Is not your communion allmost wholi peced togeather, of the partes of the Popish masse by you dismembred?”150 The dissolution of liturgical form is interpreted here, just as in Bishop’s Disproofe, not only as a loss of order but as an act of violence, a tearing asunder. The first generation of English reformers had made a point of disfiguring and destroying the physical artifacts of papistry: at the parish church of St. George in Canterbury, for example, the commissary demanded in 1541 that the image of St. George be “cut in pieces,” and noted that “it is not only the King’s majesty’s pleasure to have such images abused to be pulled down, but also to be disfigured, and nothing of such images to remain.”151 For many recusants of Byrd’s day, the attack on the liturgy was a campaign of even greater violence, to be equated not only with the destruction of images but with the destruction of living human bodies. The duty to restore and rebuild Catholic worship, in their view, was a correspondingly serious one.

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4

Text Types and Settings

The evidence surrounding William Byrd’s later Latin works suggests that he wrote them with the demands of their particular genre, function, and narrative in mind—and that his strategy in composing a Mass proper cycle was fundamentally different from his compilation of a motet book along the lines of the 1589 and 1591 Cantiones. Such a claim, if it is to be considered seriously, must stand up under musical analysis as well as under extramusical speculation. How is Byrd’s close reading of liturgical texts reflected in the structure and detail of his music? These final two chapters, unlike the previous three, involve a good deal of detailed musical discussion: they treat individual pieces by genre, then turn to the large-scale organization of the Gradualia. They should be read with a copy of the score at hand, if possible, for the sake of ongoing reference and comparison. In the interest of keeping this volume to a reasonable size, I have included musical examples only to illustrate selected points. To facilitate following the music while reading, references to Gradualia pieces are followed by their location in both the new Byrd Edition and the old Tudor Church Music edition: for example, the 1607 Easter gradual Haec dies (7a/111; 267) is found on page 111 of Byrd Edition, volume 7a, and page 267 of the Tudor Church Music Gradualia volume. Measure numbers, where given, refer to the new Byrd Edition. Anyone who spends time with Byrd’s Latin motets will soon recognize that the majority of them come in two varieties—sad and happy—with a clear bias toward the former. Joseph Kerman identifies these opposite poles of expression with contrasting musical styles. One is a “highly fluid,” “affective” language; the other is characterized by “brilliance of a fairly generalized nature,” “sometimes . . . positively nonchalant.”1 Two different emotional spheres, two basic approaches to writing a sacred song, each with its variations and refinements: the scheme makes good sense for Byrd’s Cantiones, certainly for the handful of well-anthologized motets such as Haec dies (undeniably a happy piece) or Ne irascaris/Civitas sancti tui (undeniably a sad piece, though one enterprising early-seventeenth-century scribe heard its resonant F-major sounds and adapted them to the English text Behold I bring you glad tidings of great joy).2 This binary model begins to falter in Byrd’s liturgical music. The stylistic dichotomy does not carry over intact into his three settings of the Mass ordinary, and even less so into his cycle of Mass propers. The structure 111

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112  •  Liturgy and Contemplation in Byrd’s Gradualia and scale of the Gradualia rarely, if ever, allows the leisurely development so typical of his serious style; it also leaves little room for the freewheeling exuberance of his joyful style. Most Mass proper texts, in any case, are given neither to penitence nor to jubilation. Those with a discernible affect tend toward the upbeat side, which, in Byrd’s earlier days, always encouraged some degree of purely musical display. Everything he wrote about text and music in the prefaces of 1605 and 1607 militates against his setting words in such a “positively nonchalant” fashion. The two-affect model was not simply a youthful trait that faded as Byrd grew older and his style mellowed. It is as present as ever in the title of his 1611 English collection (“Psalms, Songs and Sonnets, some solemn, others joyful”), and in much of its content, notably the sacred music for five and six voices, which often recalls the now distant world of the earlier motet books. His Latin-texted music for the Mass and the Office is built around a different ideal of expression and text setting. The typical intensity, concentration, and even inscrutability of these works is not merely a symptom of late style: it is a distinctive approach taken, for specific reasons, with a distinctive group of texts. The Mass propers of the feast-day cycle, as we have seen, tell a story. The concentration of narrative and historical texts (nearly half of the total) is a basic trait of this music, and one that distinguishes it from the Cantiones—where such material is almost completely absent, with a few indirect exceptions such as Haec dies or In resurrectione tua. A related shift is in the prevailing object of the texts. In the 1589 motet book, all but three of the pieces are directly addressed to God.3 In the 1591 book, nearly two-thirds do the same. A glance through the list of motet incipits shows an endless string of imprecations to the Lord, almost a harangue in places. Byrd’s 1589 index, especially its first column (see fig. 4.1), provides a key to the rhetoric of the collection. The word Domine is as ubiquitous here as alleluia will be in the two books of Gradualia. Only nine Gradualia texts, less than 18 percent, fall into the category of direct invocations to the deity. The incessant vocative repetitions of the Cantiones— Veni Domine, Memento Domine, Miserere mei Deus, Domine non sum dignus, Deus venerunt gentes, and so on, nearly ad infinitum—have faded by the early seventeenth century. Byrd also draws on different parts of the scriptures for his later Latin music, as suits a genre with explicit connections to the Christian liturgical year. Passages from the New Testament make up just under 30 percent of his Mass propers, a substantial figure in comparison to the 8 percent in the two books of Cantiones. Three-fourths of the feast-day proper sets (Epiphany, Candlemas, Annunciation, Easter, Ascension, Pentecost, Corpus Christi, Sts. Peter and Paul, and All Saints’ Day) are assembled on the same pattern: a group of Old Testament texts with allegorical matching and intensification from selected New Testament texts. The latter are given the most extreme and varied musical settings.4

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Text Types and Settings  •  113 One simple but useful snapshot of a composer’s text-setting procedure is the relative density of words to music: how much time does it take to work through a given piece of prose or poetry? Any composer’s work in a particular genre will reveal a distinctive “fingerprint”—or, rather, a group of distinctive approaches—from which he chooses according to the individual text and the needs of the musical setting. Pervasive imitation (as in Tristitia et anxietas, with a mere 0.53 syllables of text to each breve of music) skews the final product in one direction; pervasive homophony (as in Emendemus in melius, with a syllable-to-breve ratio of 1.6) has the opposite effect. The 1591 Haec dies produces a leisurely figure of Fig. 4.1.  From the index of the 1589 Cantio0.34. The 1607 Haec dies (7a/111; 267), nes sacrae the gradual for Easter, proceeds at a much brisker 1.38, with none of the large-scale tonal or thematic stability so carefully built up in the earlier version. The Gradualia pieces with New Testament texts have the widest and most eccentric distribution of this syllable-to-breve ratio, and the four real outliers—the long-winded Responsum accepit (5/31; 17) with a ratio of 0.51 and Tu es Petrus (7b/107; 336) with 0.56 at the low end, the highly compressed Factus est repente (7b/53; 308) with 1.73 and Ave Maria (5/83; 40) with 1.80 at the high end—are all drawn from the New Testament. Byrd took the most extreme measures with them, whether large-scale imitative structures and quasicantus firmus settings (as in the longer pieces) or homophony mixed with concentrated, almost frantic stretto expositions (as in the shorter ones). Byrd’s highly charged approach to these words is most apparent in the group of communions. Eight of the twelve Gradualia communions are drawn directly from the New Testament. Ecce virgo concipiet (5/87; 42) can also be considered a part of this group; it is taken from Isaiah 7:14, but was thoroughly assimilated into a Christian context via Matthew 1:23. Every one (as I will discuss in more detail below) is a distinctive and unusual piece in some way. If each cycle is read as a text-driven meditation on a specified topic, the last item should be—as it almost invariably is—a point of arrival and synthesis.5 The distinctive treatment of New Testament texts is not restricted to the communions. It also persists in other genres: the compact, jewel-like Annunciation offertory Ave Maria (5/83; 40); the breathless verse Venite ad me from

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114  •  Liturgy and Contemplation in Byrd’s Gradualia the All Saints’ alleluia (6a/46; 108); or the leisurely archaic setting of the Candlemas tract Nunc dimittis (5/31; 17). One device often found in gradual/alleluia pairs for feast-day propers is the combination of an Old Testament gradual and a New Testament alleluia verse. Some examples of this in the Gradualia are Haec dies/Pascha nostrum for Easter (7a/111; 267), Oculi omnium/Caro mea for Corpus Christi (6a/67; 119), and Timete Dominum/Venite ad me for All Saints’ Day (6a/37; 104). The juxtaposition of two texts from different scriptural backgrounds creates what amounts to a miniature exegetical scene, with the second text redirecting and redefining the first. The Corpus Christi gradual/alleluia pair illustrates this process: Oculi omnium in te sperant, Domine: et tu das illis escam in tempore opportuno. Aperis tu manum tuam, et imples omne animal benedictione. Alleluia. Caro mea vere est cibus, et sanguis mea vere est potus. Qui manducat carnem meam, et bibit sanguinem meum, in me manet et ego in eo.

The eyes of all wait upon you, Lord: and you give them food in due season. You open your hand, and fill every living thing with blessing. [Psalm 144:15–16] Alleluia. My flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood, remains in me and I in him. [John 6:56–57] This may seem at first to the unprepared listener to be a rhetorical bait and switch: verses from the psalter, praising the bounty and providence of God in nature, are followed by the equally unambiguous words of Christ discussing the Eucharist. Juxtaposition of this kind was in fact a commonplace in both medieval and Counter-Reformation writings on the topic.6 Countless other topics were illustrated in the same way, with diverse scriptural examples: the older text was read as a figure of the newer, and the newer as a fuller explication of the older. When the sixteenth-century polemicist John Rastell cited the Corpus Christi proper as a defense of Catholic tradition, he singled out precisely this aspect of it: “It was not for a man alone, to compile out of bothe testamentes so manye testimonies, for the sacrament, and so compile them, that like two Cherubins, the old should looke upon the new, and the new answer the old: It was not of flesh so to doe, but of the spirit of God.”7 A similar technique occurs in most of the feast-day propers: texts of one type are viewed next to, and through, texts of another type. With the bulk of explicitly Christian statements at the end of each proper set—they conclude two out of three Masses, three out of four if Ecce virgo concipiet is counted in its New Testament reinterpretation—much of the forward momentum in

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Text Types and Settings  •  115 the Gradualia propers can be traced to this exegetical drive and Byrd’s musical response to it. That arrangement is not unique to the Mass proper. It also occurs in the second half of the Mass ordinary, which moves from the hieratic Old Testament atmosphere of the Sanctus (citing the vision of the prophet Isaiah), through the Benedictus (a “double” text of the Ecce virgo type, a psalm cited in the Gospels by the crowds applauding Christ’s entry into Jerusalem), to the Agnus Dei, with its direct quotation of John 1:29.8 Byrd reflects the exegetical progression in all three mixed gradual/alleluia pairs, as he does in his three ordinaries, with a marked increase of musical intensity. The same is true, to varying degrees, for every proper set as a whole. Byrd does more in any given Mass proper than compose the necessary music for a series of fixed liturgical items: he creates a musical narrative through the four or five pieces, influenced by, and further building on, the progression of the text and the ritual it accompanies. There are two intersecting and simultaneous progressions going on in any given piece: through the cycle at hand (which can be analyzed “horizontally” across the proper set: how does this offertory fit into this particular Mass?) and through the whole liturgical year (which can be analyzed “vertically” across the genre: how does this offertory compare to other offertories?). I will begin here with the latter: observations on each proper genre in turn, along with a brief note on Byrd’s Office music. Introits Each introit in the Gradualia serves a number of practical functions.9 It establishes the prevailing mode of its set, although three of them—Puer natus (7a/2; 210), Suscepimus Deus (5/2; 3), and Resurrexi (7a/102; 262)—end with what could be called an open cadence, on a final pitch different from that of the communion and the majority of the remaining pieces. It introduces the particular mixture of voices and the general sonority of the set—again with an exception, the irregularly scored Puer natus for Christmas, which will be discussed in detail in the text. By means of modality, vocal range, and melodic gesture, the introit presents the basic musical content of each Mass proper, material that will be elaborated on later. Examples of this presentation can be as simple as the pervasive minor-third “head motive” that opens each piece in the Candlemas set, as subtle as the developing variation on the rising fifth in the Christmas set, or as complicated as the persistent modal instability of the Easter set.10 In each case, the first piece intimates what is to come in the rest of the Mass. The introit also acts as the rhetorical exordium for all that follows. An introit in a sung Mass functions as the first taste of what will be an extensive musical and ritual presentation. Byrd always treated a freestanding work, whether in Latin or English, differently than a piece on a similar scale (e.g. the five-voice Kyrie or the Venite of the Great Service) that introduced a larger

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116  •  Liturgy and Contemplation in Byrd’s Gradualia complex of music. Introits themselves can be substantial works: a sometimes lengthy main text, followed by a verse, doxology, and repetition. Byrd (unlike his slightly older contemporary Costanzo Porta) never set them in splendid isolation. He fashioned each one with an eye toward the further unfolding of its cycle. His introductory gesture in composing the introit is often a foil to the most striking characteristics of the following pieces. Heard alone, these openings can sound eccentric, inconclusive, even weak; heard in the context of their entire proper set, and in comparison with Byrd’s other introits, they make a good deal more sense. The Gradualia introits as a group are unified to some degree by their settings of the Gloria Patri, which are recognizably similar in declamation and structure through the whole collection.11 The introit doxology is formulaic in the chant repertoire—one uniform setting for each mode, with only minor variations at the final cadence—and Byrd appears to have followed something of this tradition in his own settings. Even when the doxologies are set aside, the introits are still by far the most uniform of Byrd’s proper genres in density of text declamation. He got through these texts in a reasonably businesslike manner, without many signs of haste or expressive lingering. The respond and verse of every feast-day introit, with the single exception of Ecce advenit (7a/42; 230) for Epiphany (0.96), produces a syllable-to-breve ratio between 1.2 and 1.5. Compare this to the almost even distribution between 0.82 and 1.43 for the gradual/alleluia groups, 0.81 and 1.80 for the offertories, and 0.51 and 1.73 for the communions (see fig. 4.2). The uniformity appears yet greater when the similar settings of the doxology are included in the calculation (see fig. 4.3). It is clear from these diagrams that the variability and eccentricity of Byrd’s proper settings increase as each Mass goes on. Many of the introits are marked by self-conscious reserve in a number of areas. As Philip Brett remarks on the Ascension introit, “In the place of abrupt transitions and curious juxtapositions are neatly patterned musical paragraphs. Instead of complicated part-writing that constantly gives rise to dissonance are solid progressions and deliberate consonance. . . . Even more striking is the lack of rhythmic complication and figural elaboration.”12 He notes that “this is not quite how things remain, of course,” and goes on to describe the “trajectory from the slightly stolid introit” to the “extravagant gesture” of the communion. The situation in the next cycle is much the same: “the introit of Pentecost is again a modest introduction to what follows.” His concept of a “trajectory” through each of these two cycles does more than absolve the opening pieces of what he sees as a relative lack of interest. It suggests a valuable way of looking at these (and other) Gradualia propers, a method that is fruitful even when applied to communions that can hardly be called extravagant and introits that are far from stolid. Kerman observed the same phenomenon of “trajectory” when he criticized the first half of the Corpus Christi set as “music in a light polyphonic style

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Text Types and Settings  •  117 2 1.8 1.6 1.4 1.2 1 0.8 0.6 0.4 0.2 0

1

2

3

4

Fig. 4.2.  Density of text setting in the Gradualia propers (syllable-to-breve ratio) without Introit doxologies

2 1.8 1.6 1.4 1.2 1 0.8 0.6 0.4 0.2 0

1

2

3

4

Fig. 4.3.  Density of text setting in the Gradualia propers (syllable-to-breve ratio) with Introit doxologies

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118  •  Liturgy and Contemplation in Byrd’s Gradualia that is deft, concise, and rather vacant in character,” but praised the introit nonetheless for “a delightful bright quality as a result of its cheerful, innocent homophonic alleluias” and the atmosphere created by its unusually free use of the high soprano E in preparing for cadences. His statement, like Brett’s, reveals much about the underlying structure of the cycle and the nature of the Gradualia introits in general. As the opening gambit of the entire Corpus Christi group, an unusually complex set of pieces, the introit Cibavit eos (6a/61; 116)—and, indeed, the first part of the gradual/alleluia group that follows it—is somewhat light music by comparison, with even more sweetness than would necessarily have been prompted by the images of finest wheat and honey from the rock.13 Although the figures reveal that the first half of this proper is in fact less dense or “concise” than the second half, the opening does carry the listener along in a stream of cheerful harmonic and melodic urgency that gives an impression of swiftness. This effect is Byrd’s foil to the eventual shift at the alleluia verse Caro mea/Qui manducat (6a/70; 120), with its arresting homophony and long, reflective melismas—the exact point where the text changes from the allegorical to the corporeal.14 A comparison of the two Gaudeamus introits, for the Assumption (5/156; 76) and All Saints’ Day (6a/27; 98), shows how Byrd’s opening gestures can vary with the prevailing mood of each feast and the rest of the material in each cycle. These two pieces use the same basic text, with only minor variations (though their verses are entirely different): Gaudeamus omnes in Domino, diem festum celebrantes sub honore [beatae Mariae virginis/sanctorum omnium]: de cuius [assumptione/ solemnitate] gaudent angeli, et collaudant Filium Dei. Let us all rejoice in the Lord, celebrating a feast day in honor of [the blessed Virgin Mary/all the saints]: at whose [assumption/festival] the angels rejoice, and together praise the Son of God. While setting largely the same words, the two introits point forward to the dissimilar cycles they introduce. The All Saints’ version (see ex. 4.1) begins as a figure of proliferation, of the multitudes being called to praise, with imitations chiming in at the unison and filling out a bright major triad. A series of similar overlapping subjects continues through the entire piece, soon moving into urgent quarter-note declamation, broken only by a brief, decorous return to augmented note values at sub honore Sanctorum omnium. Writing of this kind will recur at the most intense moments of the cycle—at the end of the alleluia verse (6a/44; 107) with its vivid imagery of labor and refreshment, and with the hard rain of (now dissonant) stretto entries in the communion (6a/57; 114) as Byrd recalls “those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake.” The two sopranos exploit the bright top end of their range in the introit, much as the lone soprano does at the beginning of the Corpus Christi set. They return

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Text Types and Settings  •  119 again and again to the climactic note of the authentic F-major mode as the main body of the introit comes to a close, swapping high Fs in rapid succession on gaudent angeli, et collaudant, and Filium Dei as they had in the first measures at Domino. To turn to the opening of the Assumption introit (see Ex. 4.2) is to confront another reading of the text. The prevailing mode is now minor. The writing is smoother, indeed sweeter, with few of the abrupt thematic shifts and rapid declamations found in the All Saints’ version. Byrd’s unassuming series of exposed parallel thirds at “de cuius Assumptione” will reappear again and again in the remainder of the Assumption cycle, notably at the beginning of the offertory Assumpta est Maria (5/166; 81)—with a rather un-Palestrinian, but very English, run of eight parallel thirds in a row, expanded to thirteen in the tenor and bass—and in the communion Optimam partem (5/170; 83), which builds its opening subject (also with eight successive parallels) on exactly the same principle.15 Although much of the change between the two settings has to do with a shift in sonority, it is noteworthy that the overall vocal range of these two

Ex. 4.1.  Gaudeamus omnes (Introit for All Saints’ Day)

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120  •  Liturgy and Contemplation in Byrd’s Gradualia

Ex. 4.1. (continued)

five-voice introits is precisely the same. The bass extends down to low A (and up to D above the staff) in both pieces. The highest pitch of the Assumption introit is also treble F, and it comes up often, fifteen times to the sixteen in the introit for All Saints’ Day. Its quite different effect in the Assumption set can be traced primarily to its role as the ornamental minor third above

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Text Types and Settings  •  121

Ex. 4.1. (continued)

the soprano’s most important note, a point of melodic and harmonic flourish (as in Byrd’s setting of collaudant Filium Dei that concludes the introit), but one functioning neither as a true climax nor as a goal to be rested upon. The primary point of repose in the bass is likewise a third higher in the All Saints’ proper than in the Assumption—the fact, incidentally, that makes the sustained bass A near the end of the All Saints’ offertory Justorum animae

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122  •  Liturgy and Contemplation in Byrd’s Gradualia

Ex. 4.2.  Gaudeamus omnes (Introit for the Assumption)

(6a/52; 111) such an astonishing moment, in contrast to the low cadential fifth ubiquitous in the D-minor Marian pieces. Byrd’s choice of mode, perhaps the most basic structural decision made in composing the Gradualia propers, has provided here for two quite different adaptations of the same raw material.16 The All Saints’ Mass unfolds as a tense, highly inflected group of pieces, with a marvelous moment of contrast provided by Justorum animae, which is even more surprising in the slow pace of its opening declamation than the brief augmentation at sub honore had been. The Assumption introit gives little hint of the rollicking triple-time passage at gaudet exercitus Angelorum or the nearly endless melismatic cadence that concludes the communion with the words in aeternum. Byrd’s introits are, for the most part, self-consciously restrained pieces of music. This restraint can lead to perceptions of shallowness or even perfunctory writing. When the introits are considered instead as members of a particular subgenre, with a particular function to fill in each proper set, some of their eccentricities become understandable, even helpful, in reading the cycles as coherent units. To extend Brett’s descriptive term, these proper sets are contemplative “trajectories” as well as musical ones. In this scheme, the introit

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Text Types and Settings  •  123

Ex. 4.2. (continued)

is the all-important exordium, what Byrd’s Jesuit contemporaries called the compositio loci, the composition of place: the subtle but firm establishment of the subject in the reader (or hearer’s) mind and imagination to prepare for the further reflections that follow.17 Then as now, it can be difficult to make the transition from a cramped seventeenth-century basement (or twenty-

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124  •  Liturgy and Contemplation in Byrd’s Gradualia

Ex. 4.2. (continued)

first-century study) to the emotional and historical landscape of first-century Jerusalem. Like any good guide to meditation, the Gradualia cycle takes the process slowly at first.

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Text Types and Settings  •  125 Gradual, Alleluia, Tract, Sequence Once the introit is past, the music becomes more elaborate and the task of direct comparison between Gradualia sets becomes more difficult. The group of pieces between the epistle and gospel readings—some combination of gradual, one or two alleluias, tract, and/or sequence, depending on the season and occasion—is by far the most variable and complicated area of the Mass proper. Even the same Mass can have variant readings here, determined by the season in which it falls, and the multipart structure of the section can require awkward transfers and transitions. It was this area of the proper that most often suffered from Byrd’s comparatively rare lapses of liturgical coherence.18 The post-Epistle group also introduces a new stage in the trajectory of each day’s proper. The prevailing topic, the mode, and the layout of voices have already been established. There have been a Kyrie and Gloria (most likely sung), a collect, and the first of two readings. From this point on, there are no more familiar phrases of text (except the almost ubiquitous alleluias) common to all proper sets, in the manner of the introit doxology; there are no more structural repetitions, as in the introit as a whole. The composer’s task here is to move forward, to begin developing, now at some length, the liturgical topic and musical material first introduced in the opening piece. Lengthy development of any kind is not a typical feature of Byrd’s Mass propers. This “interlectionary music” (to borrow a useful term from chant scholarship) tends to be his only chance in a given set to make such developments on a substantial scale and, equally important, with recourse to variety in texture. The offertories and communions in the Gradualia, with the single exception of the tripartite All Saints’ communion Beati mundo corde (6a/53; 112), are always scored for full voices throughout and composed without major internal divisions. The graduals, alleluias, tracts, and sequences, on the other hand, are characterized by an almost kaleidoscopic approach to texture. A piece such as the Candlemas tract Nunc dimittis (5/19; 11), for example, uses arrangements (such as the striking combination of two high voices and bass at Quod parasti, reminiscent of earlier English vocal scorings) quite foreign to other areas of the Mass proper. Again with the exception of Beati mundo corde, the only reduced-voice sections in the Gradualia for four singers rather than three are in pieces of this sort. Byrd tends to place major points of division and rearticulation almost anywhere but between the end of the gradual verse and the beginning of the alleluia. This is further evidence that each interlectionary group was conceived as a coherent whole. These larger-scale proper items, much like the Gloria and Credo movements of the three ordinaries, offer rare opportunities to observe Byrd writing extended pieces in the intense, concentrated idiom of his Latin liturgical works. They approach the size of some of the Cantiones, but they set quite different texts. They share stylistic traits with the miniatures along the lines

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126  •  Liturgy and Contemplation in Byrd’s Gradualia of Tui sunt coeli (7a/17; 218) and Psallite Domino (7b/23; 292) found elsewhere in the Gradualia, but they confront, and solve, what are often substantial problems of structure. They also fill a crucial liturgical function. The composite text of each post-Epistle group tends to occupy an important place in the overall progression of its set, discussing the events of the feast in more detail than the shorter pieces that surround it. In many cases, there is a synthesis of passages from both the Old and New Testaments, and sometimes nonscriptural texts, combined to illustrate and complement the readings they punctuate. William Flynn, writing about a very different repertoire of Mass proper settings in the eleventh-century chant of Autun Cathedral, discusses this genre in his analysis of the Christmas liturgy. “The three chants that come after the two readings,”19 he notes, “and lead up to the gospel reading adopt a different set of musical and textual procedures from any of the chants discussed so far [i.e. the introit, Kyrie, and Gloria]; this seems to highlight their special function. . . . Together they form a series intended to create a musical rite that summarizes the lections and anticipates the gospel, marking the reading of the gospel as the high point of the Liturgy of the Word.”20 In the context of the Christmas service at Autun, with its elaborate chants and equally elaborate tropes, the interlectionary music forms a carefully planned lead-in to the gospel reading, the most important event to take place in the first half of the Mass. The set of three pieces, culminating in a striking sequence, builds momentum and points toward what is to come in the liturgy. “The progression of chants between the readings,” Flynn concludes, “develops both musical and textual concepts of ornatus, helping to organize the communal reflection on the readings, and helping to create a sense of anticipation and excitement surrounding the gospel reading.”21 Despite a number of obvious stylistic and practical differences, this statement is equally true for the interlectionary groups of Byrd’s Gradualia. They combine carefully compiled texts and extended musical settings to create an environment both of reflection on what has come before and of preparation for what will follow—namely the day’s gospel. Unlike the introit, offertory, and communion, this music does not accompany any liturgical movement or action; it is purely contemplative. How exactly does Byrd respond to the challenge of this unusual genre? There are three basic models for the post-Epistle group, each used during a different season of the liturgical year. The standard progression, sung during most of the year, is: gradual—gradual verse—alleluia—alleluia verse—alleluia In the chant repertoire, the last alleluia is simply a repetition of the first. Byrd consistently goes beyond that tradition and provides a new setting as a conclusion and climax at the end of the group.22 This most common scheme is

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Text Types and Settings  •  127 found in the Masses for Christmas; Candlemas, when it falls before Septuagesima (i.e. outside the penitential period that precedes Lent); Corpus Christi; Sts. Peter and Paul; the Assumption; the Nativity of Mary; and All Saints’ Day, as well as the majority of the votive services. Within that wide range of Mass propers, the gradual/alleluia groups are structured in a number of different ways, with a considerable variety in sectional division and scoring which is largely determined by the form and length of the text. From Septuagesima (the first official pre-Lenten Sunday, two-and-a-half weeks before Ash Wednesday) to Easter, the singing of alleluia is forbidden, so the alleluia is replaced by a tract. The resulting scheme is: gradual—gradual verse—tract (consisting of several verses) The Lenten versions of the Candlemas and Annunciation sets use this form, along with the Lenten votive Masses. Although tracts are clearly marked as the penitential option for a Mass proper, they are substantial pieces—more substantial than the alleluias—with long, multipart texts. Byrd’s settings run to corresponding length, as in the 92 breves of the Candlemas tract Nunc dimittis (5/19; 11), the 99 of the Annunciation tract Audi filia (5/141; 69); or the 105.5 breves of the tract Ab ortu solis for the votive commemoration of the Sacrament (7a/64; 239); despite their ostensibly penitential function, they are among the richest pieces in the Gradualia precisely because of this shift in scale.23 For the eight weeks following Easter, the interlectionary series takes an exceptionally festive form, with an extra alleluia instead of a gradual: alleluia 1—verse 1—alleluia 2—verse 2— alleluia 2 This scheme occurs on the feasts of Ascension and Pentecost, as well as in the various votive Masses during paschal time. Byrd, again departing from the Gregorian tradition, gives the final alleluia a distinctive setting rather than repeating the music for the second. On Easter and Pentecost, he also provides a polyphonic sequence, replacing the final repetition of the alleluia.24 These diverse works are linked only by their relatively generous dimensions and their shared function as the contemplative centerpiece of the first half of the Mass. Their texts are often composite, incorporating material from multiple sources; the majority of them include two or more alleluias. When setting a text of this kind, Byrd seems to want more articulation than he would get from simply introducing a series of new points one after the other, as he does in most of the offertories and communions. The two additional tools he uses to punctuate the text are homophony and strategic changes in scoring. Every post-Epistle group in the Gradualia begins with an imitative exposition. Given Byrd’s willingness to start other proper items with homophony or near homophony, this is a surprisingly consistent way to begin a category of pieces. Every one of these groups, unlike the other Mass proper genres, also

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128  •  Liturgy and Contemplation in Byrd’s Gradualia has a homophonic full-choir entrance by way of contrast somewhere in the middle.25 The closest equivalent elsewhere in Byrd’s work is the homophonic opening of the introit doxology, which appears as a more or less identical procedure in all thirteen introits. The difference here is of course the diversity in texts: in the post-Epistle groups, instead of the predictable Gloria Patri, Byrd is setting off a collection of different statements through homophonic entrances, each one chosen by him as a point of articulation. These full-choir entrances have two functions, broadly speaking, in relation to the words they set. One of their functions is illustrative. Byrd’s settings of omni laude in the alleluia for the Nativity of Mary (5/56; 28) and of omnes in the All Saints’ alleluia (6a/ 43; 106) are clearly representations of “all.” The music leading in to each of these—the lean, agile trio in the former, and the progressive buildup through two-voice, three-voice, and four-voice writing in the latter, foreshadowing the structure of the extraordinary All Saints’ communion—draws additional attention to the entrance of the full group. The situation in the second Pentecost alleluia at reple tuorum corda fidelium (7b/46; 304), after the introductory duet, is similar: he is illustrating the prayer “fill the hearts of your faithful,” much as he does for the “fullness of the earth” in the Christmas offertory at “et plenitudinem eius” (7a/18; 218). 26 The penultimate phrases Adducentur in laetitia . . . of the Annunciation tract (5/150; 74) and Gaudet exercitus angelorum . . . of the Assumption alleluia (5/164; 80) are both illustrations of rejoicing, with a sudden full-choir entrance launching a triple-time section. These two are incidentally Byrd’s only excursions into triple time in the whole collection of Mass propers.27 Lumen ad revelationem gentium, in the Candlemas tract (5/27; 14), blazes forth in ascending and descending scales over a bass pedal. The entrance at in voce tubae in the first Ascension alleluia (7b/13; 287) is a gesture of trumpeting onomatopoeia—in contrast to the more subtle and fleeting version in the day’s offertory, which he chose to recompose rather than using a transfer. The second and somewhat more interesting set of homophonic entrances does not attempt to directly illustrate anything in the text; these have a rhetorical function, setting off a block of text within the larger progression of the interlectionary group. Here the gesture offers a suggestion of what Byrd saw as the most important words, or at least those calling for the most articulation. Recall that gradual, alleluia, and tract texts are often composed from a mixture of Old Testament, New Testament, and nonscriptural sources. In a number of these “rhetorical” cases, the punctuating full-choir entrance comes at the introduction of New Testament or freely composed words—a transition that occurs most often at the beginning of the alleluia verse. Senex puerum portabat, in the Candlemas alleluia (5/16; 10)—the classic statement of the paradox of the Incarnation (“the old man carried the child, but the child ruled the old man”)—is set to austere homophony. The alle-

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Text Types and Settings  •  129 luia verse Pascha nostrum (7a/115; 269)—the statement of Paul in the Easter reading from 1 Corinthians, which would have been heard only a moment before—is treated likewise. I have discussed the more complicated case of Corpus Christi earlier in this chapter: the point of articulation there comes not at the first New Testament phrase, Caro mea vere est cibus, which is eased into almost imperceptibly from the first alleluia, but at the unequivocal and rather shocking address to the audience, Qui manducat carnem meam. Finally, Byrd also uses homophony as a dramatic gesture when addressing someone—in this case, the Virgin Mary—and asking for favor: the Lenten votive tract Gaude Maria is punctuated this way at Dei genetrix intercede pro nobis (5/132; 66), as is the Annunciation alleluia at its verse Ave Maria (5/118; 58.) Given the variety of text types and subject matter in the post-Epistle groups, it is telling that Byrd punctuated each one with a similar gesture. His use of sudden homophonic entrances is in fact a subcategory of his primary tactic for articulating these pieces: the skillful use of variety in vocal scoring. An examination of Diffusa est gratia, one of the more intricate items in the genre, reveals something about his approach to scoring in these longer pieces. Diffusa est gratia (5, 136; 67), indexed by Byrd as a single item (number 22 of the Marian set), is a confusing object at first glance. No liturgical occasion allows it to be used exactly as printed. It is a series of seven items to be taken in various combinations for a number of different purposes: as the gradual and tract for the Annunciation when it falls in Lent, the gradual and first alleluia for the Assumption, and the offertory for Candlemas.28 The full text, consisting of various sections from the quintessentially Marian Psalm 44, shows the usual symmetry associated with psalm verses: a Diffusa est gratia in labiis tuis: propterea benedixit te Deus in aeternum. b Propter veritatem, et mansuetudinem, et iustitiam: et deducet te mirabiliter dextera tua. c Audi, filia, et vide, et inclina aurem tuam: quia concupivit Rex speciem tuam. d Alleluia. e Vultum tuum deprecabuntur omnes divites plebis: filiae regum in honore tuo. f Adducentur Regi virgines post eam: proximae eius afferentur tibi. g Adducentur in laetitia et exsultatione: adducentur in templum Regis. The line lengths here are surprisingly consistent, as is the amount of music Byrd uses to set each line. The detail of his settings, on the other hand, is quite varied. He employs a change in texture at every major break in the text, with

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130  •  Liturgy and Contemplation in Byrd’s Gradualia the exception of the alleluia, and no two reduced-voice sections use the same combination of voices: a Diffusa est

28 breves

5 voices

12345

b Propter veritatem

24.5 breves

3 voices

1 34

c Audi filia

29.5 breves

5 voices

12345

d Alleluia

9 breves

5 voices

12345

e Vultum tuum

26.5 breves

4 voices

2345

f Adducentur Regi

21 breves

3 voices

123

g Adducentur in laetitia

25 breves

5 voices

12345

In its fullest form, as the gradual/tract pair for the Annunciation when it falls before Easter, six of the seven items in Diffusa est gratia are sung; only the alleluia is left out. Here the piece is a series of six sections in a continuously varied texture. On the feast of the Assumption, the gradual/alleluia set is formed by skipping a, starting at Propter veritatem, singing b, c, and d, then moving on to the Assumption proper itself for the bipartite alleluia verse Assumpta est Maria/Gaudet exercitus and the final alleluia. This unlikely process also produces a balanced piece: b Propter veritatem

3 voices

1 34

c Audi filia

5 voices

12345

d Alleluia

5 voices

12345

Assumpta est Maria

3 voices

234

Gaudet exercitus

5 voices

12345

It is now clear why Byrd wrote the verse section Audi filia, unlike many other comparable verses, in a rich five-voice texture. It was intended always to be followed by a reduced-voice section, whether in the Annunciation gradual/ tract pair or the Assumption gradual/alleluia pair. To create additional contrast, both of these reduced sections are scored for lower voices, in contrast with the higher trio at Propter veritatem. Another piece contained in Diffusa est gratia is the offertory for Candlemas: this requires only a, the first phrase of the text.29 The florid half-close onto a resonant A chord works as both a final cadence for the Candlemas offertory—in fact, several other offertories, such as the Easter Terra tremuit (7a, 129; 277), end on similar cadences—and as a transition into the reduced-voice section Propter veritatem. Byrd’s layout of Diffusa est gratia also illustrates the general principle that an intermediate four-voice texture is reserved in the Gradualia for larger pieces, such as the tracts and sequences, where alternation of three-part and five-part sections might not provide sufficient interest. The two exceptions to

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Text Types and Settings  •  131 this rule are the short four-voice phrase near the opening of Sicut audivimus (5/12; 8), which in fact forms part of a substantial gradual/alleluia or gradual/ tract group, and the middle section of the tripartite communion Beati mundo corde (6a/54; 112.) Byrd also never used four-voice reduced sections in either of the large-scale Cantiones constructed on the “votive antiphon” model, Tribue Domine and Infelix ego; he generally kept to either six-voice or threevoice writing throughout, with some very brief duets and occasional recourse to five-voice texture as a preparatory foil to a dramatic full-choir entrance. The anomalies of range in the fifth section, Vultum tuum (5/146; 72), of Diffusa est gratia, where the Medius voice unexpectedly “soars into the upper reaches of the Superius tessitura,”30 can also be explained by the desire to vary a multipart form further—here through a striking distortion of range. The only other place in all of the Gradualia where Byrd does something similar is in another fifth section (Virgo singularis) of another seven-section piece, the hymn Ave maris stella (6b/103; 189), where the middle voice switches temporarily from the c3 to the c1 clef, pairing with the upper voice and effectively changing the whole texture of the verse. Byrd appears to have a practiced ear for just how long a predictable scheme can be followed without tedium, and a willingness to push the established norms of tessitura to achieve the desired effect: in both of these cases, Ave maris stella and the Annunciation proper in Lent, the voice in question ends up singing over a range of a full two octaves.31 Byrd’s sequences are also formally complicated and somewhat extreme pieces. Their unusual status is compounded by their rarity: there are only two in the collection, both in the 1607 volume. By the time Byrd began to compose Mass propers, after the severe post-Tridentine pruning of the genre, the only feasts calling for sequences were Easter (Victimae paschali laudes), Pentecost (Veni sancte Spiritus), and Corpus Christi (Lauda Sion). He set the first two of those sequences, but not the last, perhaps intimidated by its twenty-four stanzas of poetry and its bracing infusion of scholastic theology; it is uncertain how even Byrd’s professed insight into sacred texts would have coped with “diminution in the status of the signified.”32 He does include a conspicuous signum and bar line at the end of the Corpus Christi alleluia verse (6a/74; 122) where the chanted sequence (in fact in a compatible mode) is presumably to be introduced. Although Lauda Sion itself ends with an alleluia, he adds a brief polyphonic alleluia after the barline, to be sung at its conclusion or, perhaps, as a final refrain if the sequence is omitted altogether. The extra alleluia is strictly required for the adaptation of the Corpus Christi proper into the votive Mass of the Sacrament, a set completed only in the 1607 book. If Byrd included the alleluia with the votive Mass in mind, it must be considered that he had some knowledge of the contents of volume 2 while he was still preparing volume 1. The sequence Veni sancte Spiritus (7b/59; 304) is also problematic. Byrd provides a detachable final alleluia for Pentecost, to be sung only if the sequence is

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132  •  Liturgy and Contemplation in Byrd’s Gradualia omitted. He seems to have intended this final alleluia for occasions on which the Pentecost music is adapted into the votive Mass of the Holy Spirit, which, at least during paschal time, is identical to the day’s proper except for the omission of the sequence.33 The sequence is printed in the 1607 book as an appendix to the Pentecost Mass, unlike the Easter sequence in the same fascicle, which is placed correctly between the alleluia and the offertory. This odd placement of the Pentecost sequence is certainly in keeping with the provision of the extra alleluia, and the signum plus bar line (as at the equivalent place in Corpus Christi), that allow its omission if necessary. Considering Byrd’s enthusiasm for providing votive liturgies as an additional part of the Gradualia—some of them, such as the commemoration of the Sacrament adapted from the Corpus Christi proper, technically less smooth than the Pentecost/ Holy Spirit transfer—it may be more likely, here as in the Corpus Christi set, that this alternate ending was added as an adaptive module for creating the votive Mass.34 In either case, the Pentecost sequence is a first-rate piece of sustained and intense polyphony, on a level with the Easter sequence. If it was an afterthought, it was a remarkable one. It is the piece among all the Mass propers with by far the highest syllable-to-breve ratio—2.19 to be exact—and the singer or hearer is left with the impression that hardly a note is wasted as Byrd progresses through the text. Richard White, a seventeenth-century English Catholic, left a manuscript copy of his own meditations on the Pentecost sequence.35 This work, which he called Vox fletus et vox clamoris, breaks the sequence into individual lines and offers a reflection (“those Thoughts, which set nearest to my Heart”) on each one in turn.36 On his own whirlwind tour through this text, Byrd also picked up on the contrast between phrases and the distinctive characteristics of some of them—from the precipitous drop (m. 31) to the chord of the seventh on low F at in fletu, “in weeping,” to the sudden outcry at rege quod est devium (m. 63), “guide what has gone astray.” John Milsom asks whether it can be “mere coincidence . . . that Byrd aims for a climax” on these pointed latter words.37 (Whatever Byrd’s intentions may have been, White’s Vox fletus gives the passage a purely spiritual reading rather than a political one.) The delicate halfhomophonic trio at O lux (m. 33) recalls the opening of his 1575 O lux beata Trinitas, which is, incidentally, the one piece Byrd did set for the adjacent feast of Trinity Sunday. The even slighter setting of riga quod est aridum, “water what is dry,” slipping out of the texture (m. 50) in only two voices and over in three measures, is the softest of rainfalls rather than the drenching storm it may well have been twenty years earlier. At dulce refrigerium, “sweet refreshment,” White indulges in some imagery from the Song of Songs: “Come flow with violence from the celestial Libanus on my Soul, come breath on it a cool & life-giving wind, that it may feel thy sweetness and melt away with love. Surge Aquilo, et veni Auster, perfla hortum meum, et fluant aromata ejus.”38

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Text Types and Settings  •  133 Byrd’s unexpected Phrygian cadence onto E at dulce refrigerium, spiced by a tiny 7-6 suspension—a highly unusual turn in his G Mixolydian pieces— captures the coolness and sweetness of these lines perfectly (see ex. 4.3). The whole gesture is over in little more than a second, though it is immediately echoed by the bittersweet semitone of the contratenor entrance at in labore; then the music ducks more or less abruptly back into the prevailing major mode. An expressive modulation of this kind often took the better part of a page to prepare and dissipate in one of the Cantiones. Here it is in miniature form, swept along by the structure and function of the piece, but losing little of its effect. As in the labyrinthine Diffusa est gratia or the compact, unsettled interlectionary group for Easter, Byrd has chosen here to make haste slowly: there is little time or space to linger at this highly charged point in the liturgy, but not a fragment of the text is left behind. Offertories In each proper set of the Gradualia, the offertory acts as a point of articulation and transition, standing between the lengthy, varied development of the gradual/alleluia group and the climactic statement of the communion. In a polyphonic proper cycle, it amounts to a punctuating “half-cadence” before what is indisputably the most important event in the liturgy. The interval between offertory and communion in an actual service is longer than the interval between the other pieces, and this crucial period of time includes the canon of the Mass and the consecration, for which the offertory is an explicit preparation.39 Byrd’s offertories are distinguished by both their intensity and their brevity. Of his four basic proper genres, they have the shortest texts and treat them, on average, in the most concise fashion. A number of them, notably Sacerdotes Domini (6a/75; 123), Terra tremuit (7a/129; 277), Tui sunt coeli (7a/17; 218),

Ex. 4.3.   From Veni sancte Spiritus (sequence for Pentecost)

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134  •  Liturgy and Contemplation in Byrd’s Gradualia and Ave Maria (5/83; 40), are almost as concentrated as the Gloria of Byrd’s three-part ordinary. Though the Gradualia includes a subgenre of long communions, pieces that run short texts through leisurely musical developments, there is no corresponding group of concise offertories.40 Byrd did not consider this point in the service to be a fitting location for a gesture of repose or finality. Even outwardly calm offertories such as Justorum animae (6a/48; 109) or Confirma hoc Deus (7b/49; 306) are characterized by persistent modal conflict, complicated dissonance, and similar gestures that continue to push the cycle forward to its completion.41 The “epigrammatic” effect of the offertories has as much to do with their concentrated style as with simple density of text setting. Since they also have the shortest average text length of the four genres, this concentration is not a simple matter of recasting musical material to accommodate a large number of words, as he does in the text-rich movements of the Mass ordinaries. The shortest of the introit texts in the Gradualia, even without the Gloria Patri or the repetition, is longer than the longest offertory text. The combination of gradual, alleluia(s), tract, and/or sequence also makes for a substantial piece of music. The offertory is the first point in the proper cycle at which Byrd can work on a small canvas, and his style changes along with the raw material, turning toward a more intense, compact idiom. In the three Mass ordinaries, his other multimovement Latin liturgical works, Byrd does just the opposite when suddenly faced with a short text. When he reaches the Sanctus after two substantial text-rich movements, he changes abruptly to an open, relatively prolix style, invoking archaic precedent or a quasi-cantus-firmus technique. This is true for all three Masses, though Byrd does not indulge in the extremes of scale characteristic of the Sanctus in some other Renaissance settings, where the norm seems to be a near-consistent length for each Mass movement, whether the text is long or short. Kerman remarks on Byrd’s “refusal to spin out” the Kyrie, Sanctus, and Agnus into lengthy, abstract musical passages.42 True melismatic writing is indeed rare in these Masses. Byrd did not differentiate between the two types of ordinary movements as strongly as many continental composers (or earlier Tudor composers—most notably John Taverner). A comparative glance at, for example, the opening points of the Gloria and Kyrie in the four-part and five-part Masses shows two fundamentally different approaches to text setting: one declamatory and largely syllabic, the other flexible and largely neumatic. The change from one approach to the other is most perceptible in all three Masses at the opening of the Sanctus: the five-part setting with its soaring cantus-firmus figure in breves; the three-part setting with its long soprano pedal supported by intertwining figuration in the lower voices; and the archaizing, expansive, open texture of the four-part setting, alluding to none other than the Mean Mass of Taverner.43 Coming immedi-

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Text Types and Settings  •  135 ately after the Gloria and Credo, a pair of concentrated text-rich movements, these gestures surprise the listener by introducing a new palette of sound. Nothing of the kind happens with the offertories, the comparable movements in the Gradualia. Although it is clear that Byrd perceived both the Mass ordinary and the Mass proper as coherent cycles, he takes two varying approaches to the main point of articulation in each cycle. Both the Sanctus (within the ordinary) and the offertory (within the proper) mark the transition from the part of the service dedicated to scriptural readings and acclamations, the so-called fore-Mass or Mass of the catechumens, to the eucharistic action which is the primary raison d’être of the liturgy. In the offertories, Byrd responds to this shift in what seems at first to be an unusual way, cutting down on text repetition and further concentrating the style. They are set apart almost as strongly as the Sanctus movements by a change in musical technique, but the change leads in a different direction. Some of the idiosyncrasy may have to do with the lack of a well-established sixteenth-century tradition of composing on these texts, a tradition of the kind so apparent in settings of the Sanctus. A comparison with Palestrina’s 1593 Offertoria totius anni is instructive. Each of those pieces is set as a freestanding item, not as part of a larger proper cycle for the day, and all are composed in a conventional imitative style largely foreign to Byrd’s offertories. The difference is made clear by a comparison between Palestrina’s Tui sunt coeli or Terra tremuit and the corresponding item in Byrd’s Gradualia (see ex. 4.4). Palestrina begins these pieces, as he begins each of the 1593 offertories, with systematic imitation in all five voices, and works them out in a smooth, largely consonant style. Homophony or simultaneous entry is introduced, if at all, as brief punctuation near the end.44 These pieces are also notable for their length: Palestrina, with his leisurely polyphonic expositions, often takes up to twice as long as Byrd to set the same text. His Offertoria have the necessary weight and scope to function as motets in their own right; indeed, there is no perceptible difference of compositional procedure between them and Palestrina’s five-voice motets having nothing to do with the Mass proper. The situation could not have been more different for Byrd. Among the striking characteristics of Byrd’s offertories is their tendency to begin with homophony, with near-homophony, or at least with imitation by pairs rather than by individual parts. The simultaneous introduction of voices fills two functions. First, the text setting is begun economically. This is apparent in the beginning phrases of numerous offertories, such as Sacerdotes Domini (6a/75; 123), Terra tremuit (7a, 129; 277), Justorum animae (6a/52; 111), Confirma hoc (7b/49; 306), or, for an atypical but stunning approach to simultaneous writing, the offertory Ave Maria (5/83; 40). A variation on the typical model is found in Assumpta est Maria (5/166; 81) and Tui sunt coeli (7a/17; 218), where paired entries remain the norm well into the piece. Second,

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136  •  Liturgy and Contemplation in Byrd’s Gradualia

Ex. 4.4a  Byrd’s Tui sunt coeli (Offertory for Christmas)

the typical opening gesture of the offertory is set out in opposition to the characteristic polyphonic opening of the gradual/alleluia group. Byrd knew how to use homophony or near homophony for maximum effect after a long stretch of polyphonic writing. The Sion deserta facta est passage of Civitas sancti tui is perhaps the first to come to mind, though his music is full of similar gestures, all the way back to the hushed chromaticisms of noctem verterunt in diem near the end of the 1575 Libera me . . . et pone, or, yet earlier, the harmonically somewhat wayward “Jerusalem convertere” passage of his Lamentations, reflecting Tallis’s own memorable use of a half-homophonic texture on the same text. Byrd’s Mass propers use this technique on a different scale, across a group of pieces rather than in an individual motet.

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Text Types and Settings  •  137

Ex. 4.4b  Palestrina’s Tui sunt coeli (Offertory for Christmas)

Offertories are certainly overrepresented among the Gradualia items that modern publishers have reprinted as freestanding motets.45 They are the late Latin works of Byrd that have enjoyed the widest circulation, outdone only by the ubiquitous Ave verum corpus (6a/82; 127). Justorum animae, Sacerdotes Domini, and Confirma hoc are perhaps the best known of this group, along with Ave Maria (which Collins first published in octavo in 1925 with the stern admonition, “The music will not bear the omission of the Alleluias. The Motet is therefore not available for use from Septuagesima Sunday to Easter.”).46 Something about jewellike concentration and a tendency toward homophonic writing does appeal to the modern ear and voice. It is not surprising that Ave verum, the most popular Gradualia piece of all, is also the most simultaneous, with the exception of a few other items in the 1605 book—Turbarum voces (6b/128; 202), the Litany (6b/56; 166), and, arguably, Visita quaesumus (6b/19; 148)—that also stand outside the central cycle of propers. This preference among nineteenth- and twentieth-century admirers may be due to the

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138  •  Liturgy and Contemplation in Byrd’s Gradualia

Ex. 4.4b (continued)

overt expressive effect of homophonic writing, something Byrd had certainly exploited to the fullest since his early Cantiones. It may also have to do with the primary musical norm in post-Reformation England being simultaneous or at least clear text setting, relieved by periodic lapses into imitative polyphony. Despite the relative popularity of Gradualia offertories as freestanding “Latin anthems,” their unusual style is most effective of all when surrounded by the contrasting propers in their set. They also reveal themselves, after a closer look, to be less easily accessible pieces than their reception might suggest. One attractive trait of the offertories is their modal complication, even contradiction, within the boundaries of a short form. The simplest sign of this is their tendency to begin (and often end) out of the primary mode of the cycle. Brett describes Terra tremuit (7a, 129; 277), which opens and closes on A, as a point of “maximum instability in preparation for the following communion.”47 The internal detail of the piece takes this instability further, above all in the first measures with their depiction of the opening words (see ex. 4.5). The trembling quarter-note figure on tremuit, “shook,” is more than an unusual metrical gesture: it shifts rapidly between two remote harmonies, A major and G minor, each chord containing two out of three notes a tritone

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Text Types and Settings  •  139

Ex. 4.5.   Terra tremuit (Offertory for Easter)

removed from those in the other (C-sharp/G and E/B-flat). By the end of the sixfold oscillation between these two areas at near-opposite ends of the contemporary tonal system, the ground is certainly shaking under the singer’s or listener’s feet. The reprise of this theme is more (pace Kerman) than a repetition “a moment later for ‘quievit,’ devil take the meaning. . . .”48 The second time around (m. 5), the figure is harmonically stable: a simple oscillation between G minor and the much more predictable D major, leading up to a D half cadence on quievit. Hugh Benham remarks that the repetition is “disappointing” and “less striking,” though he notes the relative calm of the second harmonic progression and the repeated D of the middle voice, which suggests “an element of ‘stillness’ at the heart of the music.”49 This continuation of the opening material on quievit amounts to a musical aftershock, with the ground still quivering but showing signs of returning to its usual stability after the modal upheaval of the first mea-

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140  •  Liturgy and Contemplation in Byrd’s Gradualia sures. A similar but more subtle example of Byrd’s tendency to dwell on modal ambiguities in the offertories is the final alleluia of Confirma hoc Deus (7b/52; 306) with its flawlessly calculated interplay between F natural and F sharp, the very essence of the G Mixolydian mode he chose for the Pentecost cycle. The offertory texts fall into a number of categories; the majority of them, it should be said, do not involve earthquakes or other cataclysmic events. There are nevertheless several offertories of the colorful, active variety, which Byrd tends to give unusually literal settings. The archetype of this group is, of course, Terra tremuit, along with Ascendit Deus and Assumpta est Maria. The Epiphany offertory Reges Tharsis (7a/49; 234), a pair of psalm verses describing the nations who will come from afar to worship the Messiah, is also among the active offertory texts with animated settings, though Byrd’s central musical illustration is the opposite of his heavenward gestures in Ascendit and Assumpta: the piece concludes at omnes gentes servient ei with a descending scale of an eleventh, down to the subdominant degree deep in the bass, all the pagan grandeur of the Three Kings scraping the floor in a profound bow. For Byrd, who considered his own nation and monarch not to be worshipping as they should, this text appears to have carried a considerable tinge of poignancy. Byrd does not tend to linger much in these pieces over the literal expression of such imagery; the small scale of the offertories permits little lingering on any aspect of the text. The “concrete” offertories that do feature quasi-madrigalian word painting tend to drop it almost immediately in favor of pure musical constructions. Both Ascendit Deus and Terra tremuit wind down after their brash opening gestures with carefully constructed sequential alleluias. Ascendit Deus, which repeats text from the alleluia group for Ascension, significantly avoids the trumpeting onomatopoeia of the first in voce tubae and instead rushes forward in compact, elegant polyphony into the alleluia and the final cadence. Terra tremuit is the truest epigram among all the Gradualia propers: a single musical sentence, constructed in a series of breathless entries and over in barely forty-five seconds. The contrast with Palestrina’s stately, measured imitative treatment in the Offertoria totius anni is nowhere clearer than in the two settings of this brief Easter text. The Epiphany offertory Reges Tharsis (7a, 49; 234) is a more unusual example of the genre. It is by far the longest of the offertories in the Gradualia: 60.5 breves of music, with the closest contenders being the 39 breves of Constitues eos Principes and the 38 of Justorum animae. Despite having (by a narrow margin) the longest text, it is also the offertory with the lowest density, the one with the most leisurely musical development. It is a large-scale piece on all counts, certainly large in scale among its counterparts in Byrd’s Mass propers. Both its scope and its style set it apart among the offertories. The text falls into the series of parallel declarations common to psalm verses:

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Text Types and Settings  •  141 Reges Tharsis et insulae munera offerent: reges Arabum et Saba dona adducent. Et adorabunt eum omnes reges terrae: omnes gentes servient ei. The kings of Tharsis and the islands will offer gifts: the kings of the Arabs and of Saba will bring offerings. And all the kings of the earth will worship him: all nations will serve him. Byrd’s setting begins with a device well known from the Cantiones but continued in only a few select pieces in the Gradualia: imitation in all voices by inversion of a single point (see ex. 4.6).50 The semitone figure A/B-flat is answered by D/C-sharp, and then the rising or falling fifth is filled in by step. Byrd goes on to develop his musical material in an expansive, slightly recondite fashion throughout—repeating figures freely at different pitch levels and in different combinations, playing with near-identical versions of the same imitative points (as in the two upper parts at et insulae munera offerent), and lingering for the better part of two pages on the relative F-major mode. Each of the four text phrases is set to a new complex of ideas, all at considerable length. The last of the four points, omnes gentes servient ei, is a rare instance of true double imitation, itself as long as some entire pieces in Byrd’s other proper sets: Terra tremuit, for example, or the Christmas communion Viderunt omnes. After fifteen or sixteen measures of exposition, a brief surge of rapid figuration in the middle register, and a striking melodic climax on the D/C-sharp semitone in each of the upper voices (recalling the much quieter opening point an octave below), the counterpoint settles down to a final cascading passage in all four parts, led by the bass with its extraordinary fall of an eleventh to the very bottom of the texture. No piece printed in the Gradualia since the 1605 Candlemas communion Responsum accepit lingers over individual phrases at such length. For a recusant composer at the beginnning of the seventeenth century, a statement that all the kings of the earth (and “of the islands”) would come bringing gifts to worship the Christ child, that all the nations would serve him, was both

Ex. 4.6.  Reges Tharsis (Offertory for Epiphany)

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142  •  Liturgy and Contemplation in Byrd’s Gradualia bittersweet and highly volatile.51 The annotators of the Douai Bible make similar comments on the relevant passage in the Nativity story: the Three Kings’ statement that “we have come to adore him” is seen as a defense of the hotly contested practice of pilgrimage to faraway lands, and their worship of him physically present as an infant lying in the stable is read, following Chrysostom, as an exhortation to worship of the Sacrament.52 The annotations go on to take a explicitly political approach to Matthew 2:11, stating that “these three Sages, being principal men of their Countrie, represent the whole state of Princes, kings, and sages, that were (according to the said Prophecies) to beleeve in Christ, to humble them selves to his crosse, to foster, enriche, adorne, and defend his Church.” Byrd’s unusually long and emphatic offertory for Epiphany in turn affects the scope of the pieces that surround it in the Mass proper. The Epiphany introit Ecce advenit is by far the most discursive of its genre, with a large amount of text repetition (evident in the setting of et imperium) and a syllable-to-breve ratio of 1.13—only 0.96 if the doxology is not included in the calculations. The average ratio for the introits with doxology is 1.43. The truncated Surge illuminare Jerusalem (7a/58; 244), all that is offered of the gradual/alleluia group in the 1607 print, is close to being the least dense of the pieces in this genre, exceeded only by the redoubtable Tu es Petrus in its long form as an alleluia for the feast of Sts. Peter and Paul. The communion Vidimus stellam is, like Responsum accepit, one of the most substantial communions in the whole cycle, culminating with an extended point on “adorare Dominum”: the kings, finally speaking in the first person through the words of the New Testament account, have seen the star in the East and come (just as the aged Simeon would on Candlemas) “to worship the Lord.” The gravity and undeniable political subtext of all four Epiphany propers seem to have encouraged a broader, somewhat more solemn musical procedure, bearing reminiscences of earlier pieces that also had to do with the heavenly King, the worship of the nations, and the holy city of Jerusalem. Communions The communion is the last piece in each proper set. It acts as a conclusion—or a peroration, to borrow again from the vocabulary of rhetoric—and brings the development of the Mass to a close. With its final cadence, the overall form of the day’s proper becomes fully clear for the first time. Some sets, such as Candlemas or Easter, unfold with a fair amount of modal flexibility; the prevailing mode is confirmed only by the last item.53 These communions are almost invariably striking pieces, often unusual ones, as befits their place at the end and summit of complex musical cycles. Byrd’s communion settings function only as communions, not participating in the elaborate system of transfers found elsewhere in the Gradualia. The single exception is Tu es Petrus, an unusual and far from neutral piece in any case, which doubles as the alleluia verse for the feasts of Sts. Peter and Paul. Despite the prevalence of transfer operations in the Marian music, all

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Text Types and Settings  •  143 of the communions there (Responsum accepit, Ecce virgo, Optimam partem, and Beata viscera) fulfill only that one function. The four Marian communions also do duty for the annual cycle of votive Marian Masses: Ecce virgo in Advent, Beata viscera during the rest of the year. In the Christmas set, where a text in the post-Epistle group (Viderunt omnes) recurs as the communion, Byrd provides a new setting to conclude the proper. Quotiescunque manducabitis for Corpus Christi (6a/77; 124) is the only communion made truly problematic by transfers. It is intended for additional use in the votive Mass of the Blessed Sacrament, as Byrd makes clear in the 1607 volume by printing the extra music needed to complete this liturgy during various seasons. For the votive Mass during all but the unusually festive weeks after Easter, the communion is not sung with an alleluia, but Byrd’s setting of the final alleluia (also sung on the feast day of Corpus Christi itself) is thoroughly nondetachable (see ex. 4.7). Brett suggests “some adjustment of the cadence at bars 47–48” as a sort of emergency surgery to make the piece suitable for year-round votive use.54 Two conclusions can be drawn from this difficulty. It is apparent here, as in the votive Marian Masses, that Byrd seems to have conceived of the feast-day cycle before (or at least with higher musical priority than) the votive cycle. He also appears to be particularly jealous of the musical integrity of his communions, above all when an important event, such as the B-natural/B-flat false relation at the moment of transition in measure 48 of Quotiescunque, might be interrupted by combinatorial tampering.55 Communion texts, like offertory texts, tend to be memorable but brief. The composer of Mass propers faces a challenge at this point: he often has to make an effective final statement with only a handful of words. While a very short offertory functions easily as an interlude—a point at which Byrd often introduces homophony, a foreign mode, and/or unusual material—a very short communion risks leaving the cycle unresolved and the listener in suspense. For a short communion to succeed completely, it must be, as Brett describes Byrd’s second setting of Viderunt omnes (7a/20; 219), “a piece which, though barely a minute in length, sounds as though it does indeed encompass ‘the ends of the earth.’”56 In half of the Gradualia propers (Christmas, Epiphany, Annunciation, Peter/Paul, Assumption, and the Nativity of Mary) the communion is the shortest of the four texts. In two others, Candlemas and Ascension, it is almost the shortest, longer than the offertory by only a few syllables. Unlike the brief offertories, many of these brief communion texts do not receive correspondingly modest musical settings. The four most musically prolix proper items in the whole collection of Gradualia—that is, those with the most extensive imitation and lowest text-to-music ratio—are all communions belonging to this group: Responsum accepit (5/31; 17) for Candlemas, Tu es Petrus (7b/107; 336) for Sts. Peter and Paul, Optimam partem (5/170; 83)

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144  •  Liturgy and Contemplation in Byrd’s Gradualia

Ex. 4.7.  From Quotiescunque manducabitis (Communion for Corpus Christi)

for the Assumption, and Vidimus stellam (7a/54; 237) for Epiphany. With the last piece of a Mass, Byrd is more inclined to drop the reserve (and the occasional hurry) shown earlier in his proper cycles, and to linger over the communion with extensive imitation, melisma, or repetition of words. In eight of the twelve feast-day propers, the communion is the least dense and most extensively drawn out of the set. Alongside the “epigrammatic” communion texts, there is a contrasting group of longer ones: the didactic Quotiescunque, with eighty syllables; the tripartite Beati mundo corde (6a/54; 112) with sixty-eight; the narrative Factus est repente (7b/53; 308) with sixty-three; and, to a lesser extent, Pascha nostrum (7a/132; 278), with forty-eight but a substantial text in comparison to the

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Text Types and Settings  •  145 tiny offertory that precedes it. Byrd sets these pieces in a fast-moving, dense, heterogeneous manner, passing quickly through a number of styles in brief segments. Longer communion texts are treated with the same immediacy and intensity that Byrd uses in other concentrated settings, but—with the possible exception of the somewhat wild Factus est repente—they are not merely longish epigrams. Byrd recognizes the demand of the more extensive text, and adapts his technique to set it effectively. Communion texts, as noted earlier in this chapter, are distinguished by their unusual biblical provenance. Unlike the rest of the proper genres in the Gradualia, by far the majority of communions are taken from the New Testament. Even the nonbiblical Beata viscera is an adaptation of the passage in Luke 11:27 in which a woman from the crowd calls out to Jesus, “Blessed is the womb that bore you!” The two remaining communions, Viderunt omnes and Psallite Domino, are psalm verses so closely associated in Christian exegesis with the respective feasts of Christmas and Ascension that they are obvious choices to end the cycles.57 Byrd generally responds to the immediacy of gospel texts in a colorful, intense way, dropping the slight reserve characteristic of many other Gradualia items. That response, as mentioned earlier in this chapter, is not unique to communions, but it is most evident here in the genre with the highest concentration of New Testament material. As James McKinnon, discussing the origins of the Roman proper cycle, remarks on a similar phenomenon in Gregorian communion settings. Conversely [as opposed to the “sweet lyric style” in which many Old Testament communion texts are set], many of the dramatic gospelderived texts are given musical settings of striking originality. There is, for example, from the post-Christmas season the extraordinary Dicit dominus (LU [i.e. Liber Usualis] 487) of the second Sunday after the Epiphany, in which Jesus, the chief steward and the narrator create a dramatic enactment of the miracle of the wedding feast of Cana. . . . From Paschaltime there is the arresting beginning of Factus est repente (LU 882), where its quick syllabic texture and its abruptly rebounding leap of a fifth unmistakably suggest the sudden rush of wind that signifies the Holy Spirit, the spiritus vehementis.58 Other examples of this phenomenon in the Gregorian repertoire are Hoc corpus (LU 573) for Passion Sunday, Beati mundo corde (LU 1727) for All Saints’ Day, and any number of similar Gospel-derived communions. Text and music are in symbiosis here. The genre of the communion chant gravitates toward the most highly colored words, and the musical settings reflect that tendency. Of course, McKinnon is dealing in his own work with the creation of the original text cycle (the same raw material set by Byrd nearly a millennium later) as well as with its musical composition. In the case of the Gradualia, the

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146  •  Liturgy and Contemplation in Byrd’s Gradualia composer had no control over the form and provenance of the texts. Nonetheless, Byrd still shows the same degree of sensitivity to them as the anonymous composers who first compiled them and set them to chant melodies. McKinnon goes on to mention the “stylistic heterogeneity” and the resulting musical interest of chant communions.59 The same can be said, though with some reservations, about Byrd’s communions, and the phenomenon can likewise be traced back to the exceptional nature of many of the texts as well as to the climactic position of the communion in the narrative of the Mass proper. The most striking passage in a proper set often comes at or near the end, where a series of allegorically interpreted psalm verses or medieval panegyrics is suddenly interrupted by a vivid voice from the New Testament narrative: Jesus, or Simeon, or the angel of the Annunciation, or the anonymous woman who called out her blessing from the crowd. This is the moment at which, as Rastell writes in his 1564 explication of the Corpus Christi proper, “like two Cherubins, the old should looke upon the new, and the new answer the old.”60 Such points in the liturgical narrative are cast into high relief by Byrd’s settings, while other areas and genres of the Gradualia unfold on a more even keel. While introducing the five-part Marian music, Kerman discusses the “muted impression” made by much of it, and gives as a possible reason the fact that “most (though not all) of these Marian texts are not very distinctive in phraseology.”61 The exception to this rule is found primarily in the Marian communions, with their distinctive texts and corresponding musical settings. Each set of feast-day propers in the Gradualia, unlike its Gregorian counterpart, is organized by mode as well as by subject matter, and each of Byrd’s communions ends in the prevailing mode of its set. The single real exception to the rule is Viderunt omnes (7a/20; 219) for Christmas. The first setting of Viderunt ends, like the entire gradual/alleluia group but unlike the introit and offertory, on G. The second setting, the communion, begins in the generally prevailing mode of D, but it finishes with a strong cadence on G. Such an unusual and less-than-unified modal scheme, among other oddities, is a further suggestion that the Christmas set may have been among the very first propers that Byrd composed and assembled. The Candlemas proper, quite arguably the first written in the Marian set, shows large-scale modal characteristics almost identical to those in the Christmas music.62 The Gradualia communions, being assorted, even eccentric pieces, do not lend themselves easily to a search for general musical trends. One way to investigate the genre is to examine two items, much like the two Gaudeamus introits discussed above, that share related texts as well as liturgical function. The words of the communion for Corpus Christi (Quotiescunque manducabitis) and of the Easter communion (Pascha nostrum) are both drawn from the

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Text Types and Settings  •  147 first letter of St. Paul to the Corinthians. Both belong to the group of relatively prolix communion texts, though Quotiescunque (6a/77; 124) is the longer of the two; they have the same overall structure, and, broadly speaking, treat similar subject matter in a similar tone: Quotiescunque manducabitis panem hunc et calicem bibetis, mortem Domini annuntiabitis donec veniat. Itaque quicunque manducaverit panem, et biberit calicem Domini indigne, reus erit corporis et sanguinis Domini, alleluia. As often as you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the death of the Lord until he returns. Therefore whoever eats the bread and drinks the cup of the Lord unworthily will be guilty of the Lord’s body and blood, alleluia. (1 Corinthians 11:26–7) Pascha nostrum immolatus est Christus, alleluia. Itaque epulemur in azymis sinceritatis et veritatis, alleluia, alleluia, alleluia. Christ our Passover has been sacrificed, alleluia. Therefore let us feast on the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth, alleluia, alleluia, alleluia. (1 Corinthians 5:7–8) The topic here is the sacrifice of Christ, the eating (literally in the first case and allegorically in the second) of the paschal meal, and the corresponding demands made on the life of the individual and the community. In both texts, Paul makes a general statement of doctrine followed by a strong, more specific call to propriety, introducing the latter with the word itaque, “therefore.” Unlike the other proper texts for Corpus Christi and Easter, these two pieces address the listeners in the most direct terms; they go beyond the standard exhortations of exsultate Deo or confitemini Domino to speak forcefully on the topic at hand. Both liturgical texts include alleluias not found in the original passages from 1 Corinthians. The Easter communion ends with a triple alleluia, and another alleluia is interpolated in the midst of the text. The Corpus Christi communion also ends with an alleluia. They function as major points of articulation in both pieces. The alleluia of Quotiescunque, added by the thirteenth-century compilers of the Corpus Christi proper, has a somewhat ironic ring after the stern warning in the second half of the text. Byrd appears to have registered the fact that it is not a moment of unmixed rejoicing: he marks the point of transition (see ex. 4.7) between reus erit corporis et sanguinis Domini and alleluia with a trenchant B flat in the tenor, which breaks the prevailing mode and creates a false relation with the more predictable B natural in the soprano. Brett suggests that the “mild false relation at the beginning of the final alleluia hints at the

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148  •  Liturgy and Contemplation in Byrd’s Gradualia consequences of taking the Sacrament unworthily.”63 Hugh Benham, reviewing the edition, dismisses this as a “slightly fanciful” conjecture and calls it “unlikely.”64 The note is difficult to miss in any case: it is the only B flat, the lowered third of the mode, in the entire Corpus Christi proper.65 Although the music drifts readily toward an F sonority based on the Mixolydian seventh degree, nowhere else does Byrd write the B flat so easily associated with that F. Whether or not the slight shadow of this lowered third is a direct hint at unpleasant consequences, it certainly does reflect the unlikely coupling of St. Paul’s threatening words with an alleluia. It was only natural for Byrd, working in upper-class recusant England (which could be a somewhat rigorist milieu regarding reception of the sacraments), to have underscored this uneasy transition with an uneasy musical gesture.66 The intended tone may have been one of irony, caution, or some mixture of the two; it certainly increases the interest and forward momentum of the setting as it reaches its close. Building up to this moment of startled contrast, Byrd creates what may well be the most colorful and varied piece in the Corpus Christi set. Quotiescunque is a sample book of compositional techniques, with each phrase set in a fresh way. This terse, kaleidoscopic style seems, at least in part, to be a response to the raw material of the words. Byrd is faced here with the longest of the twelve communion texts, featuring somewhat sticky polysyllabic diction—or at least lacking the simplicity and utter clarity of, say, Beati mundo corde. When the first two words alone provide enough syllables to take up half a text on the scale of Viderunt omnes or Tu es Petrus, a swift-moving, varied approach is called for. The smooth homophonic gesture of the opening is almost a commonplace at this point in the Corpus Christi set. It recalls the unexpected full-choir entrance in the alleluia verse at qui manducat, as well as the simultaneous opening of the offertory Sacerdotes Domini. After its crucial first appearance halfway through the proper set, homophony in fact becomes the norm in this set for the beginning of a large unit. This tendency is of course epitomized in Ave verum, the most striking of the extra pieces associated with Corpus Christi, and one that appears to have predated (and perhaps even affected) the composition of the Mass proper itself.67 Quotiescunque opens (see ex. 4.8) with a clear D-major sonority for the first two bars. Just as the offertory begins with homophonic C chords and climbs up the circle of fifths through F sharps, C sharps and even a G sharp, the communion begins on the sharp side and works its way back down to the characteristic F-major sound based on the seventh degree of the scale. F is reached on the word manducabitis, referring to the physical act of consuming the Eucharist—a progression that further recalls the parallel with qui manducat at the end of the gradual/alleluia group, where all four voices dwell on F major for the accented syllable of this most fleshly and most important word.68 The alternating paired duets in thirds and sixths that follow at et calicem bibe-

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Text Types and Settings  •  149

Ex. 4.8.  Quotiescunque manducabitis (Communion for Corpus Christi)

tis recall similar passages elsewhere in the set: in both introit alleluias, at the beginning of Oculi omnium, and, more immediately, in the justly famous final alleluia of Sacerdotes Domini. The word itaque, “therefore,” is the rhetorical turning point of the communion. After a statement of fact, the text turns to exhortation and a direct imperative. At this crucial word, the sonority shifts once again from D major to F major, as it did in the first measures of the piece. This time the shift happens in the quickest possible manner with a direct cross-relation, and the music remains centered on F for the brief duration of the word. Although the phrase is not homophonic, the absence of harmonic change and the three unmoving semibreves of F in the bass give a strong impression of stasis and simultaneity. Manducaverit panem, in contrast, expresses vigorous action, with overlapping

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150  •  Liturgy and Contemplation in Byrd’s Gradualia scalar ascents that seem to go on forever. The bass voice (in contrast to its total lack of motion on itaque) rises through two-and-a-half octaves of rising scales on the word panem alone, with compensatory downward leaps to avoid extremes of range. Et biberit provides further variety with a pair of true freestanding polyphonic duets, as opposed to the parallel or simultaneous duet writing usual elsewhere in this proper. The texture here is polymetric as well as polyphonic, with a temporary shift to triple time and conflicting accents in different parts. To underscore the novelty of this device, the soprano and alto sing their duet alone, then are joined by the tenor and bass, who enter with the same material while the upper voices continue in polymetric imitation. Paul’s threat to his ill-behaved Corinthians comes with the words reus erit, “will be guilty.” Byrd treats this statement (see ex. 4.8) with a technique for illustrating solemnity found elsewhere in the Gradualia, as in the sub honore passages in the two Gaudeamus introits. There is an abrupt broadening of harmonic rhythm, and a slowing down of note values by a full factor of two, most notably in the bass. The music also returns for the third and last time to dwell on the F-major chord of the seventh degree, with a full breve of F in the bass. Byrd even revisits the transition from D, though now from D minor instead of the more remote D major leading into itaque. After the deceptive cadence on sanguinis Domini, the eventual resolution leading into the alleluia is overshadowed by the sudden appearance of the cautionary B flat in the tenor, a note arising from the unexpected alteration of the point as first stated in the soprano. The alleluia unfolds at some length, with the soprano voice making free use of the high E as it does in the bright alleluias of the introit. There are again two cadences: a perfect cadence prepared by a bass pedal, with a flurry of eighth-note ornamentation passed through all three upper voices in turn, and a cadence with an elaborate plagal extension that brings the piece to an end. The Corpus Christi communion is not a serene final meditation. Byrd responds to the tense, hortatory phrases of the text with corresponding musical material, often reminiscent of the rest of the cycle but with a distinctive flavor all its own. Direct comparison with a chant setting would be interesting, but the medieval compilers of the Corpus Christi proper did not leave us that option. Although the chant version of Quotiescunque shares the bright G mode of the Gregorian gradual, alleluia, and sequence for the day, the mode also common to Byrd’s polyphonic renditions, it has nothing to do musically with the text. It is a contrafactum, a near-literal reworking of the Pentecost communion Factus est repente, complete with the (now oddly inappropriate) rushing ascent, fall, and reascent of a fifth followed by ornamental figures in the highest register. Byrd appears not to have taken any direct musical cues from this chant melody on either occasion, though there are some general resemblances between his respective treatments of the Corpus Christi and Pentecost communions. They share a G modality, a D-major chordal opening, passages of lively counterpoint, and diminutions in the final alleluia, as well

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Text Types and Settings  •  151 as a generally extrovert mood, but it is difficult to imagine two more different pieces within these boundaries. The musical setting, here as elsewhere in the Gradualia, takes shape above all in response to the form and content of the words being set. Textual form and content also affect every phrase of the Easter communion Pascha nostrum (7a/132; 278). It is typical of Easter texts that they be broken up by internal alleluias. This communion has one; the introit Resurrexi has two; the antiphon Regina coeli has three. At the end of a piece, one, two, or even three alleluias are likewise present as the distinctive conclusion. Such interpolations and additions can influence, or even dictate, the structure of a musical setting. The nature of these texts is that of joyful interruption, sometimes not even waiting for a sentence to run its course before breaking in with multiple alleluias. This tendency toward fragmentation affects the whole run of paschal music in the Gradualia, up to and including Pentecost, but Byrd’s treatment of the Easter propers reflects it most strongly. The first phrase of Pascha nostrum (see Ex. 4.9) is worked out smoothly, all five voices beginning with imitation by exact inversion: the descending figure D—A—B-flat—A is answered by the ascending D—G—F-sharp—G. The only other openings of this kind in the Gradualia are in the Epiphany offertory Reges Tharsis and the exceptional (on all counts) Plorans plorabit. Their effect is one of unusual gravity and formality—it is not surprising that the texts of both Reges Tharsis and Plorans plorabit deal in some way with the topic of royalty—and a sense of unhurried exposition, almost a return to the scale and perspective of the Cantiones. Pascha nostrum begins with the same expansive, solemn atmosphere.69 The setting of the opening words is most striking in comparison with Byrd’s earlier treatment of them in the alleluia verse, where they pass in tense declamation, including the only E-major chord (m. 32) in the entire cycle. The more complex polyphony of these first bars of the communion does not last for long. In the midst of the ornate cadence to G, the second soprano jumps in (m. 10) with an apparently premature alleluia, including an unprepared seventh above the bass D. Parallel entrances in the other upper voices, with identical dissonances, follow in the next two measures.70 Here, as in the Easter introit, the first alleluia and what follows it are surprising interpolations into what could well have unfolded as a different sort of piece. Kerman describes the opening of the communion as a “rich, complex, flowing” opening point abruptly ended by “a 3-breve alleluia which overlaps its cadence in an almost insulting fashion.” This overlap is certainly a surprise, but is far from insulting; it is the last step in a progressive series of gestures that spans the entire Easter set. As the cycle develops, the internal alleluias become more closely integrated with the music and text leading into them. In the introit, the first alleluia is approached with a full stop in all voices; the second merges with the neighboring text phrase via a tiny rising figure in

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152  •  Liturgy and Contemplation in Byrd’s Gradualia

Ex. 4.9.  Pascha nostrum (Communion for Easter)

the first soprano. When the gradual Haec dies meets with the following alleluia, the latter makes its entrance just as the cadential suspension is resolved. Finally, in the communion, the alleluia appears even before the cadence is completed, and it introduces a series of repeated ornamental dissonances into the end of the phrase. The basic text has become indistinguishable from the now characteristic expression of rejoicing attached to it. Byrd’s settings of these internal alleluias are certainly interruptions, but interruptions arising from joyful reflection on the words, not from haste or lack of decorum. Such an easy familiarity with seasonal additions fits well into the contemporary recusant milieu in which he worked, where it was natural for even a vernacular, nonliturgical book of meditations to prescribe an alternative to the alleluia for seasons in which it was not allowed.71 The short alleluia dissolves almost immediately into the next section—there is just one breve’s time (m. 12) where the text is only “alleluia.” What follows in all five voices is the crux of this short piece. As in the Corpus Christi com-

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Text Types and Settings  •  153

Ex. 4.9. (continued)

munion, the important transitional word itaque receives the boldest harmonic turn of all. Byrd underscores it here (m. 13) with exactly the same shift from D major to F major that articulates the corresponding moment in Quotiescunque, including a near-adjacent false relation. The repeated C échappée in the sopranos has also prepared the fifth of this new harmony, a note which will be repeated incessantly in the upper voices through the rest of the piece. Once Pascha nostrum has shifted to F on the word itaque, and gone through several almost haranguing tonic-dominant repetitions (mm. 13–15), it lingers primarily in that area for the whole middle section and much of the concluding alleluia (see ex. 4.10). This middle section builds up to a series of declamations on sinceritatis et veritatis (mm 19–26), which Brett identifies convincingly (following the lead of the Douai-Rheims New Testament) as a topical exhortation to “sincerity and truth” in the face of all-too-frequent treachery and deception among beleaguered recusants.72 There is also contrast between the musical treatments of these two words, most of all in the final repetition, where sincerity is set to swift, crystal-clear homophony and truth to an elaborate polyphonic cadence.

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154  •  Liturgy and Contemplation in Byrd’s Gradualia

Ex. 4.10.  From Pascha nostrum (Communion for Easter)

After this broad declamatory passage, the piece winds down swiftly. Unlike the corresponding point in the Corpus Christi communion, the move to the final alleluias admits no ironic misgivings. The alleluias appear in an onslaught of quarter notes, crowding each other and interweaving in a clear gesture of proliferation. Byrd does the same at the end of one other communion, Factus est repente (7b, 53; 308).73 These are the two communions in the Gradualia where the text prescribes more than one final alleluia (two for Pentecost, three for Easter), and the teeming arpeggiated entries may well be an illustration of this text repetition that could otherwise get lost in a polyphonic setting. In Pascha nostrum, the alleluias persist in the bright major mode almost to the end. Only in the last measures does a sequential bass line lead back to the prevailing mode of the cycle, via the first and only low A heard in the piece (m. 31), followed by a poignant bass leap (m. 32) up a minor sixth from D to B flat and a final cadence (m. 33) full of subtle dissonances in the closest harmony.

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Text Types and Settings  •  155

Ex.4.10. (continued)

Examining the music of the Corpus Christi and Easter communions begins to reveal how Byrd treats his communion texts. The final alleluias, and indeed all the characteristic expressions of rejoicing in these pieces, are integrated into the mood and the logic of what has come before in both the piece and the whole set. Byrd does not seize on them as raw material for climactic gestures to conclude a proper cycle. Occasionally, as with the jewellike Beata viscera for the Nativity of Mary, the last piece in a set appears at first to be almost anticlimactic. In almost all cases, with the possible exceptions of the very extrovert Factus est repente and Tu es Petrus, the hearer is left with a distinct impression of understatement, a sense that Byrd has been applying some broad idea of proportion and not merely exploiting the (often highly colored) communion text as an effective finale. A useful comparison here is between Byrd’s All Saints communion Beati mundo corde (6a/54; 112) and the motet Beati estis by his fellow recusant Peter Philips, both of which draw on the same source text.74 The latter piece (see Ex. 4.11) was published in Philips’s 1613 Cantiones sacrae octonis vocibus. Although he spent most of his adult life in exile in various parts of Catholic

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156  •  Liturgy and Contemplation in Byrd’s Gradualia

Ex. 4.11.  Peter Philips, Beati estis

Europe, Philips appears to have been in persistent contact with the English musical community, and to have continued exchanging music across the English Channel.75 It is entirely possible that Byrd may have seen this and similar pieces, whether in manuscript or in a printed volume. Both texts are taken from the biblical Beatitudes: Beati estis, cum maledixerint vobis homines, et persecuti vos fuerint, et dixerint omne malum adversum vos, mentientes, propter me: Gaudete et exsultate, quoniam merces vestra copiosa est in caelis. Cum vos oderint homines, et cum separaverint vos, et exprobraverint, et ejecerint nomen vestrum tamquam malum propter Filium hominis: Gaudete et exsultate, quoniam merces vestra copiosa est in caelis. alleluia. Blessed are you when men shall revile you, and persecute you, and say all kinds of evil against you falsely for my sake: Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven. When men hate you, and exclude you, and defame you, and cast your name out as evil because of the Son of man: Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven. alleluia.

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Text Types and Settings  •  157

Ex. 4.11. (continued)

This is a fairly comprehensive catalog of the things that could happen to a religious dissident in early modern England. It is clear from the presentation and subject matter of this and Philips’s other motets that he, like Byrd, took part in the characteristic recusant tropes of assertive faith and resistance to

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158  •  Liturgy and Contemplation in Byrd’s Gradualia

Ex. 4.11. (continued)

adversity. As a composer who chose exile in more or less favorable conditions over the difficulties of Catholic musical life in England, and who appears to have favored the militant over the melancholy, he did not follow Byrd in writing laments over the captivity of his coreligionists or the the ruin of an allegorical “Jerusalem.” Nonetheless, he did not shrink from politically charged topics. Beati estis is the second in a large collection of double-choir motets that begins with a grandiose dedication to the pope denouncing “the discord of heresy,” followed by an equally grandiose setting of Tu es Petrus.76 Philips’s motet on the Beatitudes, like Byrd’s Beati mundo corde, evokes both persecution and its ultimate rewards. The greatest difference between the two pieces, which are relatively similar in both text and broad structure, is in the musical presentation. While Byrd sets the three sections of Beati mundo corde as largely self-contained units with more-or-less evenhanded exposition of the text, Philips passes swiftly through the blessings and the lists of adversities in swift, economical declamation, in fact reserving the entire first phrase (from Beati to propter me) to the first choir alone. The full expressive possibilities of the eight-part choir unfold only with the entrances on gaudete et exsultate, and above all in the brilliant triple-time alleluia with its hemiolas and polychoral fireworks, which, like Byrd’s alleluia in the nonliturgical Haec dies, is a separate entity that occupies nearly a third of the total length of the piece. To continue the parallel with the 1591 Haec dies, Philips is working here with the evocation of a liturgical event—the celebration of All Saints’ Day and of the martyrs—rather than with the actual event itself. Byrd treats a similar

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Text Types and Settings  •  159 text very differently in Beati mundo corde. He presents the heavenly reward as a point of repose, as the resolution of a long and somewhat problematic cycle of music, and not as an opportunity for a crowning touch of exuberance. The final words on the recompense of the righteous, quoniam ipsorum est regnum caelorum, in fact usher in a gesture of unwinding after the intensity of the previous section: a web of descending and interlocking figures, settling down gradually to a radiant cadence on the F-major final unique in the Gradualia to this set of propers (see Ex. 4.12). There are no elaborate baroque rejoicings at the end of the All Saints’ communion, although the later Byrd has certainly shown himself (as in the nonliturgical 1607 Venite exsultemus or the 1611 Turn our captivity) capable of similar climactic gestures. His emphasis here is different—a point that is easy to ignore until one imagines how a triumphant major-mode All Saints’ piece might have concluded in the early seventeenth century. Byrd, here as elsewhere, is doing something entirely distinctive with the raw material at hand.

Ex. 4.12.  From Beati mundo corde (Communion for All Saints’ Day)

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160  •  Liturgy and Contemplation in Byrd’s Gradualia

Ex. 4.12. (continued) Office Music In addition to the propers for the feast-day Mass cycle, Byrd provided music for both the votive Office of the Virgin and the regular Office cycle of the year. For the recusant community of his day, the most visible distinction between the two major genres in the Gradualia was a practical one. To take part in the Mass, it was necessary to obtain the somewhat rare and always highly dangerous ministrations of a priest, but even the most elaborate celebrations of lauds, vespers, or other hours of the Office could be carried out freely by lay Catholics. Brett describes the general shift halfway through the four-part fascicle of Gradualia I from Mass to Office music, from the breviary to the primer, as a “step . . . from public to private.”77 Given the clandestine nature of all the activities in question, it could be called a step from private to truly intimate. The Marian Office was among the most important markers of recusant devotion. Like the feast-day cycle, it was also a hotly contested practice, brought up

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Text Types and Settings  •  161 regularly in English Protestant attacks on “idolatry” or unenlightened popular piety. The hymns belonging to the Little Office of the Virgin (all four of which are set in the 1605 Gradualia) were particular targets of criticism, and at least three of the four are quoted in anti-Catholic polemics. Matthew Sutcliffe’s Challenge concerning the Romish Church returns to them several times: Do they not also worship the holy virgin Marie, and call her a starre, and say, ave Maris stella: haile thou starre of the sea, alluding, percase, to Venus. . . .?78 To the virgine Mary they pray thus, Ave maris stella, Dei mater alma, atq; semper virgo, felix caeli porta, solve vincla reis, profer lumen caecis.79 The ancient fathers never prayed to our Lady after the new Romish fashion, nor thought it lawful to say, Maria mater gratiae, mater misericordiae, tu nos ab hoste protege, & hora mortis suscipe.80 Thomas Bell’s Woefull crie of Rome, printed in the same year as Gradualia I, also cites this last passage as evidence of Mariolatry, along with the complete third and fourth stanzas of Ave maris stella.81 The 1581 Caveat for Parsons Howlet by John Field argues that “you might aswell [sic] make a syllogisme of Quem terra pontus, to prove of nothing something.”82 The 1623 Pill to purge out Poperie accuses Catholics of denying the articles of Christian faith by making Mary into a savior, with the by now familiar text: “and therefore they pray thus to her: Tu nos ab hoste protege, & hora mortis suscipe.”83 These texts were even more ubiquitous among English Catholics themselves than among their detractors. The Jesuit missionary Robert Persons observed that “when no publick [Office] can be said . . . at least the Service of our Lady may be said by some one or other.”84 Henry Chaderton, under house arrest in London during the 1590s, recited the Little Office every day, rarely failing to do so unless circumstances prevented it.85 The young Edward Laythwaite studied as much as he could in adverse conditions, “in which time I made no more progress in letters than to be able to read the office of the Blessed Virgin, though not yet to understand it.”86 His contemporary John Jackson met a young Catholic woman while he was a student in York; she impressed him with her explanations of religious matters, “and when I left there that noble lady gave me a rosary, an office of the Blessed Virgin, and a Jesus Psalter”—devotional items that appear eventually to have led to his conversion. The biographer of another notable recusant woman, the martyr Margaret Clitherow, recalled her longstanding desire to enter a monastic order “if that it pleased God so to dispose, and set her at liberty from the world . . . and to this end (not knowing what God would do with her) she learned our Lady’s Matins in Latin.”87

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162  •  Liturgy and Contemplation in Byrd’s Gradualia Edmund Campion, in a lively description (De iuvene academico) of the ideal student, shows the same enthusiasm for committing the Marian Office to memory and saying it regularly, whether or not there is the chance to attend a more communal form of worship: “He recited daily, in fact from memory, the hours of the Blessed Virgin; he would say a day had passed without sunshine, if he had not heard mass during it.”88 Richard Verstegan’s 1599 Primer, or office of the blessed virgin Marie was a handbook encouraging the laity to this practice: a parallel English/Latin adaptation of the Officium B. Mariae Virginis nuper reformatum promulgated by Pius V in 1571.89 It enjoyed great popularity in Byrd’s day, just as similar bilingual books of devotion had on the eve of the Reformation.90 As part of the common currency of recusant devotion, Marian Office texts appeared in both English and Latin with equal frequency and familiarity. Recall the language of John Sweetnam’s Paradise of Delights, a guided meditation through the forty-five attributes of the Virgin in the Litany of Loreto: “He that pretendeth to enter into the glorious Citty of the heavenly Jerusalem, must knock at this beautifull gate the Blessed Virgin, who therefore by the holy Church is so intytled, as in that divine hymne Ave maris stella, she is said to be Felix caeli porta, the happy gate of heaven: and in the Anthym Ave regina Coelorum, we say, Salve radix, salve porta, ex qua mundo lux est orta: All hayle o B. roote, all hayle o heavenly gate.”91 The preface to the hymn translations in Verstegan’s Primer reflect the same flexibility: “The hymnes in the Office of our Lady . . . (notwithstanding the difficultie) are so turned into English meeter, as that they may be soong unto the same tunes in English, that they been in Latin.”92 English Catholic interest in the Little Office is reflected in the music of the Gradualia, which includes, along with the four Marian antiphons pertaining to the various seasons, a cycle of four through-composed hymns for this purpose: Quem terra, pontus, aethera (6b/83; 177) for Matins; O gloriosa domina (6b/89; 181) for Lauds; Memento salutis auctor (6b/93; 183) for the minor hours of the day;93 and Ave maris stella (6b/97; 186) for Vespers. Byrd mentions in his 1605 introduction that he has included “all the hymns composed in honor of the Blessed Virgin” (“omnes hymni in laudem Virginis compositi”), and they are printed together in the three-part fascicle of Gradualia I, in their liturgical order as listed above.94 These are in fact all of the Marian hymns, strictly speaking, sung in the post-Tridentine Office. The four Marian feasts named in the Gradualia—Candlemas, the Annunciation, the Assumption, and the Nativity of Mary—use the same series of hymns as the votive Marian Office. When William Fulke complained in his Retentive about the Assumption and the “barbarous hymnes in the popish Churche that daye,” he was referring to the same material used in the Little Office; even the antiphons proper to that feast were sung as part of the daily Marian hours. These four hymns add an important new dimension to Byrd’s “totius anni Officia.”95 It is entirely possible that his Marian hymns were also used

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Text Types and Settings  •  163 on the feasts of the Virgin to which they pertained. He did not set hymns as extensively as he set Office antiphons; the only others in the Gradualia are his through-composed alternatim setting of Pange lingua (6a/97; 134), for vespers and the procession on Corpus Christi, and his complete setting of Jesu nostra redemptio (7a/93; 257) for the Ascension. By including the four Marian hymns, he nevertheless provides at least one piece of Office music for every feast day but one in his Mass cycle, as well as for the ongoing celebration of the Little Office. The only feast that lacks Office music altogether is Epiphany, whose Mass proper was printed in the 1607 set in an incomplete and somewhat garbled state; could an antiphon or hymn have been lost at the printer’s, along with part of the gradual and the alleluia? One of the few items present in Verstegan’s primer, but not in the Roman original, is a group of “antiphonaes, verses and prayers of the principall feastes of the whole yeare.”96 This cycle of Magnificat antiphons, versicles, and collects comprises the major feasts of the Temporale and Sanctorale, though with the conspicuous omission of all Marian feast-days—either for political reasons, or because Verstegan considered the Little Office to be sufficient for commemorations of the Virgin.97 Corpus Christi is also missing. The remaining list includes each of the other seven Gradualia feasts, here italicized; Byrd set the four underlined Magnificat antiphons (all for second vespers). Byrd’s cycle of Office antiphons also accounts further, though in a less orderly fashion, for a number of these days. For Pentecost, he sets the antiphon at first Vespers, Non vos relinquam orphanos (7b/73; 318), instead of the piece at second Vespers, Hodie completi sunt, which is given by Verstegan. The feast of Sts. Peter and Paul, like Corpus Christi, is lavishly provided for: Byrd sets both Magnificat antiphons for these days, as well as the Benedictus antiphon at Lauds. O quam gloriosum appeared more than fifteen years earlier (though with an unusual composite text) in the 1589 Cantiones, in the same clef combination and mode as the All Saints’ propers.98 As in the Verstegan primer, none of Byrd’s Marian feasts receive additional Office items—except for Candlemas, with antiphons for both first and second vespers provided in the four-part fascicle of Gradualia I. Near the end of his primer, Verstegan prints two additional series of liturgical texts: Sunday collects, and additional saints’ day collects, with their antiphons and versicles. Byrd’s composite Post dies octo/Mane nobiscum Domine (6b/125; 200) sets the antiphon and versicle for Dominica in albis, the octave of Easter, in the order given by Verstegan—not in the standard order of the breviary, where the versicle precedes the antiphon.99 Byrd also provides both antiphons for the brief celebration of vespers on Easter Eve, Alleluia and Vespere autem sabbati (6b/117; 196), with a more or less continuous paraphrase of the chant in the uppermost voice. Finally, the Christmas/Epiphany section of Gradualia II includes O admirabile commercium (7a/28; 223), the first psalm antiphon for the feast of the Circumcision on January 1.100

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164  •  Liturgy and Contemplation in Byrd’s Gradualia Table 4.1  Magnificat Antiphons Printed with their Versicles and Collects in Verstegan’s 1599 Primer Christmas (Hodie Christus natus est)

Pentecost (Hodie completi sunt)

St. Stephen

Trinity Sunday

St. John

St. John the Baptist

Epiphany (Tribus miraculis)

Sts. Peter and Paul (Constitues eos)

First Sunday of Lent

St. Lawrence

Palm Sunday

St. Michael

Easter (Et respicientes/Haec dies)

All Saints’ Day (O quam gloriosum)

The Ascension (O rex gloriae) Note: Italicized feasts are part of the Gradualia cycle; pieces underlined are set to music in the Gradualia.

The subcycle of Office antiphons in the Gradualia can be summarized in a table: Table 4.2  Office Antiphons in Both Volumes of the Gradualia, in Liturgical Order Title Feast Antiphon to Hodie Christus natus est Christmas Magnificat, second Vespers O admirabile commercium Circumcision First psalm, Vespers/Lauds Senex puerum portabat Candlemas Magnificat, first Vespers Hodie beata Virgo Candlemas Magnificat, second Vespers Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia Easter Psalm, first Vespers Vespere autem sabbati Easter Magnificat, first Vespers Post dies octo Octave of Easter Magnificat, second Vespers O Rex gloriae Ascension Magnificat, second Vespers Non vos relinquam Pentecost Magnificat, first Vespers O quam suavis Corpus Christi Magnificat, first Vespers Ego sum panis vivus Corpus Christi Benedictus, Lauds O sacrum convivium Corpus Christi Magnificat, second Vespers Tu es Pastor ovium Sts. Peter and Paul; Magnificat, first Vespers St. Peter’s Chains Quodcunque ligaveris Sts. Peter and Paul; Benedictus, Lauds St. Peter’s Chains Hodie Simon Petrus Sts. Peter and Paul Magnificat, second Vespers

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Book 2 2 1 1 1 1 1 2 2 2 1 2 2 2 2

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Text Types and Settings  •  165 In addition to these antiphons, as we have seen, Byrd composed hymns for Corpus Christi, the Ascension, and all four of the major Marian feasts. All of this recalls nothing more than the elaborate collection of Office music written by John Sheppard and Thomas Tallis for the mid-sixteenthcentury Chapel Royal: over sixty pieces in all, arranged to suit the liturgical calendar.101 The resulting coverage of the year (excepting only high-summer feasts such as the Assumption, during which court was out of session and the Chapel Royal was on holiday) is almost seamless and of the highest musical quality throughout. Byrd, who almost certainly was involved as a teenager in the London choral milieu of the 1550s and took part in the brief CounterReformation revival of elaborate liturgical polyphony, must have been deeply impressed by singing and hearing this music day after day.102 In the Gradualia Office cycle, his debt to the previous generation of English Catholic composers is perhaps clearest of all.

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5

Chronology and Narrative

Where might William Byrd have started the large-scale task of composing and assembling the Gradualia? We can safely assume that the collection did not appear fully formed in a single burst of inspiration. Anomalies of style, scoring, arrangement, and rubrication suggest that some of the earliest layers composed were in fact printed as part of book 2 in 1607. This leads to the hypothesis that he approached the Gradualia, at least once he had begun the intensive work on it described in his prefaces, as a collection ultimately unified in purpose though split (for a number of reasons) between two separate prints. When read as a single yearlong cycle, in liturgical order rather than print order, it reveals careful organization by mode, scoring, and affect to form a sustained trajectory through what Henry Garnet called “the principall pointes of the life of our Saviour, and of his holy Mother.”1 It is not only a comprehensive resource for practical use, but also a carefully structured narrative in its own right. The music offers some internal clues about Byrd’s working procedure. Joseph Kerman draws a speculative chronology for the five-voice Marian propers of book 1, and concludes that the Candlemas set seems to have been the first of these composed, with the Nativity of Mary a likely candidate for the second.2 His evidence for the early origin of Candlemas includes its opening position in the book, the peculiar status of the introit doxology (which appears to be an earlier version of the doxology in the Nativity/Lady Mass introit Salve sancta parens), the unparalleled shift from three to four voices in the middle of the gradual verse, the slight awkwardness of the cut and transfer required to assemble the gradual, and the unusually sweeping dimensions of the communion. An additional point in favor of an early origin for Candlemas is the presence of four-voice (Senex puerum, Hodie beata Virgo) and threevoice (Adorna thalamum tuum) music for the feast in the miscellaneous section of the 1605 book. This is the single exception to Byrd’s self-imposed rule of always using the same number of singers for a given day, and it may well be an artifact of an earlier stage of composition, when he was less concerned with unity of scoring and mode throughout a given day’s music. “That the Nativity Mass was composed next after the Purification,” Kerman notes, “is suggested by its anomalous position as the second Mass in the Gradualia and also, in a somewhat roundabout way, by the anomalous manner 167

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168  •  Liturgy and Contemplation in Byrd’s Gradualia in which the music itself is presented.”3 Four out of five pieces in the Nativity Mass do additional duty as part of the Marian votive cycle, but their consistent presentation as belonging to the feast-day set (even while Byrd includes the optional alleluias required only in the votive Masses) may reflect an early origin for the Nativity Mass, indeed before Byrd had planned out the votive music in any systematic way.4 Turning to the rest of the Gradualia, Kerman goes on to construct a rough chronology for the entire feast-day cycle, something that had never before been tried—not least because a comparably serious reading of the individual pieces had never been attempted. John Milsom remarks on this accomplishment in his review of Masses and Motets; Kerman “made it his aim to trace both the roots and the stages of growth in this tangle, and he tackles the job with magnificent determination. The theory he constructs is entirely new, and because of that perhaps the most important achievement in the book.”5 He identifies the contents of Gradualia II, with the apparent exception of the pieces for Sts. Peter and Paul, as music of consistently later origin than Gradualia I. There is the tendency toward more systematic organization in the 1607 book, a number of apparent stylistic differences between the 1605 pieces (most notably the Marian Masses) and their 1607 counterparts, and the fact that the first volume was not marketed as liber primus until both were reprinted together in 1610. All of this points, in Kerman’s view, to a more or less straightforward division between the production of the two books, with “the bulk of the contents of book 2 . . . composed rather rapidly in 1605,” before political developments in England made it too risky to plan large-scale Catholic liturgical publications.6 It is clear that the two volumes and their contents are in some ways different, and that Byrd, in assembling Gradualia II, had the obvious advantage of having already compiled and launched his first large-scale liturgical collection (what James Jackman has called “on internal evidence alone . . . something of a trial balloon”).7 When the entire series is considered with no preexisting judgments as to Byrd’s schedule, though, a number of factors point to the 1607 Christmas proper as being the earliest of all. This timetable, if accurate, has considerable implications for the nature of the collection in general. Before returning to more general questions of content and chronology, it is worth examining the internal evidence of the Christmas set. This set, the first in the 1607 book, is notable for being Byrd’s only Mass proper with music in more than one clef combination. The introit Puer natus is scored in low clefs, c1/c3/c4/f4, while the rest of the proper is in higher clefs with two equal soprano parts, c1/c1/c3/f4.8 The associated music for the Christmas Office is also in the higher clef combination, with the exception of the low-clef O magnum mysterium/Beata virgo, which is (uniquely among all the Office items in the Gradualia) a responsory for Matins rather than an antiphon or hymn for one of the day hours. Kerman argues that “though the

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Chronology and Narrative  •  169 possibility must be considered that the three motets in question [i.e. these two anomalous items and the Circumcision responsory O admirabile commercium] are earlier pieces incorporated into the scheme of book 2, one is hard put to support this idea on stylistic grounds.”9 They are quite unlikely to be much earlier pieces—that is, of the vintage of his Cantiones. There is nothing at all in them to point to an origin before 1590, when Byrd turned to the compact, highly charged liturgical style equally evident in the three Mass ordinaries and the Christmas music. It is almost certain that the music of the Gradualia (with a handful of debatable exceptions such as Christus resurgens, In manus tuas, Ave verum, and perhaps Adoramus te) was composed within the decade leading up to its publication. Within this formidable project, on the other hand, there are stylistic clues that reveal a relatively early origin for a number of pieces. The Christmas set, even more so than the Candlemas set, is chief among them. The Christmas introit is the one piece in its Mass with the anomalous low clefs. Given Byrd’s stubborn adherence to a consistent group of voices for each Mass—which persists even across the two books of Gradualia, as in the music for the votive celebration of the Sacrament—this anomaly is a sign that the introit may well have been composed very early on in the project. A polyphonic introit would be a logical beginning for a composer who wished to start engaging with proper settings, and the importance (both religious and social) of Christmas in the recusant community would make it a yet clearer choice. It is likely that Byrd began his engagement with Christmas music by writing the two anomalous pieces in low clefs—the introit, an understandable thing to set on its own, and the motetlike responsory text O magnum mysterium—and then filled out the rest of the proper with new music, keeping the established mode and style but altering the texture somewhat. There were certainly Renaissance precedents both for setting O magnum mysterium (not least Victoria’s renowned motet on that text) and for composing a polyphonic feast-day introit. Byrd seems to have seized on both possibilities while the Gradualia was still in its embryonic stage; the rest of the Christmas set was his attempt to fill in around these pieces as part of what was slowly becoming a larger project. This introit is distinguished, above all, by its use of the opening motive (see ex. 5.1) from the Puer natus chant.10 No other introit in the Gradualia— indeed, no other Mass proper item—uses a chant incipit in the same way.11 A composer taking tentative first steps toward setting a Mass proper could hardly have begun in a more obvious place than with such an opening—and nowhere more so than on Christmas, with the almost iconic status of the rising fifth that announces “unto us a child is born.” The first page of music in Gradualia II begins with it. This chant-based exordium in three of the four voices, printed solemnly in the semibreve ligatures that persisted well into the seventeenth century in such circumstances, is a fitting gesture to begin

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170  •  Liturgy and Contemplation in Byrd’s Gradualia

Ex. 5.1  Puer natus est nobis (Introit for Christmas)

a systematic collection of liturgical music. Kerman recalls the parallel to the Puer natus Mass of Tallis, a substantial and elaborate work on the same chant melody that the younger Byrd would surely have known through his teacher.12 Byrd’s decision to open the book with such a gesture is an appeal to tradition on a number of separate but intersecting levels. For what is in fact the first Gradualia item in the annual feast-day cycle, preceded only by the Advent Lady Mass in the 1605 book, this iconic opening is all the more suitable. By using the Puer natus incipit in this way, Byrd is following a thread that reaches back through the Renaissance and Middle Ages to the origins of sacred polyphony. A chant quotation, even a brief and symbolic one, has a normative status that gives authority to the new composition that surrounds it. In her analysis of Jacob Obrecht’s Christmas motet Factor orbis, Jennifer Bloxam draws a parallel between the cantus firmus given in long notes at the center of a complex musical presentation—in this case, the incipit of the antiphon Canite tuba in Sion—and the authoritative scriptural text given in bold type at the center of an elaborately glossed Bible page.13 Obrecht’s opening gesture, which incidentally shares both the general subject matter and the trumpeting fifth of Puer natus, functions not only as a practical framework for the opening of the piece, but also as a reference to a liturgical and scriptural authority much greater than the particular motet at hand. The unmistakable incipit on the first page of Byrd’s Christmas proper functions in the same way, recalling

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Chronology and Narrative  •  171

Ex. 5.2.  Christmas proper: Gradual (a), Offertory (b), Communion (c)

the familiar chant and the consistent celebration of the feast (something rarely taken for granted among recusants) over so many centuries. He never began another proper set with such a gesture; as the only opening of its kind in the Gradualia, it is likely that it belongs to one of his very first essays in the genre. The influence of this distinctive opening gesture does not stop with the introit. The other Mass proper items for Christmas all share a loosely connected set (see ex. 5.2) of head motives, derived from the chant incipit and its countersubject.14 The opening point of the gradual Viderunt omnes, introduced by the second soprano, is very similar to the beginning of Puer natus; the rising fifth and the solemn series of long notes is intact, with only one change in pitch content, the fourth semibreve being F instead of G. The two

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172  •  Liturgy and Contemplation in Byrd’s Gradualia countersubjects to this point are quite alike in pitch contour throughout the first three breves, and they use similar syncopations as they enter and progress against the slow-moving upper voice. Byrd’s second setting of Viderunt omnes, the Christmas communion on a shorter form of the same text, opens with a subtle transformation of the rising cantus-firmus figure that originates with the Puer natus incipit and continues in the gradual.15 The fifth is expanded into a minor sixth in the first soprano, the bass, and eventually the tenor, incorporating the expressive semitone so familiar from Byrd’s earlier Latin works, and adding a new dimension to what is by this point in the proper a quite familiar gesture.16 The octave leap of the tenor countersubject is finally stretched to a tenth. Tui sunt coeli, the offertory, prepares this final development by outlining the same minor sixth in its initial ascending figure; the three upper voices of the offertory and the communion in fact enter with essentially the same music. This link makes the sudden coloring of the head-motive in the latter piece into an unexpected but marvelous gesture of synthesis.17 The opening phrases of the first-layer Mass proper for Candlemas are organized in a similar way. Alan Brown, in his review of Kerman’s Masses and Motets, revisits “the question of motivic unity between movements” by examining the Candlemas set.18 He reiterates Kerman’s understandable misgivings about the presence of explicit head-motives in the manner of the Mass ordinaries, but identifies a clear series of such motives in all the movements of the Candlemas set (excepting the alleluia, which is required only when the feast falls before Septuagesima, and appears in any case to have been composed after the rest of the group).19 The rising figure D-F (see ex. 5.3), sung in long notes in the alto register and often complemented by the higher figure A-D as a countersubject, is an immutable fixture throughout the day’s proper; it is already well established in the introit and verse, and made clearest of all by the solemn cantus-firmus treatment of the figure in the communion.20 Brown, following the suggestion in Masses and Motets that the Candlemas set was the first written of the Marian group, offers the explanation that this set “might . . . also share some use of the head-motive technique” of the fivepart ordinary, with which it shares the same mode and overall vocal range.21 Given the reasonably secure dating of this ordinary as not only the last published but the last composed, it is not at all surprising that there should have been some overlap in method.22 Opening motives of this kind are absent from other proper sets in the first book, such as the music for All Saints’ Day; this appears to have been a technique Byrd tried but ultimately rejected, perhaps while negotiating the thickets of the Marian fascicle and realizing that no single Mass in this group could be composed in isolation from the others.23 The unusual concentration of such head motives in the Christmas and Candlemas sets is a further suggestion that they came relatively early.

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Chronology and Narrative  •  173

Ex. 5.3.  Head motives from the Candlemas proper: Introit (a), Introit verse (b), Gradual verse (c), Tract (d), Tract verse (e), Offertory (f), Communion (g).

The opening figure common to nearly all of the Candlemas pieces also has much in common with the incipits of the day’s Mass chants. Even taking into account the formulaic resemblances among otherwise unrelated pieces of chant and polyphony, there is a perceptible link here with Byrd’s theme: the chant gradual, tract, offertory, and communion all open with the same D–F figure, and the alleluia with a very similar gesture. Byrd could hardly have picked a more suitable source for the artificial cantus firmus of his head motive, above all in its extraordinary use at the beginning of the communion. His approach to the Christmas set draws on the same source, the normative chant setting of the day’s proper, in a yet more overt way.

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174  •  Liturgy and Contemplation in Byrd’s Gradualia Byrd’s Candlemas set is a demonstrably early part of the Gradualia, and it makes free use of head-motive technique, apparently adapting material from the day’s chant proper. His Christmas music reveals the same compositional process, which points to a comparably early origin. Kerman warns against the modern attraction to a “tighter ‘unification’ that we may seek uneasily in the Gradualia as the result of habits ingrained from the study of nineteenth- and especially early twentieth-century music.”24 Such unification is not present everywhere in Byrd’s Mass propers, and when it is, it should, as Brown points out, be taken as a sign of something distinctive in the composer’s method and chronology. Another connection between these two apparently early proper sets is their inconsistent layout of voices. As noted above, Candlemas is the one occasion on which the Office music is set for a different number of singers than the Mass music.25 The two Magnificat antiphons for Candlemas that surface near the end of the four-part fascicle of Gradualia I, far removed from their companion Mass at the beginning of the five-part section, are in the same anomalous low clefs (and indeed the same mode) as the first-layer Christmas pieces Puer natus and O magnum mysterium—an arrangement quite foreign to the layout of the Marian Mass propers, with their terraced five-part scoring, from the f3 clef in the bass to the g2 clef in the soprano.26 Philip Brett suggests that “the idea of including the Magnificat antiphons of the Purification must have occurred to Byrd after having planned and completed the five-part Mass music.”27 Given their resemblance to the beginnings of the Christmas set, it is also possible that they may have been written first. The clear liturgical connection between the two days—Christmas as the centerpiece of the winter round of feasts, Candlemas concluding it forty days later—makes this musical link all the more attractive.28 Several more anomalies in the Christmas set point to its having taken shape early on in the creation of the Gradualia. It ends out of the prevailing mode, as no other set does, with the single exception of the Annunciation when that feast falls in paschal time and requires the grafting of an alleluia onto the end of its communion.29 The Christmas proper also has the unique instruction Chorus sequitur between the alleluia and the full verse Dies sanctificatus. This may be due to its location as first in the 1607 print, or, yet more likely, as first in the liturgical narrative: compare the introit of the 1605 Advent Lady Mass with its unusual note Rorate: ut supra, given, as in the traditional format of the Missal, once and for all at the first available place in the year. 30 The Christmas rubric Chorus sequitur may simply have been an annotation Byrd included in his own manuscript copy at this early and still relatively unfamiliar stage of compiling the year’s propers.31 Even if the Chorus sequitur rubric is just an aid to the unusual segue between alleluia and verse, he never joins those two musical elements quite this way again in the other proper sets. This explicit instruction, like the unusual full-voice entrance at the verse Dies sanctificatus, may well be a sign of earlier provenance. Such an instruction reflects most

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Chronology and Narrative  •  175

Ex. 5.4.   Doxology of Puer natus est nobis (Introit for Christmas)

directly what liturgical books provide for the reader; Byrd, by the time his proper cycle was well under way, appears to have taken on a predominantly laissez-faire attitude to rubrics, trusting his reader to carry out difficult combinatorial feats with little or no outside instruction. One final anomaly points to a early origin for the Christmas set. Its introit includes what appears to be Byrd’s one real attempt in the Gradualia (see ex. 5.4) to set the words in saecula saeculorum, amen, with the bass making a slow, steady scalar descent in long notes while the upper voices exchange thematic material in idiosyncratic ways; the progression in the fifth bar, with its implied

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176  •  Liturgy and Contemplation in Byrd’s Gradualia parallels and ringing tritone relation between the lower voices, recalls the early fifteenth century rather more than the late English Renaissance. This can be read logically as a first essay in what will become a series of rich but utilitarian (and surprisingly similar) settings of a ubiquitous text. Kerman singles it out as “probably his most vivid setting ever of these words.”32 If one of the first proper sets—or, in fact, the first—that Byrd undertook could end up in the second volume of Gradualia, we are left with an important conclusion. The whole proper cycle seems to have been conceived broadly as a single project across a number of years, not as a series of two successive but separate endeavors. Byrd did not set out solely to supply music for the more controversial, politically charged feasts—major Marian celebrations, All Saints’ Day, Corpus Christi—and then go on after the fact to build up a more comprehensive liturgical collection, including the feasts of the centrally important Christmas/Easter cycle.33 Rather, he developed the collection as a whole, covering all the major events of the ritual year, unified in purpose though divided (most likely for a number of various reasons) between two prints.34 He complained in his 1607 preface that this second set of music had been “long since given to the press”: considering how soon after the publication of the first book of Gradualia the political climate turned abruptly against Catholics, it is possible that both books could have been slated for publication within a single year. Some of the music in book 2 does appear to have been written later than that of the bulk of book 1: there is evidence that Byrd spent a good deal of time at the beginning of his Gradualia project assembling the Marian pieces, as is clear even from a glance at their scope and complexity, as well as some difficulties in making the transfer system work smoothly. The Masses of the Marian series are also inclined on the whole toward a quieter style, which gives the first book a distinctive flavor. Kerman links this difference in idiom to two influences that can be considered even independent of chronological factors: a measure of innate conservatism and decorum in approaching the complex of Marian texts, and the lingering effect of the very similar five-part ordinary, which he calls “that great monument of classic restraint.”35 It can be objected that Byrd did not register and print the first book of Gradualia—unlike his first book of Cantiones—as Liber primus, thereby showing that he had no plans at the time to continue the project with a second volume.36 (When he reprinted the two books together in 1610, the well-known primus and secundus designations were added to the title pages.) This possibility can hardly be ignored. One thing that remains easy to agree on is the obvious level of audacity and uncertainty at work in the printing of the 1605 book. Jackman was correct to decribe Gradualia I as “something of a trial balloon”; could Byrd have known the future of this volatile project when he submitted the first volume to the printer?

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Chronology and Narrative  •  177 The title of a book does not necessarily reflect further ambition or the lack thereof. Compare Byrd’s first published collection of music thirty years earlier; this 1575 collaboration with Tallis promised a substantial follow-up in its preface, introducing itself as the pioneering volume in a series of new English music publications. The book turned out to be a commercial failure, with over two-thirds of the copies left gathering dust in the warehouse. In any case, it was not presented as Liber primus cantionum, quae ab argumento sacrae vocantur. It was a somewhat open-ended experiment in much the same way the first book of Gradualia was an experiment, though without (for the most part) the creative frisson and the genuine danger of politically charged subject matter. Recall that a man was arrested within the year of publication for possessing a set of the “papistical” first book of Gradualia—something that could hardly have happened over the 1575 volume, with its carefully regulated contents and obsequious dedication to Queen Elizabeth.37 Likewise, the Mass ordinaries of the 1590s were not offered as prima, secunda, and tertia. Byrd had them printed with no dates, prefaces, or promises to continue further in the genre. They are noteworthy for being almost untraceable publications, though the composer’s name alone is conspicuously present in each copy; an accurate account of their genesis had to wait until well into the twentieth century.38 Byrd was publishing what he could, when he could, with, we can be sure, a persistent and keen eye on the barometer of current events. This attitude of circumspection seems to have continued into his production of the Gradualia. Even the clear differences of presentation between the 1605 and 1607 books should never detract from consideration of the cycle as a single entity. Gradualia II, though certainly the tighter and more liturgically ordered of the two volumes, was not immune to ambiguity or outright disorder: witness what Brett calls “the wreck of the Epiphany set,” for example, or the numerous ungainly cut-and-paste operations required to assemble the votive Mass of the Sacrament.39 It was a somewhat different project than the first book, with its subgroups of miscellaneous music and its multiple, complex transfers. It shows advances in Byrd’s liturgical fluency, presumably hard won through his “night labors” in the preparation of the 1605 volume; there is also evidence that he got the riskier, more arduous task out of his way first, which proved to be a prescient decision in light of the Gunpowder Plot and the ensuing near disaster for the English Catholic book trade. These two volumes, in any case, have much more to unify them than to separate them. The Gradualia cycle appears to have developed as a coherent whole, and certainly deserves to be analyzed as such. What musical techniques does Byrd use to articulate this rather unwieldy complex of works? This inquiry can begin with a page of music that has provoked some interest and perplexity among commentators: the sonorous, repetitive, almost simple-minded C-major opening of the Ascension introit

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178  •  Liturgy and Contemplation in Byrd’s Gradualia

Ex. 5.5.  Viri Galilaei (Introit for Ascension)

Viri Galilaei (see Example 5.5), a gesture of utter contrast after the minormode complexity and turmoil of the Easter set. It is clear that Byrd is responding here in some way to the topic of the day. In the narrative of the New Testament, the Ascension is a point of irrevocable change. It is the watershed between one part of the story—the physical presence and work of Christ—and its very different continuation on Pentecost, in the activity of the apostles, and through the gradual development of the church. The account in the book of Acts, from which the day’s introit is taken, reflects this moment of transition. Even as Christ takes his leave of the still somewhat incredulous apostles, he discusses the events to come, events directly commemorated in the series of feasts that follow the Ascension: They asked him: “Lord, will you now restore the kingdom of Israel?” He replied: “It is not for you to know the seasons or times which the Father has set by his authority: but you will receive power when the Holy Spirit descends on you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all

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Chronology and Narrative  •  179 Judea, and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” When he had said this, as they looked on, he was lifted up, and a cloud took him out of their sight. While they were watching him go up into heaven, suddenly two men in white robes stood beside them, and said: “Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking up into heaven? This Jesus, who was taken up from you into heaven, will return in the same way as you saw him go.”40 The beginning of the introit Viri Galilaei makes the most sense when it is heard as a watershed in the corresponding narrative of the liturgical year. Brett captures the significance of it when he describes it as “the decisive and significant transition to a world far removed from the anxious fervour of the Easter Propers,” and he notes that the suspensions and rhythmic intricacies of the preceding sets have suddenly vanished in favor of “solid progressions and deliberate consonance.”41 Kerman agrees that “the contrast could not be more complete with the volatile, irregular Easter music.”42 Even more surprising than the unfamiliar dissonance treatment (or lack thereof) is the unprecedented major-mode opening, the first of its kind in any of the Mass propers since the cycle began in Advent. From this point on in the liturgical year, all of Byrd’s non-Marian propers—for the Ascension, Pentecost, Corpus Christi, Sts. Peter and Paul, and All Saints’ Day—are in a major mode. The shift is a highly significant one. At the precise moment when Christ speaks to the apostles and then vanishes “out of their sight” (Acts 1:9), the music takes on an entirely new modal flavor, one it will sustain from the bright exordium of Viri Galilaei to the final benediction of Beati mundo corde as the liturgical year draws to a close with All Saints’ Day. Leeman Perkins notes, in a review of Kerman’s Masses and Motets, that “even something as obvious as the rather consistent commixtures in the Gradualia of D Dorian for text phrases referring to earthly matters and F Lydian for celestial things is passed over without comment.”43 Although Perkins, somewhat tantalizingly, does not go on to give any specific examples of such commixtures in the Mass propers and related pieces, there is no more apt application of the broad principle he hints at than to the narrative of the collection as a whole. The earthly, beginning with Christmas, is in a minor mode throughout; the heavenly, beginning with the moment of ascension in Viri Galilaei and ending with the direct promise of the regnum caelorum at the end of Beati mundo corde, is in a consistent major mode. The five feasts of the latter group, describing the ongoing life of the church through its founding events (Ascension and Pentecost), its sacraments (Corpus Christi), its apostles and teachers (Peter and Paul), and its eventual consummation in heaven (All Saints’ Day), are set apart from the earlier feasts by their distinctive and shared modality. Of course there is ample room for variety within each of these two general designations. Whether the split into contrasting minor and major blocks was

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180  •  Liturgy and Contemplation in Byrd’s Gradualia Table 5.1  Feast-Day Masses of Gradualia, in Liturgical Order Event

Date

Scoring and Mode

Book

Christmas

December 25

4 voices (c1/c3/c4/f4 —c1/c1/ c3/f4), d/g

2

Epiphany

January 6

4 voices (c1/c1/c3/f4), d

2

Candlemas

February 2

5 voices (g1/c2/c3/c4/f3), d

1

Annunciation

March 25

5 voices (g1/c2/c3/c4/f3), d

1

Easter

variable

5 voices (c1/c1/c3/c4/f3), d

2

Ascension

forty days after Easter

5 voices (c1/c1/c3/c4/f4), C

2

Pentecost

fifty days after Easter

5 voices (c1/c1/c3/c4/f4), G

2

Corpus Christi

second Thursday after Pentecost

4 voices (c1/c3/c4/f4), G

1

Sts. Peter & Paul

June 29

6 voices (c1/c1/c3/c4/c4/f4), C

2

St. Peter’s Chains

August 1

6 voices (c1/c1/c3/c4/c4/f4), C

2

Assumption

August 15

5 voices (g1/c2/c3/c4/f3), d

1

Nativity of Mary September 8

5 voices (g1/c2/c3/c4/f3), d

1

All Saints’ Day

5 voices (g1/g1/c2/c3/f3), F

1

November 1

part of Byrd’s concept from the very beginning, or (as is far more likely) something that evolved as the year-round cycle started to take shape, it never leads to dullness or lack of interest. The minor-mode pieces vary from the unquiet twists and turns of the Easter set to the Nativity Mass, with its smooth, seamless counterpoint; the range of major-mode pieces encompasses everything from the understated suavity of Corpus Christi to the sonorous and occasionally overbearing gestures of the music for Sts. Peter and Paul. What the shift from minor to major does provide is a technique for broad arrangement and development of what could easily have become a vast, only loosely related body of music. From a purely statistical point of view, it is hard to attribute Byrd’s arrangement of modes in the Gradualia to coincidence. When his own liturgical perspective is kept in mind, such a coincidence appears even more unlikely. Recall that he was conscious enough of the liturgical order of the contents to include rubrics (otherwise all but absent) for the first three events of the year—the Lady Mass for Advent, Christmas Day, and the Lady Mass for Christmastime—although they occur out of chronological sequence, even divided between the two books. Jackman points out that “the appearance in these Masses of the explanatory matter, i.e. of the rubrics, is not only natural, but is further evidence of the liturgical thought behind the work. In other

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Chronology and Narrative  •  181 words, if there are going to be rubrics at all, it is in precisely these Masses that they should occur.”44 This in itself is clear evidence that Byrd saw his Mass propers as belonging to a single narrative that unfolded through the church year. Of course, this narrative is not presented unambiguously throughout the two volumes of Gradualia. We know that the printed order was influenced by variations in scoring (both prints are strictly arranged by number of voices: the first in descending order, the second in ascending) and by Byrd’s apparent provision for the most urgent issues of English Catholic religion in the Marian, Eucharistic, and All Saints’ music that earned pride of place in the first volume. Despite the resulting irregularities, his two most evident concerns, for liturgical order and for recusant devotional practices, are in fact successfully reconciled in his Gradualia.45 Kerman, who was the first to suggest a doctrinal and even polemical influence on the contents of book 1, comments just as effectively on the “moving logic” of its internal narrative, which “ran from episodes in the life of Mary at the beginning to Jesus’ crucifixion at the end.”46 An objection may arise at this point. If Byrd wished to create a contrast between two different modal and topical areas, why did he write the music for the Assumption, which (unlike the other three Marian Masses) fits better among the “heavenly” events than among the “earthly” ones, in the same mode as the other Marian propers? Also, since both the Assumption and the Nativity of Mary occur in late summer, why does Byrd break the momentum of the five consecutive major-mode propers—or indeed six, if both feasts of Sts. Peter and Paul are sung, St. Peter’s Chains on August 1 as well as the greater feast on June 29—with these two anomalous ones? One obvious factor is the system of transfers. A substantial piece of music from the Annunciation Mass, Propter veritatem/Audi filia, must be borrowed to assemble the Assumption gradual. Such a substantial transfer of minormode music would not have sat well in an otherwise major-mode Assumption set, had Byrd chosen to write one. The Mass for the Nativity would be even more difficult to extricate from the Marian set as a whole: all but one of its items are shared with the group of votive Masses, which in turn is intertwined with the music for almost every other occasion in the Marian fascicle. Practical reasons alone would have sufficed for him to keep the mode and clefs consistent throughout all of these sets. There is also contemporary evidence that Byrd’s four Marian feasts were in fact taken together as a self-contained group, intertwined with the rest of the liturgical year but with distinctive subject matter and a narrative of their own. Henry Garnet, names them as a set in his Societie of the Rosary: the “four principall festivities of our blessed Lady, the Nativitie, Purification, Annunciation, and Assumption.”47 Byrd’s presentation of the Marian Masses as a self-contained fascicle at the beginning of Gradualia I reflects the same approach, and the audacious transfer system he devised for them shows a propensity to set

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182  •  Liturgy and Contemplation in Byrd’s Gradualia them apart; the fact that no texts can be transferred into or out of the Marian group from other propers can only have encouraged his choice to treat them in relative isolation, sharing the same mode and the same distinctive arrangement of five “terraced” voices in five different clefs. They form a closed system within the larger scheme of the collection. Alan Brown suggests that they may have been written under considerable influence from the style and consistent D modality of the five-voice ordinary.48 The proximity of the two late-summer Marian feasts in the calendar, like the proximity of Candlemas and the Annunciation six months earlier, also unifies them and (as will become clear with other pairs of feasts) appears to encourage an almost stubborn consistency of mode and scoring. Byrd’s Mass propers, then, fall into three broad narratives: one involving the life of Christ, another the ongoing life of the church after his ascension and departure from earth, and yet another the life of the Virgin Mary. The first two follow each other in chronological order through the church year, while the events of the third intertwine with them.49 These narratives can be summarized as follows: the name of each feast is followed by its mode and the number of voices for which Byrd sets it. Narrative 1 (the life of Christ) Christmas d/g4, Epiphany d4, Easter d5 Narrative 2 (the life of the Church) Ascension C5, Pentecost G5, Corpus Christi G4, Sts. Peter and Paul C6, All Saints’ Day F550 Narrative 3 (the life of Mary) Nativity d5, Annunciation d5, Candlemas d5, Assumption d5 When this scheme is laid out, the various proper sets of these narratives begin to fall into interconnected groups, linked by similarities in mode and scoring. The Epiphany set shares the unusual layout of voices (c1/c1/c3/f4) used in most of the Christmas set, and confirms what had been somewhat inconclusively established as its prevailing modality, though the ambiguity is recalled by the decisive ending of the Epiphany alleluia on G. Easter is in the same mode as Epiphany, which precedes it in the narrative, but the Easter proper adds a fifth voice, as suits the importance of the feast. The somewhat jolting modal transition between Easter and Ascension is bridged by their consistent five-part scoring, which persists through Pentecost. The adjacent feasts of Pentecost and Corpus Christi are in the same distinctive G Mixolydian mode, though they are separated by a difference in texture; one of the two sopranos disappears for Corpus Christi, leaving a more modest four-voice group. Byrd’s music for Sts. Peter and Paul continues in the major vein, returning to the C mode first introduced at the Ascension, but now with the additional weight and detail of a sixth voice. This and the All Saints’ proper, the last two

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Chronology and Narrative  •  183 sets in the “ecclesiastical” cycle, share the same true major mode—the only time that two such sets are placed together. The bittersweet flat seventh of the late-spring Mixolydian propers has vanished into an unequivocal blaze of glory. Unlike Corpus Christi, these two final sets also share the characteristic bright sound of paired soprano parts, which have been steadily inching upward in range throughout the cycle. This increase in range of the top voices, prolonged throughout the entire year, is so gradual as to be almost imperceptible. On Christmas, Epiphany, and Easter, the uppermost voices only reach D. On Ascension and Pentecost, they range up to E, though only in one piece each, the Ascension communion and the Pentecost introit. For Corpus Christi and Sts Peter and Paul, the superius makes free use of the E in each of the proper items. Finally, in the All Saints proper, high F, and the occasional G, is present throughout. The clefs of this last set (g1/g1/c2/c3/f3) are consistently higher than those of the Ascension and Pentecost sets (c1/c1/c3/c4/f4), the most recent examples of five-voice music heard in the course of the year; this shift in scoring, with an additional emphasis on the top of each singer’s range at moments of particular intensity, creates an effect of transfiguration. The All Saints’ Mass is the only F-mode Mass proper in all of the Gradualia; the other modal assignments invariably come at least in pairs, and sometimes, as in the case of the winter and spring D-mode sets, in large groups. The unusual choice of modality further underscores the unique mood of All Saints and its status as the consummation of the year’s cycle. Within this broad framework, the individual feast-day propers fall into distinctive groups. Byrd’s Christmas and Epiphany sets form an obvious pair, with their shared mode and unusual scoring for two sopranos, alto, and baritone. The two days were just as closely paired in the liturgical calendar: recall the invitation the young convert Henry Chaderton received to visit a nearby recusant house and “celebrate the whole feast of the Nativity of our Savior among Catholics.”51 The “whole feast” here was a twelve-day period of rejoicing, encompassing both of these holidays, as is evident from Chaderton’s report of staying through Epiphany—after which he was ambushed on the road and his companion taken to prison, a common enough occurrence at a time of year when it was known that recusants were likely to congregate in relatively safe houses and seek out the services of priests.52 It was almost certainly with such gatherings in mind that Byrd wrote and assembled the propers for these midwinter feasts; their evolution in several stages fits well with the image of the composer visiting a large Catholic house year after year for the celebration of Christmas and Epiphany, gradually progressing from a piece or two embellishing the liturgy to a full proper set. Byrd was recorded as early as 1589 spending these twelve days, just as Chaderton did with his hosts, as a guest of the Petre family at Ingatestone.53

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184  •  Liturgy and Contemplation in Byrd’s Gradualia The events following Easter, as is clear from their modal arrangement, make up another important subset of Byrd’s collection. The recusant author Edward Daniel groups these late-spring feasts together in his Meditations collected and ordered for the use of the English colledge of Lisbo. This book, published in 1649 but assembled from older material, is a series of Ignatian-style reflections on the events of the liturgical year, translated into the vernacular for the benefit of those novices and brothers at the English college in Lisbon who would not otherwise be able to read them. “These meditations,” Daniel claims, “suffice for the whole yeare in due and right order, for the great Feasts thereof, as well moveable as immoveable.”54 He keeps to his promise for the most part, passing from the “decree of the Incarnation” in Advent, presented much as Ignatius gives it in the Exercises, through the events of the church year. After the intense contemplation of the Passion and Resurrection during the weeks surrounding Easter, Daniel introduces the next group of feasts as beginning a new part of the liturgical cycle: “These foure great solemnities [Ascension, Pentecost, Trinity, and Corpus Christi] make up the period of all our Saviours oeconomie, from his first coming down from heaven, to his returne thither againe; and therefore it behoveth all devout soules, to follow and mount with him in union of spirit, Ubi videbit et affluet et dilatabitur.”55 These commemorations stand, at least strictly speaking, outside the boundaries of meditation on Christ’s life, “from his first coming down from heaven, to his returne thither againe”; it is worth recalling that the last event in the narrative of the Spiritual Exercises is the Ascension. Period (in the same sense as the well-known Thule, the period of cosmography) here refers to the utmost end, the final punctuation, as it were, of the narrative of Christ’s life and work. Something new is now happening, in a quite different sphere than the earthly sufferings and eventual triumph traced out in the traditional meditatio vitae Christi: something that “it behoveth all devout soules” to follow in their own reflections—above all, at the time of year devoted to the relevant feasts. In the Gradualia, these late-spring feasts, or the three of them Byrd set, form a distinctive group of their own. Byrd, somewhat perplexingly, did not include any music for Trinity Sunday, the Sunday before Corpus Christi.56 It can only be guessed that his eagerness to provide music for the latter may have crowded out the former. Ascension and Pentecost, as biblical events and integral parts of the post-Easter cycle since the first centuries of the Church, were clear choices for polyphonic setting. The doctrinal and practical significance of Corpus Christi for the recusant community apparently led him to take on both its Mass proper and a substantial group of what Brett calls “companion settings.”57 He set the antiphons to the Magnificat at both vespers and to the Benedictus at lauds, the processional hymn Pange lingua, the hymn excerpt O salutaris hostia, and the well-loved Eucharistic primer text Ave verum corpus—ten pieces in all, as well as the additional music needed to make the day’s Mass proper suitable for the votive celebration of the Sacrament in all seasons

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Chronology and Narrative  •  185 of the year. Byrd gives no other occasion in the calendar, not even Easter or Christmas, a comparable amount of music. Corpus Christi is also the only proper set that spans the two books of Gradualia; that in itself is evidence of an intense and ongoing engagement with the occasion.58 The music for the two feasts (June 29 and August 1) of Sts. Peter and Paul, which immediately follow Corpus Christi, is anomalous in one striking way: it is the only proper set for six voices. It continues in the major-mode sequence, but with an additional tenor voice, adding both complexity and weight to the by now familiar bright sound. It is clear even at a first listening that Byrd is departing here from the norm of the Gradualia propers: the counterpoint is rich, dense, sometimes downright archaic as the sixth voice contributes a new layer of imitation and dissonance. Kerman notes that “at certain places [Byrd] was embarrassed by the 6-part texture.”59 He goes on to suggest that it may have been an early and still somewhat awkward contribution to the Gradualia, perhaps prepared in haste as a celebratory Mass for the elevation to the peerage of Byrd’s eponymous patron Sir John Petre in 1603.60 Certainly nothing about the inherent significance of the feasts offers a full explanation for such extravagant scoring; if anything merited six voices, it would surely be Easter or perhaps Christmas, not any saint’s day—even one as much associated with contemporary religious and political debates as the celebration of St. Peter was in early-seventeenth-century England. One possibility, certainly reflected in the sound of such pieces as Constitues eos Principes and the renowned Tu es Petrus, is a more modest one: Byrd may simply have wanted to create a specific mood. He was quite capable of writing ebullient or bittersweet or contemplative music for various occasions; his music for the commemoration of the two greatest apostles and the founder of the See of Peter is, in all deference, a bit on the pompous side. In the midst of the surprisingly smooth sequence from winter through midsummer, from Christmas and Epiphany to Corpus Christi and the feasts of Sts. Peter and Paul, the Easter propers stand alone to some extent. They do not share the major mode of the feasts that follow them; the central modal transition does not occur here, as might be expected, but at the Ascension, forty days later. The music is nervous and disjointed—indeed, unsettling in places. The Easter introit Resurrexi of course begins with a distinctive opening gambit, what Kerman rightly calls one of Byrd’s “most brilliant stretto points,” because of its all-important first word.61 Nonetheless, it is not an unimpeded shot toward the heavens along the lines of super caelos caelorum in the Ascension communion Psallite Domino; it is a complicated journey, more akin (see ex. 5.7) to the opening theme of the first Kyrie in the five-part Mass ordinary, passing through a series of hesitations and redoublings before it reaches its ultimate goal. It is clear that Byrd is responding to something more complex than merely the affect of rejoicing commonly associated with Easter. William Flynn offers

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186  •  Liturgy and Contemplation in Byrd’s Gradualia

Fig. 5.6  Opening figures of the Easter Introit Resurrexi (a) and the five-part Kyrie (b)

one possible explanation in his account of the troped Easter Mass at Autun. Here the texts and music of the day, unlike the corresponding material in the equally elaborate Christmas liturgy, focus on the “apocalyptic vision of Christ’s presence” as well as the historical event of his resurrection.62 Even in the core proper texts set by Byrd, this imagery is present: in the admonitions of the introit verse and communion, as pointed out by Brett, and also in the earthshaking moment of the offertory, where God not only arises but “arises in judgment”—on a world that, in the composer’s view, had gone seriously astray in recent years.63 He responded to the text in kind with his musical setting, which turns away from sweetness and light in favor of the shattering chiaroscuro of an early Baroque Resurrection. The offertory Terra tremuit is ample illustration of this. Byrd undertook a very different sort of task when he set the Marian feastday propers. Even disregarding the elaborate system of transfers, they differ from the non-Marian feasts of the Gradualia in an important way: their liturgical and narrative chronologies do not overlap. Candlemas comes before the Annunciation in the calendar, and, even less logically, the Assumption in mid-August is followed almost immediately by the Nativity in early September. Although the first three (and sometimes all four) of those events are commemorated in the rosary and associated devotional texts, their liturgical celebration does not follow the familiar narrative. Garnet lists them as the “Nativitie, Purification, Annunciation, and Assumption,” a sequence that follows neither strict biographical order nor the order of Byrd’s 1605 print. It appears to be an attempt to reconcile the somewhat irregular liturgical scheme with the story of Mary’s life. Garnet solves at least part of the problem by beginning his run through the calendar in September: he begins with the Nativity, and puts the Assumption at the end of the list, as the consummation of her earthly life—a judgment that seems to persist in the Gradualia, where it is printed last and given an unusually lavish, extrovert setting. One obvious unifying factor in Byrd’s Marian propers is his choice of mode and vocal ranges. In the Mass ordinary for five voices, written barely a decade earlier, he used the continental model of five-part writing that had caught on

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Chronology and Narrative  •  187 in English secular music (and, to a considerable extent, in Anglican sacred music): the basic four-part texture with one part, in this case the tenor, doubled for a fuller sound. In the Marian propers he reverted to a native English model from earlier in the sixteenth century: five different voices, each with a distinctive range and tessitura. The scheme occurs nowhere else in the Gradualia. The usual English names for these voices were treble (triplex), mean (medius), contratenor, tenor, and bass.64 Byrd’s partbooks reproduce the terms exactly, with the exception of the highest, labeled superius rather than triplex.65 This fivefold layout establishes a conscious link to the English Catholic past: it had been cultivated in a milieu of intense Marian devotion, most recently at the Chapel Royal in the 1550s, where the cycle of Office music by Sheppard and Tallis was based on its distinctive, rich sound.66 It also permits Byrd to make distinctive gestures in scoring that recall the older festal Mass and votive antiphon—such as the striking combination of two high voices and bass at the penultimate verse Quod parasti of the tract Nunc dimittis, reminiscent of the texture so often used at a similar point in large-scale pieces of the early Tudor era, or the introductory trio of Gaude Maria, which Kerman identifies as an explicit homage to the great Gaude gloriosa of Tallis.67 Byrd’s choice of a consistent mode for these propers is, of course, practical for the extensive transfer operations he had in mind, but it also recalls the pervasive D modality that opens each of the chanted Marian Masses. Each of his introits in this set shares the D mode of its Gregorian setting: Salve sancta parens (mode 2), Vultum tuum (also mode 2), and especially the well-known mode 1 group, Gaudeamus omnes, Rorate caeli, and Suscepimus Deus, with the characteristic exordium of a rising fifth that Byrd mirrored so often in his own opening points. The four Marian feasts fall into two pairs, each approximately a month apart: one pair as winter gives way to spring, the other as summer gives way to fall. This symmetry may well have confirmed Byrd’s plan to write them all in the same mode and for the same number of voices. His typical procedure in the rest of the cycle, as we have seen, was to associate pairs of feasts that were close together on the calendar by similarities in modality and scoring; in the case of the Marian Masses, their consistent and unique sound, recurring as two substantial blocks in the course of the year, assures their integration into the rest of the cycle. Candlemas and Annunciation also share a distinctive characteristic: they include a long tract, at least in the most usual situation, when both occur during the pre-Lenten and Lenten seasons. Candlemas is the first feast printed in the Gradualia. The story as related in Luke 2:22–38 must have had special meaning for Byrd, who had passed much of his life waiting and hoping for the restoration of the Catholic order in England, and who referred to himself in both Gradualia prefaces as an old man offering his musical ultimum vale to the world. As Kerman points out, the reports of his imminent demise were somewhat exaggerated: “in the event,

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188  •  Liturgy and Contemplation in Byrd’s Gradualia of course, he lived on till 1623.”68 The trope of the aged Simeon and his “swan song” does recur elsewhere in recusant writing. The English Catholic author Edward Daniel, in his Meditations collected and ordered, singles out the Candlemas narrative for a depiction of particular warmth: Coming thither, and entring into the Temple, there met them old Simeon, a just and holy man, sent thither by the instinct of the holy Ghost; who had promised him, that he should see the Saviour of the world, ere he died: here he met him, adored him for his Soveraigne and God; with the Virgin Mothers leave tooke him in his armes; and full thereby with new light in his understanding, new heat in his brest, lifting his aged face to heaven, full of devotion, joy, and raptures, like the dying swan, celebrated his own funeralls with a Nunc dimittis servum tuum Domine; walking on in this procession with Jesus in his armes, till he came to the holy Altar. This is that procession, yearely represented by the Church on Candlemasse-day; and the most solemne that ever was made on earth, if you consider the persons in it.69 In this passage, Daniel evokes a number of the key liturgical texts of the day—above all, Nunc dimittis and Responsum accepit Simeon; he directly links the unique event of the first Candlemas to its recurring liturgical commemoration, “that procession, yearely represented by the Church on Candlemasseday.” All of the relevant texts here were set by Byrd in Gradualia I. Daniel also speaks of Simeon in the same terms Byrd (scarcely more than middle-aged, it must be admitted) used to describe himself in the introductory matter to that first book of Gradualia. As in the epigraph from Martial and the first lines of the 1605 preface, Simeon, “lifting his aged face to heaven, full of devotion, joy, and raptures, like the dying swan, celebrated his own funeralls with a Nunc dimittis.” What feast day would be better to launch what Byrd clearly saw as the consummation of his life’s work? The late-summer observances of the Nativity and (especially) the Assumption of Mary, the beginning and end of her earthly life as reflected on in countless devotional sources, are an equally important part of the narrative. Eamon Duffy, questioning the received historical wisdom that divides the pre-Reformation English year into “sacred” (December–June) and “secular” (July–November) halves, brings up, among other counterexamples, “the most important feast of Our Lady, the Assumption, or ‘Our Lady in Harvest,’” along with her Nativity a few weeks later.70 A homely example from the household records of the recusant Nicholas Blundell shows that the latter feast was accorded the same respect as better-known festa ferianda, or strictly observed holidays, such as Easter and Christmas: “James Addison came to geld my Stoned Hors but being Holy Day (Nativity of Our Lady) I would not let him.”71

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Chronology and Narrative  •  189 The Nativity Mass nonetheless tends to be more modest than Byrd’s other feast-day propers, and is generally not as inclined to a distinct stylistic flavor of its own.72 Kerman calls the gradual Benedicta et venerabilis “one of several perfect miniatures” in the collection, and the introit and communion are structured along the same lines.73 All of the Nativity items, with the single exception of the alleluia verse Felix es, recur in various combinations as part of the Marian votive Masses. Such a group of somewhat short, light, and varied pieces is best suited to the numerous cuts and repetitions required to make up those propers. The introit Salve sancta parens and the communion Beata viscera are almost constant ingredients in the year-round votive cycle: the former is used in three of the five seasonal versions, the latter in four out of five. A piece that could easily be sung thirty-five or forty times a year as part of a regular Saturday Lady Mass requires less highly colored music than a corresponding piece for a yearly event such as Ascension or Pentecost. Such a scheme of recurrence calls for a more muted style, and Byrd responds with elegant settings—Beata viscera is perhaps the best example of this—that bear almost unlimited repetition. Byrd’s proper set for the Assumption, which does not share nearly as much music (only the ubiquitous introit verse Eructavit) with the votive Masses, is a more distinctive collection of propers. He gave this Mass, the conclusion of the Marian fascicle both in print and in historical sequence, some of his warmest, most imaginative music: the smoothness of the part writing and the distinctive use of parallel thirds create a characteristic sweet sound throughout the proper. This day, the quintessential Marian feast and among the first abolished by the Reformers, was celebrated with special relish both in pre-Reformation England and during the brief liturgical revival of the 1550s. The sixteenthcentury recusant polemicist Richard Bristow remarks, on the abrupt change in the observance of the Assumption, that “the proper dayes of our Lady are, her Conception, her Nativity, her Visitation, and especially her Assumption, which the Protestants have laid all away, as though Christ were worshipped by keeping his Precursors or Baptists Nativitie, and dishonored by keeping his Mothers Nativitie: honored by keeping his other Saints Assumpting out of this life to heaven, and dishonored by keeping his mothers Assumption. . . .”74 Brett suggests that Byrd’s exquisite setting of the day’s communion Optimam partem, a text that the Douai annotators of the Bible interpret matter-offactly as a defense of the contemplative life over the active, was written as “a tribute to the many people he must have known who had themselves chosen ‘the best part,’ and had left the country to live out their lives in one of the several English religious houses in the Low Countries.”75 This text was certainly read in a similar way by a number of his Catholic contemporaries. William Tayler, who left Oxford because of religious difficulties and joined the English College in Rome to study for the priesthood, wrote in his letter of application that “I confidently hope that I have, with Mary, chosen the best part.”76 A

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190  •  Liturgy and Contemplation in Byrd’s Gradualia few years later, another applicant to the college, the eighteen-year-old Thomas Cooke, was still unsure whether he was called to be a cleric, “but I declare that I in no way shrink from it, and I hope shortly to choose that best part of Mary Magdalen that will not be taken away from me.”77 In light of this recurring trope, Byrd’s treatment of the text—the final piece of his Marian cycle—takes on a cast of bittersweet reflection. “Choosing the best part” for him had meant something quite different. He was a family man, an owner of property, and unlikely by temperament to have retired to a sympathetic monastery across the English Channel and grown old in a life of unobtrusive piety. Like the singers for whom he wrote Optimam partem and the rest of his Gradualia, he had chosen to exercise his talents in a different way. His setting, conceived and performed far from the safe havens of contemplation that were associated with those words, nonetheless offers a point of timeless repose in the midst of both his proper cycle and the often harsh realities of recusant liturgical life.

Ex. 5.7.  From Venite ad me (Alleluia verse for All Saints’ Day)

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Chronology and Narrative  •  191 Perhaps the most surprising set of all is the Mass proper for All Saints’ Day. It is the last major event in the liturgical cycle before the beginning of Advent and the start of a new year, and it stands alone in its distinctive F modality and use of two high (g2 clef) soprano voices. Despite the bright vocal scoring and the saturation of major triads, it is hardly a single-minded expression of joy— again, a comparison with the F-major Haec dies is enough to illustrate the point. Brett remarks in memorable terms on the harsh dissonances, “poignant moments in which simultaneous false relations splash across the texture of the music like bright white highlights on a rich painting.”78 Even the contrasting stretches of consonance and exultation are far from being straightforward. In the alleluia verse at the words et ego reficiam vos, Byrd expresses the idea of “refreshment” or “rest” in a figure of ecstatic proliferation (see ex. 5.7) rather than the calm, sustained tones that might be expected. Richard White’s Vox fletus et vox clamoris addresses the same text in a similar fashion, noting “that admirable rest of mind which thou inspirest, that which we were call’d unto by our Saviour, when he said venite ad me omnes qui laboratis, et onerati estis, et ego reficiam vos: that which the Prophet Isaias stiles the beauty of peace et requies opulentia, a rich repose.”79 “Rich repose” is an apt description of Byrd’s setting of the All Saints’ proper. It is hardly stereotypical music of rest and quietness—though that is something Byrd had certainly shown himself capable of composing, as in the extraordinary setting of “dormientes” in his 1589 Vigilate, described by Kerman as “the longest [point] in the motet because the sleepiest.”80 When the counterpoint finally settles into an interlocking series of falling scales at the end of the offertory and the communion—illi autem sunt in pace, quoniam ipsorum est regnum caelorum—the longed-for final reward is still more dynamic than static. This last set also reflects a link between Byrd’s modal ordering of the Gradualia and the organization of his earlier Latin collections. The liturgical series of Mass propers, concluding with the All Saints’ music, strongly recalls the structure of his middle-period books of Cantiones, which pass through a progressive series of contrasting, often dark modes, then emerge fully into the light, concluding with a bright, triumphant F-mode piece: Laetentur coeli at the end of the 1589 book, Haec dies at the end of the 1591 book.81 As Byrd planned his second large set of Latin publications, he may well have turned to the precedent of his earlier collections for guidance. This precedent merged with his newfound liturgical awareness to form a model that was effective not only for the emotional trajectory of a collection of sacred songs, but also for a liturgical trajectory, what he called “notes as a garland” to adorn the church year.82

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Notes

Introduction













1. Translation adapted from Philip Brett, ed., Gradualia I: The Marian Masses, Byrd Edition 5 (London: Stainer and Bell, 1989), xxxvi; for notes on this passage, see xvii–xviii. See also John Irving, “Penetrating the Preface to Gradualia,” Music Review 51 (1990): 157–66. 2. Joseph Kerman, “The Elizabethan Motet: A Study of Texts for Music,” Studies in the Renaissance 9 (1962): 285–305; Patrick Macey, Bonfire Songs: Savonarola’s Musical Legacy (Oxford: Clarendon, 1998), 153ff.; Kerry McCarthy, “Byrd, Augustine, and Tribue Domine,” Early Music 32 (2004), 569–76. 3. The classic treatment of text choice in Byrd is the opening chapter, “Motet Texts and Motet Function,” of Joseph Kerman, Masses and Motets of William Byrd (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1981), 21–54, esp. 29–48; the quote is on 39. A shorter version of the chapter first appeared as “William Byrd and Elizabethan Catholicism,” New York Review of Books, May 17, 1979, 32–36; this original essay has been reprinted in Joseph Kerman, Write All These Down: Essays on Music (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1994), 77–89. 4. The second volume of Gradualia was registered at the Stationers’ Company on February 19, 1607; see Philip Brett, ed., Byrd Edition 7a (London: Stainer and Bell, 1997), xii. King Lear was registered on November 26; Orfeo was first performed on February 24; Jamestown was established on May 14. 5. Kerman, Masses and Motets, 313. 6. Ibid., 308, on the music for Sts. Peter and Paul. 7. Ibid., 246, on the doxology of the Christmas introit. 8. Ibid., 285–86. For a contrasting opinion on the Corpus Christi music, see Philip Brett, ed., Byrd Edition 6a (London: Stainer and Bell, 1991), x: “The beautifully managed phrases of the introit, with its deftly managed alleluias, set a warm, even-tempered mood, intensifying into fervency, that is maintained throughout.” 9. Michael Questier, “‘Like Locusts all over the World’: Conversion, Indoctrination and the Society of Jesus in Late Elizabethan and Jacobean England,” in The Reckoned Expense: Edmund Campion and the Early English Jesuits, ed. Thomas McCoog (Woodbridge, N. J.: Boydell, 1996), 265. 10. Philip Brett, William Byrd and his Contemporaries: Essays and a Monograph, ed. Joseph Kerman (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2006). 11. Mary Carruthers, The Book of Memory: A Study of Memory in Medieval Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 15.

193

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194  •  Notes 12. Byrd opened his 1605 preface with this bilingual pun; see Brett, Gradualia I: The Marian Masses, xxxvi: “The Swan, they say, when death is near, sings more sweetly. However little, in this, my old age, I have been able to equal the sweetness of that bird in these songs. . . .”

Chapter 1







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1. “Missa est cantus magnus: cui verba Kyrie, Et in terra, Patrem, Sanctus, et Agnus, et interdum caeterae partes, a pluribus canendae supponuntur: quae ab aliis officium dicitur. Motetum est cantus mediocris: cui verba cuiusvis materiae sed frequentius divinae supponuntur. Cantilena est cantus parvus: cui verba cuiuslibet materiae sed frequentius amatoriae supponuntur.” Johannes Tinctoris, Terminorum musicae diffinitorium; facsimile reproduction in Monuments of Music and Music Literature in Facsimile, series 2, vol. 26 (New York: Broude Brothers, 1966). The definition of the Mass is on fo. b1r; motet: fo. b1v; song: fo. aiiiv. 2. Cicero, Orator ad M. Brutum 20: “tria sunt omnino genera dicendi”; see Andrew Kirkman, “The Invention of the Cyclic Mass,” Journal of the American Musicological Society 54, no. 1 (2001): 4–7. 3. Ludwig Finscher and Annegrit Laubenthal, “Cantiones quae vulgo motectae vocantur: Arten der Motette im 15. und 16. Jahrhundert,” in Neues Handbuch der Musikwissenschaft, ed. Carl Dahlhaus (Laaber, Germany: Laaber, 1989), 277ff. 4. Tinctoris singles out the Mass in Liber de arte contrapuncti III.8 for its level of varietas; see Corpus scriptorum de musica vol. 22, ed. Albert Seay (Rome: American Institute of Musicology, 1975), 155. 5. Byrd’s own title for the collection was Gradualia ac cantiones sacrae (graduals—i.e., sung Mass propers—and sacred songs). He submitted both books to the Stationers’ Company under this name, though the later volume was printed as Gradualia seu cantionum sacrarum. . . liber secundus (Second book . . . of graduals or sacred songs), perhaps because of reluctance to advertise Roman Mass propers in the anti-Catholic backlash after the near-disaster of the Gunpowder Plot in November 1605: see Philip Brett, ed., Byrd Edition 7a (London: Stainer and Bell, 1989), xii. Byrd clearly identifies the two genres present: liturgical items, gradualia, and (far fewer) paraliturgical or nonliturgical items, cantiones sacrae. It can be problematic—pace Joseph Kerman, Masses and Motets of William Byrd (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1981), 21—to refer to the former simply as “motets.” 6. Craig Wright, Music and Ceremony at Notre Dame of Paris, 500–1500 (Cambridge, Mass.: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 243–72. 7. Ibid., 245–46. 8. David Sutherland, ed., The Lyons Contrapunctus; Recent Researches in Music of the Renaissance 21 (Madison, Wisc.: A-R Editions, 1976), xiii. 9. David Fallows, “Dufay and the Mass Proper Cycles of Trent 88,” in I codici musicali trentini a cento anni dalla loro riscoperta, ed. Nino Pirrotta and Danilo Curti (Trento, Italy: Provincia Autonoma di Trento, 1986), 53; Philip Cavanaugh, “Early Sixteenth-Century Cycles of Polyphonic Mass Propers—An Evolutionary Process or the Result of Liturgical Reforms?” Acta Musicologica 48, no. 2 (1976): 153.

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Notes  •  195 10. David Chadd, John Sheppard: I, Responsorial Music; Early English Church Music 17 (London: Stainer and Bell, 1977), xi. 11. In some areas, especially where local liturgical forms were protected by the “grandfather clause” of the Council of Trent, the late medieval traditions continued to flourish even into the seventeenth century; for the situation in Paris, see Wright, Music and Ceremony, 128–39. 12. David J. Burn, “What Did Isaac write for Constance?” Journal of Musicology 20, no.1 (2003): 45–72; Peter Bergquist, “The Anonymous Propers in Munich Mss. 32 and 76: Are They Previously Unknown Works by Orlando di Lasso?” Acta Musicologica 65, no. 1 (1993): 4­–22. 13. Cavanaugh, “Cycles,” 161. 14. Sutherland, Lyons Contrapunctus, xi–xii. 15. Donald Gresch, “Mattheus Le Maistre’s Polyphonic Officia,” Musical Quarterly 60, no. 1 (1974): 94–113. 16. Fallows, “Trent 88,” 56. 17. Kerman, Masses and Motets, 32. 18. Roger Bray, “The Part-Books Oxford, Christ Church MSS. 979–83: An Index and Commentary,” Musica Disciplina 25 (1971): 179–97; David Mateer, “Oxford, Christ Church Music MSS 984–8: An Index and Commentary,” RMA Research Chronicle 20 (1986–87): 1–18. 19. The Book of Common Prayer 1559, ed. John E. Booty (Charlottesville: Virginia University Press, 1976). 20. Barbara Haggh, “The Archives of the Order of the Golden Fleece and Music,” Journal of the Royal Musical Association 120, no. 1 (1995): 35. 21. Peter Clulow, “Publication Dates for Byrd’s Latin Masses,” Music and Letters 47 (1966): 1–9. 22. Raimund Redeker, Lateinische Widmungsvorreden zu Meß- und Motettendrucken der ersten Hälfte des 16. Jahrhunderts; Schriften zur Musikwissenschaft aus Münster 6 (Eisenach, Germany: Verlag der Musikalienhandlung Karl Dieter Wagner, 1995). 23. Stephen Greenblatt, Renaissance Self-Fashioning from More to Shakespeare (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980), 2. 24. John Harley, William Byrd: Gentleman of the Chapel Royal (Aldershot, England: Scolar, 1997), 126–31. 25. Craig Monson, ed., Byrd Edition 1 (London: Stainer and Bell, 1977). 26. Greenblatt, Renaissance Self-Fashioning, 192. 27. John Steele, ed., Peter Philips: Select Italian Madrigals, Musica Britannica 29 (London: Stainer and Bell, 1970), xviii. 28. Brett, Byrd Edition 7a (London: Stainer and Bell, 1997), xii. 29. Alan Brown, ed., Byrd Edition 2 (London: Stainer and Bell, 1988), xix. 30. The same concern surfaces in the subtitle of the 1588 Psalmes, Sonets and Songs: “some of them going abroad among divers, in untrue coppies, are heere truely corrected.” 31. John Milsom, “The Nonsuch Music Library,” in Sundry Sorts of Music Books: Essays on the British Library Collections, ed. Chris Banks, Arthur Searle, and Malcolm Turner (London: British Library Publishing, 1993), 146–82. 32. Harley, William Byrd, 101–2.

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196  •  Notes 33. The Council forbade the practice in 1546; the exemption was granted in April 1580. See Nancy Pollard Brown, “Robert Southwell and the Mission of the Written Word,” in The Reckoned Expense: Edmund Campion and the Early English Jesuits, ed. Thomas McCoog (Woodbridge, England: Boydell, 1996), 194. 34. The full Latin texts of the Gradualia prefaces are found in facsimile in Philip Brett, ed., Byrd Edition 5 (London: Stainer and Bell, 1989), xxxi–xxxii (1605) and Brett, ed., Byrd Edition 7a, xxiii (1607); English translations are provided on 5: xxxvi–xxxvii (1605) and 7a: xxviii–xxix (1607). The translations given here are slightly adapted from these versions. 35. Brett, Byrd Edition 5, xvii. 36. Sixtus V, Constitutio Postquam, 3 December 1586; §5: “Adeo pauci reperiuntur, ut eorum officio satisfacere nequeant, immo saepius presbyteri cardinales loco diaconorum, contra Patrum instituta Pontifici assistere, et ministrare cogantur.” 37. The term is ubiquitous in the 1599 Directorium in Exercitia Spiritualia, a Jesuit handbook on administering the Exercises: “Si qui se exercet fatigatus videatur” (§529), and “Quarta hebdomada . . . tota enim exercetur in amore Dei” (§623); see Directorium in Exercitia Spiritualia, in Thesaurus Spiritualis Societatis Iesu, ed. Johann Philipp Roothaan (Rome: Typis Polyglottis Vaticanis, 1948). 38. See, for example, the 1917 code of canon law: “Sacerdos Missam ne celebret sine ministro qui eidem inserviat et respondeat. Minister Missae inserviens ne sit mulier, nisi, deficiente viro, iusta de causa, eaque lege ut mulier ex longinquo respondeat nec ullo pacto ad altare accedat.” Codex iuris canonici Pii X pontificis maxime iussu digestus (Rome: Typis Polyglottis Vaticanis, 1917), §813. “Canonici sive ecclesiae cathedralis sive collegialis Episcopo sollemniter Missam celebranti aut alia pontificalia exercenti, etiam in aliis ecclesiis civitatis aut suburbii, ab eodem invitati, assistere et inservire debent. . . .” (Ibid., §412). 39. As in the frontispiece to Louis de Blois, D. Ludouici Blosii . . . opera quae quidem conscripsit omnia (Köln, 1571). 40. The young Henry Chaderton, for example, was driven out of his household after he was overheard reciting the Office of the Dead in November 1599; see Anthony Kenny, ed., Responsa Scholarum (1598–1621), Catholic Record Society vol. 54 (London, 1962), 43; or the Elizabethan recusant Lady Montague, whose round of daily devotions included “sometimes the Office of the Dead”; see Philip Brett, ed., Byrd Edition 6b (London: Stainer and Bell, 1993), vii. 41. Giuliano Raffo, “Il Giubileo del 1300 nelle antiche cronache,” Tratto da Civiltà Cattolica 150 (1999): 135–46. 42. All existing seventeenth-century copies are free compilations of various proper items and verse sections for reduced voices, little of which produces anything of liturgical value; see Brett, ed., Byrd Edition 7b (London: Stainer and Bell, 1997), xvi–xvii. The first copyist to work systematically and assign correct rubrics appears to have been Samuel Wesley (British Library, Add. MS 35001) in the early nineteenth century; see Philip Olleson and Fiona M. Palmer, “Publishing Music from the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge: The Work of Vincent Novello and Samuel Wesley in the 1820s,” Journal of the Royal Musical Association 130 (2005): 38–73.

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Notes  •  197 43. The couplet runs: “Dulcia defecta modulatur carmina lingua / Cantator Cygnus funeris ipse sui.” Georg Rhau (1488–1548), music printer and anthologist of the early German Reformation, was the first to use this as an epigraph in the context of a musical publication: he cites it in full in the preface to his self-consciously last print, the 1544 Postremum vespertinum officii opus. See Redeker, Lateinische Widmungsvorreden, 327.

Chapter 2





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1. Robert Southwell, Two Letters and a Short Rule of Good Life, ed. Nancy Pollard Brown (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1973), 45. 2. Eamon Duffy, The Stripping of the Altars (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1992), 135. 3. On the extraordinary effect (and doctrinal subtext) of the false relation on verum, see Joseph Kerman, Masses and Motets of William Byrd (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1981), 288. 4. Philip Brett, ed., Byrd Edition 6a (London: Stainer and Bell), xi. 5. The two most valuable (if occasionally dated) general accounts of the English Jesuit mission are found in Bernard Basset, The English Jesuits from Campion to Martindale (New York: Herder and Herder, 1967); and Francis Edwards, The Jesuits in England: From 1580 to the Present Day (Tunbridge Wells, England: Burns and Oates, 1985). A collection of essays worth perusing is The Reckoned Expense: Edmund Campion and the Early English Jesuits, ed. Thomas McCoog (Woodbridge, N.J.: Boydell, 1996); particularly relevant to the present study are Thomas McCoog, “‘Playing the Champion’: the Role of Disputation in the Jesuit Mission,” 119–139; John Bossy, “The Heart of Robert Persons,” 141–158; Nancy Pollard Brown, “Robert Southwell: The Mission of the Written Word,” 193–213; and Michael Questier, “‘Like Locusts Over All the World’: Conversion, Indoctrination and the Society of Jesus in Late Elizabethan and Jacobean England,” 265–84. 6. Brett, Byrd Edition 6a, vii; Patrick McGrath, “Elizabethan Catholicism: A Reconsideration,” Journal of Ecclesiastical History 35 (1984): 425. 7. It may also have precipitated the anguished setting of Deus venerunt gentes published in the 1589 Cantiones; see Kerman, “William Byrd and Elizabethan Catholicism,” New York Review of Books, May 17, 1979, 78–80. 8. Questier, “‘Like Locusts Over All the World,’” 265. 9. The best and most realistic document is still the firsthand account of John Gerard, The Autobiography of an Elizabethan, trans. Philip Caraman (London: Longmans, 1951). I am indebted to the librarian at Stonyhurst College for providing a facsimile of the Latin original in its surviving manuscript copy. The stilted and bowdlerized translation made by John Morris, The Life of Father John Gerard (London: Burns and Oates, 1881), should be avoided for all but antiquarian purposes. 10. Ignatius of Loyola, Autobiography, §11, in Saint Ignatius of Loyola: Personal Writings, trans. Philip Endean and Joseph Munitiz (London: Penguin, 1996), 16. This passage, like the rest of this brief biographical sketch, is taken from the book of reminiscences that Ignatius dictated to his associate Luis Gonçalves da Câmara between 1553 and 1555.

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198  •  Notes 11. Ignatius of Loyola, Spiritual Exercises and Selected Works, ed. George E. Ganss (New York: Paulist Press, 1991), 33. 12. Ignatius, Autobiography, §57; §67–68. 13. Ibid., §99. 14. Ganss, ed., Spiritual Exercises, 54. 15. Jacobus de Voragine, Legenda aurea, ed. Giovanni Paolo Maggioni (Florence: SISMEL, Edizioni del Galluzzo, 1998). 16. All of the feasts provided for in the Gradualia are included in the Golden Legend, with the single exception of Corpus Christi, which was officially approved (on September 8, 1264) during the author’s lifetime. 17. Ganss, ed., Spiritual Exercises, 16; the reference is to the Toledo edition of 1511. 18. For this famous meditation, see Ignatius, Spiritual Exercises, §136–47. 19. Emmerich Raitz, “Ludolph le Chartreux et les Exercices de S. Ignace de Loyola,” Revue d’ascétique et de mystique 25 (1949), 375–88; William Bangert, A History of the Society of Jesus (St. Louis, Mo.: Institute of Jesuit Resources, 1972), 6; and Gilles Cusson, Biblical Theology and the Spiritual Exercises, trans. Mary Angela Roduit and George E. Ganss (St. Louis, Mo.: Institute of Jesuit Sources, 1988), 8–22. 20. Ganss, ed., Spiritual Exercises, 20. 21. Ignatius ends his own series of “Mysteries of the life of Christ” with the Ascension rather than with Pentecost. 22. Ludolph, Vita Christi, Prologue, §11; cited in Ganss, ed., Spiritual Exercises, 22. 23. Endean and Munitiz, eds., Saint Ignatius of Loyola: Personal Writings, xv. 24. Ignatius, Spiritual Exercises, §72. The sessions were as follows: one during the night, one in the morning, one before the noon meal, one at the time of Vespers (i.e., late afternoon), and the last before the evening meal. 25. Ibid., §4. 26. Ibid., §169–88. 27. Ibid., §189. 28. Ibid., §262–312. 29. Ibid., §267. 30. See the prelude to the exercise on the Incarnation, in Ignatius, Spiritual Exercises, §104, “to ask for what I desire, namely an intimate knowledge of the Lord, who was made man for me, that I might love him and follow him more.” 31. See the exercise on the Incarnation, in Ignatius, Spiritual Exercises, §109: “At the end a colloquy is to be made, thinking over how I should speak to the three divine Persons [i.e. the Trinity], or to the eternal Word made flesh, or to our Lady. I will ask, according to what is in me, whatever will help me follow and imitate our Lord, who in this way has so recently become incarnate.” 32. Ignatius, Spiritual Exercises, §110–7. 33. Ibid., §249, §252. 34. Ibid., §258–60. 35. Directorium in Exercitia Spiritualia, in Thesaurus Spiritualis Societatis Iesu, ed. Johann Philipp Roothaan (Rome: Typis Polyglottis Vaticanis, 1948), 184. Roothaan was an early-nineteenth-century Jesuit philologist, perhaps the most important annotator and critical editor of the Exercises since the sixteenth century. The scriptural reference is to Psalm 83:2: “cor meum et caro mea exsultavit in Deum vivum.”

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Notes  •  199 36. Fulvio Androzzi, Certaine devout considerations of frequenting the blessed sacrament . . . with sundrie other precepts and rules of direction, ed. tr. Thomas Everard (Douai, 1606). Everard also adapted the first part of Androzzi’s Opere spirituali (Della meditazione della vita e morte del nostro Salvatore Gesu Cristo) in the separate book Meditations uppon the passion of our Lord Jesus Christ (Douai, 1606). 37. Ignatius to Fulvio Androzzi, July 18, 1556. In Joseph N. Tylenda, ed., Counsels for Jesuits: Selected Letters and Instructions of St. Ignatius Loyola (Chicago: Loyola University Press, 1985), 120. 38. Androzzi, Certaine devout considerations, 274–75. 39. “I. R.,” A manuall, or meditation, and most necessary prayers . . . (1580/81). 40. J. D. Crichton, “The Manual of 1614,” Recusant History 17 (1984): 158–72. 41. “I. R.”, Manuall, fo. K7v–K8r. 42. The material has been transcribed and edited by Anthony Petti in Recusant Documents from the Ellesmere Manuscripts, Catholic Record Society vol. 60 (London: Catholic Record Society, 1968); the text discussed here is on 202–7. The entire Ellesmere collection, including the priceless manuscript of Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, is now at the Huntington Library. 43. Petti, Recusant Documents, 202. 44. Ibid., 206. The relevant pamphlets are collected as “tracts relating to the Jesuits,” British Museum, 860.d.6; they include another Paternostre des Jesuites, a Salve Regina des Jesuites, and a Credo des bons Catholiques François, avec l’Ave Maria des Jesuites. 45. In 1610, for example, there were only forty-three: see Basset, The English Jesuits, 140. 46. Anthony Kenny, ed., Responsa Scholarum (1598–1621), Catholic Record Society 54 (London: Catholic Record Society 1962), 28. 47. Nicolao Berzetti, The practice of meditating with profit the misteries of our Lord, the blessed Vergin and Saints, trans. Thomas Talbot (Mecklin, 1613). 48. A. F. Allison and D. M. Rogers, The Contemporary Printed Literature of the English Counter-Reformation between 1558 and 1640 (Aldershot, England: Scolar, 1994), 148. 49. Berzetti, The Practice of meditating, 64–65. 50. Ibid., 101. 51. Ibid., 145ff. 52. Ibid., 109. 53. Ibid., 110. 54. Ibid., 98–99. 55. Ganss, ed., Spiritual Exercises, 119. 56. See Roothaan, ed., Directorium in Exercitia Spiritualia. 57. Ganss, ed., Spiritual Exercises, 18. 58. Directorium, §388; the paragraphs in the standard edition are numbered sequentially with those of the Exercises, taking up at §371 where the latter leaves off. 59. Directorium, §384. 60. Directorium, §446. 61. Southwell, Two Letters, xxvii. 62. M. Ruth McGee, “William Byrd and the Heavenlie Banquett in Captivitie,” Ph.D. diss., University of Adelaide, 1990, 65.

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200  •  Notes







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63. Basset, The English Jesuits, 148. 64. Gerard, Autobiography, 147. 65. Directorium, §453. 66. Philip Caraman, Henry Garnet, 1555–1606, and the Gunpowder Plot (London: Longmans, 1964), 428–29, and plate facing 336. 67. Directorium, §608. 68. Ignatius, Spiritual Exercises, §189. 69. Directorium, §626. 70. Ibid., §634. 71. Ibid., §635. 72. 1 Corinthians 14:15; the second half of the verse reads: “I shall sing with the spirit; I shall also sing with the mind.” 73. Directorium, §637. 74. Ibid., §400. 75. Ibid., §399. 76. Ibid., §650. 77. Ibid., §651–2; the allusion is to the parable of the sower in Mark 4:3–8. 78. Ibid., §653. 79. Ibid., §638. 80. Allison and Rogers, Contemporary Printed Literature, 50. 81. The translator of these leaflets was clearly working from the Versio Vulgata, a classicizing version made from Ignatius’s Spanish original by a French Jesuit named André des Freux. Ignatius had prepared an earlier version himself in direct, essentially scholastic Latin, but the more polished, humanistic Vulgata (the text that had been submitted in 1548 for papal approbation) was by far the most common reading at the time. See Ignatius, Personal Writings, 281. 82. Ignatius, Spiritual Exercises, §114. 83. Leaflet 21. 84. There are three sets of leaflets in this state; three others survive only in part. Although it is most likely that a complete set would be fully preserved because it was not used, the relatively high survival rate of material in such an impermanent format points to its wide distribution and frequent use. 85. Enucleare, in its literal sense (as in contemporary household records referring to food preparation), means to crack the shell and “take out the kernel” of a nut. 86. Directorium, §433–4. 87. See, for example, Ignatius, Spiritual Exercises, §11: “It is helpful for a person receiving the Exercises of the first week to know nothing about what is to be done in the second. . . .” 88. Directorium, §420. 89. Ibid., §510. 90. See Gerard, Autobiography. 91. Ibid., 207. 92. Gerard, Autobiography, xvii. The book was written in 1609. Caraman’s English edition is translated from an eighteenth-century Latin manuscript at Stonyhurst, which claims to be “taken from the [now lost] authentic version at Sant’ Andrea.” Comparison with earlier surviving cross-references shows it to be a faithful copy of Gerard’s original. 93. Ibid., xix.

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Notes  •  201 94. Ibid., xxiv; Gerard, Autobiography, 8. 95. See, for example, William Allen, The martyrdom of XII priests (Rheims, 1582); Richard Smith, The Life of the most honourable and vertuous lady the La. Magdalen Viscountesse Montague (St. Omer, 1627); Henry Granville, ed., The Life of St. Philip Howard (London: Phillimore, 1971). 96. Gerard, Autobiography, 22. 97. Ibid., 24. 98. Ibid., 24. 99. Ibid., 27. The raising of Lazarus is one of the biblical scenes in which Christ himself weeps, a point brought out by Ignatius in his own digest of the text for meditation: “He raises him, after he has wept and prayed”; Ignatius, Spiritual Exercises, §285. 100. Gerard, Autobiography, 28. 101. Ibid., 28­­–29, 222. De Bono Statu Religiosi was a contemporary introduction to basic principles of religious life, written by the man who had been Gerard’s instructor as a Jesuit novice in Rome. 102. Ibid., 29–30. 103. Ibid., 32. 104. Ibid., 49. 105. Ibid., 227. 106. John Harley, William Byrd: Gentleman of the Chapel Royal (Aldershot, England: Scolar, 1997), 97–98. 107. Brett, ed., Byrd Edition 6a, ix. 108. Gerard, Autobiography, 29. 109. Annunciation (1); Christmas (3); Candlemas (5); Easter (11); Ascension (12); Pentecost (13); and Assumption (14). The Turbarum voces in passione Domini, Adoramus te Christe, and some of the Corpus Christi pieces in book I of the Gradualia also have affinities with the sixth through tenth topics, the “sorrowful mysteries” involving the passion of Christ. 110. The feast of the Holy Rosary is, perhaps, the quintessential Counter-Reformation feast day; Pope Pius V instituted it in 1571 after an important naval victory against the Turks at Lepanto, which was attributed to the public Rosary processions made in Rome that day. 111. Breviarium Romanum ex decreto ss. Concilii Tridentini restititum... pars autumnalis (London, Burns Oates & Washburne, 1946). 112. See, for example, Play 46 of the York cycle of mystery plays, ll:155–56 — a scene of the Assumption, the second-to-last of the traditional mysteries, which ends with Christ crowning his mother: “Ressayue this croune my dere darlyng / ther I am kyng thou schalte be quene.” 113. Ceri Sullivan, Dismembered Rhetoric: English Recusant Writing, 1580 to 1603 (London: Associated University Presses, 1995). 83; note, however, that the suggestions are not always “terse.” 114. Henry Garnet, The Societie of the Rosary. Wherin is conteined the begining, increase, & profit of the same. Also the orders & manifold graces annexed unto it, with divers other things thereunto appertaining, 2d ed. (1596/97), 38–39; all citations are to this edition unless otherwise specified.

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202  •  Notes 115. Gaspar de Loarte, Instructions and advertisements, how to meditate the misteries of the rosarie of the most holy Virgin Mary, trans. John Fenn (London: W. Carter, 1597). 116. Ibid., 19. 117. Ibid., 48. 118. Ignatius, Spiritual Exercises, §264. 119. Loarte, Instructions, 49. 120. Ibid., 52–53; cf. Ignatius, Spiritual Exercises §110–17. 121. Ignatius departs only once from his scheme of direct biblical references, immediately after the Resurrection of Christ: “First he appeared to the Virgin Mary. Although this is not said in Scripture, it is understood as included in saying that he appeared to so many others, because Scripture supposes that we have understanding, as it is written: ‘Are you also without understanding?’” (Spiritual Exercises, §299). 122. Loarte, Instructions, 29. 123. Ignatius, Spiritual Exercises §106–8. 124. Loarte, Instructions, 30–38. 125. The English translation of Loarte uses an identical poem: see Instructions, 28. 126. Anonymous, A methode, to meditate on the psalter, or great rosarie of our blessed Ladie (1598), fo. C5v–C7r. 127. A. F. Allison, “The Writings of Fr. Henry Garnet, S.J.,” Recusant History 1 (1951): 12–14, 19–20. The third (1624) edition included a life of the Virgin, described on the title page as “Written in Italian, by the reverend father Lucas Pinelli of the Society of Iesus.” This ambiguity has caused false attributions of the entire work to Pinelli; see, for example, the entry in the English Short-Title Catalogue, 1st ed., no. 19939. 128. Garnet, Societie, 19; all citations are to this edition unless otherwise specified. 129. Ibid., fo. A2v. 130. Ibid., 18. 131. Ibid., 23; Craig Monson, “Byrd, the Catholics, and the Motet: The Hearing Reopened,” in Hearing the Motet: Essays on the Motet of the Middle Ages and Renaissance, ed. Dolores Pesce (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), 365. 132. Brett, ed., Byrd Edition 6a, ix; Bodleian MS Eng.th.b.2, 136. 133. The figure of “the Church singing” was a popular one in literature of this sort. See, for example, John Sweetnam, Paradise of Delights (St. Omer, 1620), 80–81: “Of this most pure Virgin the holy Catholike Church singeth: Benedicta et venerabilis es Virgo Maria, quae sine tactu pudoris inventa es Mater Salvatoris. Blessed and venerable art thou, O Virgin Mary, who without any touch of thy chastity didst becom the Mother of God.” Benedicta et venerabilis was, of course, one of the Marian texts Byrd himself set to music: Philip Brett, ed., Byrd Edition 5 (London: Stainer and Bell, 1989), 50–52. 134. Garnet, Societie, fo. A6v. 135. Ibid., fo. B2v. 136. Garnet, Societie, fo. A3v. 137. Ibid., 182. 138. Ibid., 126.

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Notes  •  203 139. Henry Garnet, The Societie of the Rosary. Wherin is conteined the begining, increase, & profit of the same. Also the orders & manifold graces annexed unto it, with divers other things thereunto appertaining (1593/94), 6. 140. Philip Brett, ed., Byrd Edition 6b (London: Stainer and Bell, 1993), vii; the Marian litany is not mentioned in this preface. 141. John Sweetnam [“I. S. of the Society of Jesus”], The Paradise of Delights, or the B. Virgins garden of Loreto, with briefe Discourses upon her Divine Letanies, by way of Meditation (St. Omer, 1620). 142. Caraman, Henry Garnet, plate facing 336. 143. Sweetnam, Paradise, 12. 144. Ibid., 33. 145. Recall that Byrd himself set a large number of these to music. 146. The texts cited in these three passages are: (1) the hymn Ave maris stella, at Vespers on Marian feasts and in the Little Office, and the Marian antiphon Ave regina coelorum, which concludes Lauds, Vespers, and Compline between Candlemas and Easter; (2) the responsory Sancta et immaculata virginitas, the first responsory at Matins on Marian feasts and in the Little Office; and (3) the gradual Benedicta et venerabilis, for Mass on the Nativity of Mary and her votive Mass outside Advent and the Christmas season. Byrd’s setting of the last of these texts includes the word sacra: “benedicta et venerabilis es, sacra Virgo Maria.” It was removed in Clement VIII’s 1604 revision of the Mass proper, which Sweetnam follows. Byrd set Ave regina coelorum and Ave maris stella as they stand here. He did not set Sancta et immaculata virginitas; the only responsory in the Gradualia cycle, in fact, is only a partially Marian one, O magnum mysterium / Beata virgo, for Matins on the feast of the Circumcision (January 1). 147. Sweetnam, Paradise, 186. 148. Ibid., 98–99. 149. Ibid., 80–81. 150. Nativitas tua is the Magnificat antiphon at the second Vespers of the Nativity of Mary. The text “for of thee is borne the sonne of justice,” quia ex te ortus est sol justitiae, occurs in both the Lady Mass gradual Felix namque and the responsory of the same name for the Little Office and Marian feasts. 151. Sweetnam, Paradise, 149­–52. The references to the Agnus Dei and the sol justitiae image are clear. The final invocation here recalls the collect Deus, qui salutis aeternae, said after the antiphon Ave regina caelorum during the forty days from Christmas to Candlemas: “O Lord, who gave the gift of eternal salvation to the human race by the fruitful virginity of blessed Mary: grant, we beseech you, that we may obtain the intercession of her, through whom we have merited to receive the Author of life. . . .” 152. I. B., Virginalia, or spirituall sonnets in prayse of the most glorious Virgin Marie, upon everie severall title of her litanies of Loreto (Rouen, 1632). 153. Ibid., fo. A2r–A2v. 154. I. B., A treatise with a kalendar, and the proofes thereof, concerning the holy-daies and fasting-daies in England (c. 1608), 4. See also Allison and Rogers, Contemporary Printed Literature, 161; 10–11. This book is discussed further in Chapter 3.

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204  •  Notes 155. Allison and Rogers, Contemporary Printed Literature, 11. The “I.B.” of Virginalia is also the author of a collection, published around 1630, of witty and extraordinarily mean-spirited Epigrammes on the lives and characters of the Reformers. It was reissued in 1634 as the Mirrour of new re-formation. The subject matter of this book certainly encourages identification with the “John Brereley” who compiled the anti-Protestant Luthers life. . . ; however, see A. F. Allison, “Who was John Brereley? The Identity of a Seventeenth-Century Controversialist,” Recusant History 16 (1982): 17–43, for an argument to the contrary. 156. St. Mary’s College, Oscott, England, MS R223; transcriptions are by Joy Rowe of the Chapels Society. 157. Ibid., 209. 158. Ibid., 340. 159. Ibid., 336. 160. Ibid., 338. 161. Perhaps this line was “redeemed all”? 162. Moule, Commonplace Book, 209. 163. Duffy, Stripping of the Altars, 241; see, more generally, 239–243 for additional background on this prayer. 164. Moule, Commonplace Book, 270. 165. Monson, “Byrd, the Catholics, and the Motet,” 355­–62. 166. Allen, The martyrdom of XII priests, fo. B8r. 167. Caraman, Henry Garnet, 438. 168. Allen, The martyrdom of XII priests, fo. f5r, f4v. 169. Gaspar de Loarte, Exercise of a Christian Life, trans. Stephen Brinkley (London: n.p., 1579). 170. Yale University Library, Osborn Shelves, a30. The fullest account of the MS is in Michael F. Suarez, “A New Collection of English Recusant Manuscript Poetry from the Late Sixteenth Century: Extraordinary Devotion in the Liturgical Season of ‘Ordinary Time.’” Recusant History 22 (1994): 306–18. 171. Suarez, “New Collection,” 306. 172. Eamon Duffy’s objection to recent scholarly attempts at dividing the liturgical year into a “ritual” half and a “secular” half (see Duffy, Stripping of the Altars, 47) is worth recalling here. 173. Might the unusually long space after the Corpus Christi poem have been intended for a poetic adaptation of Lauda Sion, along the lines of Southwell’s “Saint Thomas of Aquines Hymne read on Corpus Christy Daye”? 174. Suarez, “New Collection,” 311. 175. Ibid., 310. 176. Ibid., 314. 177. Ibid., 307. 178. The unusually well-preserved copy of the 1575 Tallis-Byrd Cantiones at the Royal College of Music is likewise bound in the disjecta membra of a late medieval chant manuscript. For more on the physical preparation of recusant books, see Nancy Pollard Brown, “Paperchase: The Dissemination of Catholic Texts in Elizabethan England,” in English Manuscript Studies 1100–1700, ed. Peter Beal and Jeremy Griffiths (London: British Library, 1997), 120–43. 179. On Southwell’s links to Byrd, see Philip Caraman, The Life of Robert Southwell, Poet and Martyr (New York: Farrar, Straus and Cudahy, 1956), 114–15.

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Notes  •  205 180. See Louis Martz, The Poetry of Meditation: A Study in English Religious Literature of the Seventeenth Century (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1962), 163–68; and Peter Daly, “Southwell’s ‘Burning Babe’ and the Emblematic Practice,” Wascana Review 3 (1968): 29–44. 181. Martin Elsky, “History, Liturgy, and Point of View in Protestant Meditative Poetry,” Studies in Philology 77 (1980): 73. 182. Edward Daniel, Meditations collected and ordered for the use of the English colledge of Lisbo. By the superiours of the same colledge (Lisbon, 1649), fo. §4v. 183. Robert Carballo, “The Incarnation as Paradox and Conceit in Robert Southwell’s Poetry,” American Benedictine Review 43 (1992): 225. 184. Martz, Poetry of Meditation, 102. 185. Ibid., 103. 186. Brown, “Robert Southwell and the Written Word,” 212. 187. A recent account of Byrd’s carefully calculated use of the press in the service of his artistic concerns is Jeremy L. Smith, “From ‘Rights to Copy’ to ‘Bibliographic Ego’: A New Look at the Last Early Editions of Byrd’s ‘Psalmes, Sonets and Songs.’” Music and Letters 80, no. 4 (1999): 511–30, esp. 529–30. 188. Martz, Poetry of Meditation, 104–5. 189. Philip Brett, ed., Byrd Edition 7a (London, Stainer and Bell, 1997), x, speculates that even the disorder of Byrd’s Epiphany set, with the alleluia out of the proper order and the gradual missing altogether, may somehow be (as Martz suggests for the odd location of Southwell’s Nativity poem) a comment on the public hostility of the English establishment toward both the authority of the Roman church and its liturgical practices. 190. See John and Lorraine Roberts, “To Weave a New Webbe in their Own Loome: Robert Southwell and Counter-Reformation Poetics,” in Sacred and Profane: Secular and Devotional Interplay in Early Modern British Literature, ed. Helen Wilcox, Richard Todd, and Alasdair MacDonald (Amsterdam: Vrije Universiteit Press, 1996), 73. 191. John Busby, quoted in The Complete Poems of Robert Southwell, ed. Alexander B. Grosart (London: Robson and Sons, 1872), 114. 192. This apt term, “principle of economy,” was first used by Jackman to describe Byrd’s combinatorial technique in the Gradualia; see James L. Jackman, “Liturgical Aspects of Byrd’s Gradualia,” Musical Quarterly 49 (1963): 21.

Chapter 3

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1. For an excellent account of these issues, see Lucy E. C. Wooding, Rethinking Catholicism in Post-Reformation England (Oxford: Clarendon, 2000), esp. chapters 6 (“Defending the Faith”) and 7 (“Scholasticism Revisited”). 2. John Gerard, The Autobiography of an Elizabethan, trans. Philip Caraman (London: Longmans, 1951). 3. Ibid., 42. 4. William Allen, An apologie and true declaration of the insitution and endevours of the two English Colleges (Rheims, 1581), fo. 79r–79v. 5. Philip Brett, ed., Byrd Edition 6a (London: Stainer and Bell, 1991), ix. 6. Philip Caraman, Henry Garnet, 1555–1606, and the Gunpowder Plot (London: Longmans, 1964), 320.

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206  •  Notes



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7. Richard Smith, The Life of the most honourable and vertuous lady the La. Magdalen Viscountesse Montague (St. Omer, 1627), 28–29. 8. Allen, An apologie, fo. 11v–12r. 9. P. Renold, ed., The Wisbech Stirs, Catholic Record Society vol. 51 (London: Catholic Record Society, 1958), 164. 10. The Ceremonies, solemnities, and prayers, used at the opening of the holy gates of foure Churches, within the Citie of Rome, in the yere of Iubile (London: John Wolfe, 1600). The English printer of this work also produced a number of Catholic books with false imprints claiming they were made in Italy; see A. F. Allison and D. M. Rogers, The Contemporary Printed Literature of the English CounterReformation, vol. 2 (Aldershot, England: Scolar, 1994), 27. 11. Judith Champ, The English Pilgrimage to Rome: A Dwelling for the Soul (Leominster, England: Gracewing, 2000), 71–73. 12. Anselme Davril and Timothy Thibodeau, eds., Guillelmi Duranti Rationale Divinorum Officiorum I–IV (Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols, 1995). 13. Timothy Thibodeau, “Enigmata Figurarum: Biblical Exegesis and Liturgical Exposition in Durand’s Rationale,” Harvard Theological Review 86, no. 1 (1993): 65–79. 14. “On peut considérer ce livre comme le dernier mot du moyen-âge sur la mystique du culte divin.” Prosper Guéranger, Institutions liturgiques, vol. 1 (Paris, 1840), 355. 15. William Weston, William Weston: The Autobiography of an Elizabethan, ed. Philip Caraman (London: Longmans, 1955), 37. 16. Martin Luther, Three Treatises, ed. and trans. C. M. Jacobs, A. T. W. Steinhaeuser, and W. A. Lambert (Philadelphia: Muhlenberg Press, 1947), 241; quoted in Thibodeau, “Enigmata Figurarum,” 67. 17. Wooding, Rethinking Catholicism, 264–65. 18. Allison and Rogers, Contemporary Printed Literature, 148–49. 19. Thomas Knox, ed., The First and Second Diaries of the English College, Douay (London: D. Nutt, 1878), 111. 20. See Justin Martyr, The First and Second Apologies, trans. William Barnard (New York: Paulist Press, 1997). 21. Laurence Vaux, A catechism or Christian doctrine, 7th ed. (1599), 175. 22. Ibid., 173. 23. Ibid., 165–66. 24. Ibid., 167, 168–69. 25. Ibid., 172. 26. Ibid., 165–67. 27. See Chapter 4 for more on scriptural text choice in the Mass proper and Byrd’s musical response to it. 28. John Heigham, A devout exposition of the holie Masse, with an ample declaration of all the rites and ceremonies belonging to the same (Douai, 1614). 29. A. F. Allison, “John Heigham of S. Omer (c. 1568–c. 1632),” Recusant History 4 (1957–58). 30. See John Heigham, trans., Meditations upon the mysteries of our holie faith, with the practise of mental prayer touching the same (St. Omer, 1619); and John Heigham, trans., The life of our blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus. Gathered out of Saint Bonaventure (St. Omer, 1622).

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Notes  •  207 31. Allison, “John Heigham,” 229–30. 32. Heigham, Devout exposition, 82–83. I have kept his somewhat eccentric punctuation throughout. 33. Though the psalm Venite exsultemus certainly has a special role in the day’s liturgy: it is, very unusually, part of the prescribed cursus of psalms at matins, and thus is dropped from its usual place as the matins invitatory. 34. Byrd’s rubric, at the end of the doxology, reads simply Rorate: ut supra. Despite the objections of Philip Brett, ed., Gradualia I: The Marian Masses, Byrd Edition 5 (London: Stainer and Bell, 1989), xiii–xiv, who notes that the votive Masses are not printed as part of the Temporale in contemporary service books, Jackman is correct in noting that this Mass Rorate caeli marks “the opening of the ecclesiastical year at Advent. Hence the appearance [there] of the explanatory matter, i.e. of the rubrics, is not only natural, but is further evidence of the liturgical thought behind the work”; see James L. Jackman, “Liturgical Aspects of Byrd’s Gradualia,” Musical Quarterly 49 (1963): 30. More recently, the recorded Byrd Edition of Andrew Carwood and the Cardinall’s Musick has recognized this structure by beginning their Gradualia cycle with the Advent Lady Mass rather than with the more predictable Christmas proper. 35. Heigham, Devout exposition, 109–11. 36. Ibid., 112–16; the reference is, of course, to Bede’s Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Anglorum. 37. Allison, “John Heigham of S. Omer,” 236. 38. Henry Fitzsimon, The justification and exposition of the divine sacrifice of the Masse, and of al rites and ceremonies therto belonging (Douai, 1611). Fitzsimon wrote this treatise in response to the accusations of John Rider, the Protestant dean of St. Patrick’s Cathedral in Dublin; he dedicated it to the founder of the Irish College in Douai. See Allison and Rogers, Contemporary Printed Literature, 59­–60. 39. Fitzsimon, Justification, 229. 40. Ibid. 41. Ibid., 228. 42. The well-known sequence Stabat Mater dolorosa, present in more recent liturgical books, was officially restored to the liturgy only in 1727 at the initiative of Pope Benedict XIII. 43. Heigham, Devout exposition, 117–19. 44. Ibid., 119–20. 45. Craig Monson, “Byrd, the Catholics, and the Motet: The Hearing Reopened,” in Hearing the Motet: Essays on the Motet of the Middle Ages and Renaissance, ed. Dolores Pesce (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), 364. Monson notes that the text of the tract lacks “in universo mundo,” but does not identify the longer form as a Little Office antiphon; he states, inaccurately, that Gaude Maria is “a phrase also included in the recitation of the rosary” (n. 31). 46. See the discussion of text censorship in the Gradualia later in this chapter. 47. Heigham, Devout exposition, 163–64. 48. Ibid., 357–58. 49. A. C. Southern, An Elizabethan Recusant House (London: Sands, 1954), 43; quoted in Joseph Kerman, Masses and Motets of William Byrd (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1981), 49.

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208  •  Notes 50. Robert Southwell, Two Letters and a Short Rule of Good Life, ed. Nancy Pollard Brown (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1973), 111. 51. “Per duos fere annos conversatio mea fuit inter Catholicos, singulis septimanis nisi valde raro necessitate aliter coactus Sanctam Communionem accepi.” See Anthony Kenny, ed., Responsa Scholarum (1598–1621), Catholic Record Society vol. 54 (London: Catholic Record Society, 1962), 69. 52. Petrus Canisius, Summe of Christian Doctrine, trans. Henry Garnet (c. 1592– 96), 488. 53. Richard Bristow, A briefe treatise of diverse plaine and sure wayes to find out the truthe in this doubtfull and dangerous time of Heresie, 2d ed. (Antwerp, 1599). 54. John Strype, Annals (1824 ed). , vol. 2, part 1, 498; cited in Philip Caraman, The Other Face (New York: Sheed and Ward, 1960), 155–56. 55. Peter Milward, Religious Controversies of the Elizabethan Age (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1977), 44. 56. Bristow, Briefe treatise, 131r. 57. Ibid., 130r–130v. 58. The conversation on the road to Emmaus (Luke 24:13–35), for example, is annotated as “The Gospel upon Munday in Easter weeke.” The full complement of votive Masses are also accounted for, such as John 21:25–27, “The Gospel in a votive Masse of our B. Lady betweene Easter & Whitsuntide.” 59. See also John Rastell’s discussion of the Corpus Christi proper later in this chapter. 60. The approval of selected holidays was not solely a matter of antiquity: the feast of the Transfiguration (August sixth), of Eastern origin, was not officially adopted by the Roman Church until 1456. 61. The author adds a note: “This is Ember, that your blind Apostles do boldlie say to have bin the Popes Lemman.” The name is actually, as he goes on to mention, an English corruption of quatuor temporum (four brief penitential periods throughout the year, each falling in one of the four seasons). 62. Bristow, Briefe treatise, 131v. Such a long list of liturgical events used as polemical ballast is by no means unique to this book, as we shall see in other treatises. Compare, for example, the final chapter of N. C., The pigeons flight, from out of Noes ARKE (c. 1603) later in this chapter. 63. Bristow, Briefe treatise, 133r. 64. See Eamon Duffy, The Stripping of the Altars (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1992), 169–83, for the intense “social” presence of the saints in pre-Reformation England. 65. Bristow, Briefe treatise, 132v. Brett, ed., Gradualia I: The Marian Masses, xiii, notes that the Purification, being a legitimate Anglican feast and using exclusively biblical texts in its Mass proper, was a prudent choice to open the Marian Gradualia. The Visitation (July 2) and the Conception (December 8) of Mary were indirectly provided for in the Gradualia; they use the same proper texts as the Nativity. 66. Bristow, Briefe treatise, 133r–133v.

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Notes  •  209 67. This claim did not go unchallenged. A popular argument among Protestant respondents to Bristow was that, outside a handful of great Continental cathedrals, collegiate chapels, and the like—to which Elizabethan Catholics had little or no access—the Roman rite was more inclined to be dull, slovenly, hasty, and a scandal to any person who was attempting to worship with sincerity and understanding. See Milward, Religious Controversies, 39–46. 68. The supplication of certaine Masse-Priests (London, 1604), fo. I3r. 69. Ibid., fo. I3v. 70. Duffy, Stripping of the Altars, 436, 460, 461. 71. Matthew Sutcliffe, Challenge concerning the Romish Church, her doctrines and practices (London, 1602), 23. 72. Ibid., 23. 73. William Bishop, The second part of the reformation of a Catholike deformed (1607), 14. 74. William Fulke, A retentive, to stay good Christians, in true faith and religion, against the motives of Richard Bristow (London, 1580), 91–92. Cf. Bristow, Briefe treatise, 131v. 75. Henry Garnet, A summe of Christian doctrine: composed in Latin, by the R. Father P. Canisius . . . To which is adjoined the explication of certaine questions not handled at large in the booke (1592/6), fo. *3v. 76. Ibid., 488–89. 77. Ibid., 490. 78. Ibid., 491. 79. Ibid., 494. 80. Ibid., 493–94. 81. Alexander Baillie, A true information of the unhallowed offspring, progresse & impoisoned fruits of our Scottish Calvinian gospel, & gospellers (Würzburg, Germany, 1628). 82. Ibid., 209. 83. Ibid., 208. 84. Ibid., 208. 85. Ibid., 211. 86. “I. B.”, A treatise with a kalendar, and the proofes thereof, concerning the holydaies and fasting-daies in England (1608), 2. 87. Ibid., 6. 88. John Radford, A directorie teaching the way to the truth in a briefe and plaine discourse against the heresies of our time (1605). Such delays between the preparation of a manuscript and its publication were common in English recusant circles; the second volume of Gradualia, apparently delayed for two years, is a rather mild instance. 89. Ibid., 421. 90. Radford, Directorie, 422–23. 91. Radford, Directorie, 423. 92. Where the liturgical text reads “quae ascendit,” the Vulgate text reads “quae progreditur.” 93. N. C., Pigeons flight, 88. 94. Hebrews 12:1, as translated in the Douai-Rheims New Testament. 95. N. C., Pigeons flight, 98.

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210  •  Notes 96. Brett, ed., Byrd Edition 6a, viii. 97. John Rastell, A confutation of a sermon, pronounced by M. Iuell the second sondaie before Easter (which Catholikes doe call Passion Sondaie) Anno Dni. MDLX (Antwerp, 1564); in response to John Jewel, The Copie of a Sermon pronounced by the Byshop of Salisburie at Paules Crosse the second Sondaye before Easter in the yere of our Lord, 1560 (London, 1560). 98. Through the predictable barrage of Catholic responses, Jewel never dropped his challenges. He died as Bishop of Salisbury in 1571, still one of the staunchest defenders of the Elizabethan settlement. 99. Rastell, Confutation, fo. 86r. 100. Ibid., fo. 85v. 101. Ibid. 102. Ibid., fo. 83r. The original antiphonal singers in Isaiah 6 are seraphim rather than cherubim (as in Claudio Monteverdi’s famous Duo seraphim clamabant alter ad alterum). 103. Rastell, Confutation, fo. 83v–84r. There appears to be some confusion here about terminology; the first two pieces, which he refers to as “responds,” are in fact biblical lessons for Matins, and the first two “versicles” are the responsories that follow them. “Antempnes” are of course antiphons. The scriptural references are to Exodus 12:2–20 and 1 Corinthians 5:7–8; 1 Kings 19:6–8 and John 6:51; Job 31:31 and Mark 14:22. 104. The proper cycles of most other major feast-day Masses are compiled along the same lines, a structure that Byrd exploits in his own settings. 105. Fulke, Retentive, 92. 106. Rastell, Confutation, fo. 84r–84v; note that the vernacular “later evensong” takes the place of the more literal “second Vespers.” 107. Ibid., fo. 84v. 108. Ibid., fo. 84v–85r. 109. See also Anne C. Parkinson, “Religious Drama in Kendal: The Corpus Christi Play in the Reign of James I,” Recusant History 25, no. 5 (2001): 604–12, on the continuing popular demand for public religious festivities associated with Corpus Christi several generations after the feast had officially been abolished. 110. Passion Sunday, along with a number of other Lenten and pre-Lenten observances, were excised from the reformed calendar. 111. “Charitatem inchoatam quam laeti excipimus, charitatem indies magis magisque augescentem postulabimus enixe, praestabimus (spero) ingenue. Me in hanc spem inducit sanctorum omnium festivitas. Quibus vel ideo res nostras curae et cordi esse magis persuasum habeo, quod in illorum celebritatem adventus ad nos tuus multo charissimus, et post biennium decursum litterarum tuarum effectus, supra quam dici potest optatissimus, inciderit. . . . In octava Omnium Sanctorum. Tuus in veritate C. B.” See Renold, Wisbech Stirs, 152. 112. “Hodierno quidem die per Octavas omnium Sanctorum, illuminante Deo vultum sum super nos, ut qui effuderit super nos spiritum suum abunde, partim freti sanctorum precibus, partim tracti amicorum sermonibus, iisdem articulis in digito dei subscripsimus omnes tanquam vir unus.” Ibid., 156.

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Notes  •  211 113. “Si gaudet unum membrum congaudent reliqua. In eo vero etiam nobis placeamus magis, quod dum sanctorum in caelis gloriam utrumque celebramus, sanctorum in terris spiritualem et exuberandam laetitiam palpamus quasi et sensibus usurpamus.” Ibid., 161. 114. One handbook of meditation does conclude its cycle with an implicit image of the Church and its saints: the almost wordless series of illustrations that make up Godly contemplations for the unlearned, printed as the second half of the anonymous Certaine devout and godly petitions (Antwerp, 1575). The series of Godly contemplations ends with a woodcut of a great tree, and birds flying around and nesting in it, being fed by a hand from heaven. Two church spires and what appears to be a fortified tower stand in the background. Scriptural references are given to Psalms 144 and 146, as well as to Matthew 6. 115. “Controvertia autem nostra de Purgatorio incepit in multorum proximorum nostrorum praesentia, quos Frater meus festo Omnium Sanctorum ad celebrandum primum festi Salvatoris nostri diem, ut in patria mos est, in coena postquam vesperas pro de Defunctis absolvi, invitasset.” See Kenny, ed., Responsa Scholarum, 43. 116. Brett, ed., Byrd Edition 6a, vii. 117. Alison Shell, Catholicism, Controversy and the English Literary Imagination, 1558–1660 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 197. 118. Caraman, Henry Garnet, 330. 119. The liturgical text reads Gentem auferte perfidam, and, of course, alacriter (swiftly) rather than acriter (bitterly). 120. Caraman, Henry Garnet, 402. 121. Ibid., 413; his reference to the “precise” quotation of the text appears to be a touch of irony, far from uncommon in these courtroom dialogues. 122. We now know, and in fact Coke knew, that the actual sermon had nothing to do with the Gunpowder Plot, though it shared in the tense atmosphere of that early November as Parliament prepared to open. It is improbable that Garnet would have discussed the plot freely before a large mixed group of recusants (which appears to have included at least one spy) when he was unwilling to tell even one of his closest friends, who could have advised him on the matter, or a single well-placed government official, who could have put a stop to it. He revealed his prior knowledge of the plot only under torture. 123. Edmund Fellowes, William Byrd (London: Oxford University Press, 1936), 43. 124. Philip Brett, ed., Byrd Edition 7b (London: Stainer and Bell, 1997), xvi. 125. Philip Brett, ed., Byrd Edition 7a (London: Stainer and Bell, 1997), xiii. 126. Ibid., 38. 127. New Testament . . . translated faithfully into English. . . (Rheims, 1582), fo. c2v. 128. Brett, ed., Byrd Edition 7b, xx, describes the Douai Bible as “an extremely literal [i.e. following the Latin Vulgate] translation, often to the point of incomprehensibility.” This is certainly true in the Douai version of the passage in question here: “for with such hostes God is promerited.” The original Latin hardly differs from the translators’ English: “talibus enim hostiis promeretur Deus.” The 1611 Authorized Version reads, more digestibly, “for with such sacrifices God is well pleased.” 129. Edward Maihew, A paradise of praiers and meditations (Douai, 1613), 122, 123, 125.

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212  •  Notes 130. Brett, ed., Byrd Edition 7a, xvii. 131. Hugh Benham, review of Philip Brett, Gradualia II (1607): Christmas to Easter, Music and Letters 80 (1999): 333. 132. Kerman, Masses and Motets, 337. 133. See, for example, the testimony of Richard Huddleston in Kenny, ed., Responsa Scholarum, 113, on preparations for the Mass of St. Ursula: “Dominus Burskeus Missam die Sanctae Ursulae celebraturus pridie cum Jacobo Duketo necessario suo convenerat, ut indumenta sacra, librum ceteraque suppeditaret” (Lord Burske, planning to celebrate Mass on the day of St. Ursula, met with his kinsman Jacob Duckett the previous day, that he might supply the vestments, the book, and the other things necessary); Southwell’s account of plans to “sing Mass with all solemnity, accompanied by choice instrumental and vocal music, on the feast of St. Mary Magdalen” (Brett, ed., Byrd Edition 6a, ix); or the fifty-eight carefully ordered feast-day poems in an anonymous recusant manuscript of c. 1600 (Yale University Library, Osborn Shelves, a30; see Recusant History 22 [1994]: 306–318), including the last three of these days. 134. Henry Granville, ed., The Life of St. Philip Howard (London: Phillimore, 1971), 49; this list, of course, covers more than half of the Gradualia propers. It should be said that most of the Jesuit missionaries disapproved of severe fasting in the pre-Reformation vein, considering it inappropriate for a persecuted community that needed to keep up its strength and avoid excesses in any direction. See John Bossy, The English Catholic Community 1570–1850 (London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 1975), 111. 135. Granville, Life of St. Philip Howard, 64; 48. 136. Kenny, ed., Responsa Scholarum, 32. 137. “Dedit mihi tunc librum ad orandum dum parabat litteras.” Ibid., 33. 138. “Hoc accidit per mensem unum ante festum Nativitatis Salvatoris nostri et iussit mihi redire ad se circa festum S. Thomae Apostoli ut simul iter facere potuerimus ad celebrandum inter Catholicos festum totum Nativitatis Salvatoris nostri.” Ibid. 139. “Post festum autem Epiphaniae dum reverteremur Episcopus Wintoniensis in itinere orbavit me illo, et inclusit illum in carcere eiusdem Civitatis.” Ibid., 34. 140. “Sub initium regis huiusce Iacobi una cum centum et quadraginta plus minus aliis missam iam audituris die purificationis Beatae Virginis sacro sum deprehensus.” Ibid., 243. 141. “Commorans autem Grarigiae domumque Domini Francisci Duketi nobilis viri frequentans (a qua non adeo procul diurnabam) hic in Ecclesiam Catholicam adscitus eram: uxor enim Dni Fi. Duketi affinis mea me Catholicum (eo quod Mater reliquique paene omnes) autumans, invitatum ad pascalia (ut meminem [?] sum [?]) illic, cognatulis meis transigenda bis terve ad sacrum, ullam ante peccatorum Fideique Homologesin, nescia admisit.” Ibid., 112. 142. Gerard, Autobiography, 174­–75. 143. “In vigilia Nativitatis domini quidam pater Societatis . . . instanter urgebat, quo me a manifesto aeternae submersionis periculo liberatum in Arcam Noe benigne exciperet.” Kenny, ed., Responsa Scholarum, 92.

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Notes  •  213 144. “Post unam quippe aut alteram horam ab illo tempore . . . immensa dei misericordia mens interno lumine efficaciter perfusa est. Propriae etenim miseriae, deique erga me amoris, atque eorum quae praecipue circa salvatoris nostri plusquam benignissimi nativitatem, humilitatis scilicet, paupertatis, et charitatis, sese offerebant meditationis puncta, diutius insistens contemplationi; delicta mea, meamque (proh dolor) ingratitudinem maximam, obortis lachrimis, singultibus, et suspiriis deflebam . . . Morae impatiens e lecto protinus desiliens, arrepta toga, illico ad religiosissimum sacerdotem . . . patrem scilicet Gerardum (qui divina providentia una cum alio praefato patre in eadem domo tunc temporis aderat) gressum accelerebam: Ad cuius pedes provolutus, prae doloris magnitudine vix in haec verba vocem resolvo. Veni eum adoraturus, qui pro me in vili stabulo nasci non dedignatus est, dixique me desiderare catholicum fieri.” Ibid., 92–93. 145. William Bishop, Disproofe of D. Abbots counterproofe (Paris, 1614), 351. 146. Antonia Fraser, The Gunpowder Plot: Terror and Faith in 1605 (London: Phoenix Press, 1996), 223. 147. William Allen, The martyrdom of XII priests (Rheims, 1582), fo. D7v. 148. Ceri Sullivan, Dismembered Rhetoric: English Recusant Writing, 1580 to 1603 (London: Associated University Presses, 1995). 149. Kerman, Masses and Motets, 44. 150. Rastell, Confutation, fo. 156r. 151. Duffy, Stripping of the Altars, 440.

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1. Joseph Kerman, Masses and Motets of William Byrd (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1981), 84–85. 2. Peter le Huray and Ralph Daniel, The Sources of English Church Music 1549– 1660 (London: Stainer and Bell, 1972), 83; Craig Monson, “Authenticity and Chronology in Byrd’s Church Anthems,” Journal of the American Musicological Society 35 (1982): 301–2; John Morehen, “The English Anthem Text, 1549–1660,” Journal of the Royal Musical Association 117 (1992): 71. 3. The three that do not—Vigilate, O quam gloriosum, and Laetentur coeli—make up, notably, three-fourths of the joyful content of the book. 4. The Christmas set comes only from the Old Testament. The Assumption and the Nativity of Mary, as the two nonbiblical events in the cycle, also do not fit the usual mold; most of the nonbiblical passages in the Gradualia tend to be Marian. 5. See pp. 142–159. 6. Miri Rubin, Corpus Christi: The Eucharist in Late Medieval Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991); George Dunbar Kilpatrick, The Eucharist in Bible and Liturgy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983). 7. John Rastell, A confutation of a sermon, pronounced by M. Iuell the second sondaie before Easter (which Catholikes doe call Passion Sondaie) Anno Dni. MDLX (Antwerp, 1564), fo 83r. 8. This place in the Douai Bible is conspicuously marked “Agnus Dei at Masse.” (The biblical passages containing the Gloria and Sanctus are annotated in the same way).

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9. There are thirteen introits in all. The only one outside the main feast-day cycle is Rorate caeli for the Lady Mass in Advent; it will be discussed here along with the others. When figures are given on length, text density, or other characteristics of an introit, the reference is—unless specifically stated otherwise—to the respond, verse, and doxology, without the prescribed repetition of the respond. 10. See Chapter 5 for more on this topic. 11. Kerman, Masses and Motets, 243. 12. Philip Brett, ed., Byrd Edition 7b (London: Stainer and Bell, 1997), vii. 13. Kerman, Masses and Motets, 285–6. 14. See pp. 96–97. 15. Ludwig Finscher and Annegrit Laubenthal, discussing polyphonic Mass propers in the high Renaissance, point out the contrast between Byrd’s and Palestrina’s Offertories by comparing their two very different opening gambits for Assumpta est Maria. See Finscher and Laubenthal, “Zwischen liturgischer Funktion und musikalischer Gattung: Propriumszyklen,” in Neues Handbuch der Musikwissenschaft, vol. 3, no. 2, ed. Carl Dahlhaus (Laaber, Germany: Laaber, 1990), 432–33. 16. Per Kerman, Masses and Motets, 267, “at the Assumption nothing is quite so bright, or clamorous, or stately, or effervescent.” 17. Ignatius of Loyola, Spiritual Exercises and Selected Works, ed. George E. Ganss (New York: Paulist Press, 1991), §47 and passim; the word composition occurs, in this sense, thirteen times in Ignatius’s original version of the Exercises. 18. Examples include the incomplete gradual-alleluia group on Epiphany, the problematic situation with the votive-Mass alleluias Ave Maria and Virga Jesse, or the difficulty in cutting short the gradual Oculi omnium to accommodate the tract Ab ortu solis. 19. In the rite discussed here, there are two scripture readings before the gospel on Christmas, and a sequence after the alleluia. 20. William Flynn, Medieval Music as Medieval Exegesis (Lanham, Md.: Scarecrow, 1999), 186. 21. Ibid., 193. 22. Per Kerman, Masses and Motets, 234, “[Byrd] prefers to make the second alleluia more impressive than the first, in one way or another.” 23. The most obvious reason for the difference in scale, which is more evident here than in chant propers, is that Byrd does not give his alleluias massive melismatic settings of the kind that occur in the chant repertoire. He views the word alleluia (unlike the verses of the tract) as a relatively short text, and sets it as such. 24. See pp. 131-133. 25. The single exception is the Epiphany Mass, which has come down to us missing its gradual, gradual verse, and first alleluia—that is, three-fifths of the relevant group. 26. Byrd was not bound to such a representation, though: sanctorum omnium in the All Saints’ introit is articulated in a very different manner than venite ad me omnes in the alleluia a few minutes later.

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Notes  •  215 27. One of these excursions occurs, no less, only in a tract. The antiphon Hodie Christus natus est and the hymn Jesu nostra redemptio also include triple-time sections near the end. Kerman, Masses and Motets, 337–38, compellingly identifies the triple-time last verse of the latter as a tribute in both style and metric organization to the polyphonic hymns of Tallis, who “generally changes from triple to duple metre in his last stanza”; there is also a reminiscence of Sheppard, who more often did what Byrd does here. 28. See Philip Brett, ed., Gradualia I: The Marian Masses, Byrd Edition 5 (London: Stainer and Bell, 1989), 136, for a helpful set of explanatory rubrics on Diffusa est gratia. 29. Although, as Kerman, Masses and Motets, 252, notes, the final words et in saeculum saeculi are lacking for the purpose. This could have been an oversight on Byrd’s part, or a grudging admission that the piece was complicated enough as it stood. 30. Brett, ed., Byrd Edition, xxvi. 31. Kerman, Masses and Motets, 331, remarks on the uncouth extremes of range in Ave maris stella, and concludes that “this all seems inexplicable,” even in the unlikely case that the stanza Virgo singularis was adapted from an earlier setting of the Sarum hymn by that name. 32. See stanza 20, Nulla rei fit scissura: signi tantum fit fractura, qua nec status nec statura signati minuitur. 33. Brett, ed., Byrd Edition 7b, 33, gives the rubrics of this votive Mass. 34. Byrd’s Easter set, which includes the sequence in its appropriate place and no extra alleluia, has no votive option at all—though it was fairly common practice before the reforms of the sixteenth century to sing the Easter Mass as what amounted to a votive Mass on other Sundays of the year; see Philip Cavanaugh, “Early Sixteenth-Century Cycles of Polyphonic Mass Propers—An Evolutionary Process or the Result of Liturgical Reforms?” Acta Musicologica 48 (1976): 151–65. 35. Richard White, Vox fletus et vox clamoris (c. 1640?), Newberry Library MS 3A 6, [3]. The manuscript is undated, but White lived from 1604 to 1687, and appears to have been in the prime of life while assembling this work: “The morning of youth which many find cool and temperate, with me was full of heats, heats of unbridled desires, heats of concupiscence; and as my Noon grew on, so they encreas’d to a high exorbitance, nor can I hope for ease till thou wilt show thy self and assuage their violence” (65–66). 36. A few groups of lines that make little sense on their own, such as “et emitte caelitus / lucis tuae radium” in the first stanza or “da tuis fidelibus / in te confidentibus / sacrum septenarium” near the end, are taken together as advised in contemporary books on meditation. 37. John Milsom, “The Masses and Motets of William Byrd” (review), RMA Research Chronicle 19 (1983–85): 93. 38. White, Vox fletus, 50: “Arise, north wind, and come, south wind, blow through my garden, and its perfumes shall flow.”

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216  •  Notes 39. The interval between gradual/alleluia and offertory may well be the longest in the service if there is a sermon (though the recusants appear to have cultivated sermons primarily outside the immediate context of the Mass). In any case, the time between offertory and communion is the longest stretch of purely liturgical action between any two proper items. 40. The long Communions are Responsum accepit for Candlemas, Tu es Petrus for Sts. Peter and Paul, Optimam partem for Assumption, and Vidimus stellam for Epiphany. 41. See the analysis of Confirma hoc Deus in Joseph Kerman, “William Byrd, 1543– 1623,” Musical Times 114 (1973): 687–90, with musical supplement. 42. Kerman, Masses and Motets, 193­–94. 43. Philip Brett, “Homage to Taverner in Byrd’s Masses,” Early Music 9, no. 2 (1981): 169–76. 44. Perhaps not surprisingly, Palestrina and Byrd both illustrate the word plenitudinem (“fullness”) in Tui sunt coeli with a homophonic entry in all voices. 45. John Milsom, “Sacred Songs in the Chamber,” in English Choral Practice 1400– 1650, ed. John Morehen (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 178. 46. Kerman, Masses and Motets, 262. When the Annunciation is celebrated before Easter, which is the case in most years, the alleluia is to be left out of this offertory. 47. Philip Brett, ed., Byrd Edition 7a (London: Stainer and Bell, 1997), xi. 48. Kerman, Masses and Motets, 274. 49. Hugh Benham, “Gradualia II: Christmas to Easter,” Music and Letters 80, no. 2 (1999): 334. 50. The other instances are in the Easter communion Pascha nostrum and Plorans plorabit. 51. Brett, ed., Byrd Edition 7a, x. 52. See the Douai annotations to Matthew 2:2 and 2:11; their citations of Chrysostom are from Homily 24 on 1 Corinthians, Homily 7 on Matthew, and the Homily on St. Philogonus. 53. The exception to this rule is the Christmas proper, which begins in one mode and ends in another. 54. Brett, ed., Byrd Edition 7a, 63. The progression at measures 46–47 is another likely candidate—the “adjustment” could also go here, with a perfect cadence in soprano and tenor, and the bass moving to G instead of the deceptive E, though this option would require some telescoping of the text underlay in the bass. 55. This recalls the difficulties once observed in a choir trying to adapt the Corpus Christi gradual/alleluia pair Oculi omnium/Caro mea to a Mass that required three readings according to later-twentieth-century liturgical reforms. After some unsuccessful experiments, the break for the second reading was set after the first alleluia (mm. 41–42 in Philip Brett, ed., Byrd Edition 6a (London: Stainer and Bell, 1993), which provided a slightly wan conclusion but was at least a convincing cadence. The joinery between gradual verse and alleluia was simply unbreakable. 56. Brett, ed., Byrd Edition 7a, x.

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Notes  •  217 57. The texts of all three Masses on Christmas (at midnight, at dawn, and on Christmas morning) are drawn literally and exclusively from the Old Testament; the single exception is the free material at the beginning of the second introit Lux fulgebit. It is less surprising in this context to see even the Christmas Day communion drawn from the same stock of Old Testament messianic texts. 58. James McKinnon, The Advent Project: The Later-Seventh-Century Creation of the Roman Mass Proper (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2000), 7. I have added citations to the 1950 edition of the Liber Usualis for ease in finding the relevant chants. 59. McKinnon, Advent Project, 9. 60. Rastell, Confutation, 83r. 61. Kerman, Masses and Motets, 240. 62. See p. 172. 63. Brett, ed., Byrd Edition 6a, x. 64. Hugh Benham, review of Philip Brett, Gradualia I: All Saints and Corpus Christi, Music and Letters 73 (1992): 324. 65. This observation holds only for the Mass proper itself and the majority of the related items. B flat appears several times in the A-Dorian Pange lingua setting, and, of course, throughout the G-Dorian Ave verum. 66. See, for example, John Gerard’s dismay that the conservative residents of an isolated country house dared to approach the sacraments only a few times a year; Gerard, Autobiography, 32. 67. Brett, ed., Byrd Edition 6a, 118: the piece survives in manuscript with what appear to be prepublication variants. Philip Brett, “Edward Paston (1550–1630): A Norfolk Gentleman and his Musical Collection,” Transactions of the Cambridge Bibliographical Society 4:1 (1964): 51–69. 68. Manduco, like the Greek trogo from which it is translated in the Vulgate rendition of this passage, is (unlike the more usual term phago used elsewhere in John 6) hardly a refined or spiritualized word for “eat”: a literal rendition is closer to “chew” or “gnaw.” 69. H. K. Andrews, The Technique of Byrd’s Vocal Polyphony (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1966), 244. 70. This sort of cadential dissonance is certainly found elsewhere in the Gradualia: see, for example, the final cadence of Confirma hoc Deus, where the first soprano simply enters on the dissonant note, or (for Byrd’s treatment of the figure with reduced voices) the verse of the Corpus Christi introit at “adjutori nostro,” where the alto leaps up a seventh after functioning momentarily as a harmonic bass. 71. Anonymous, A methode, to meditate on the psalter, or great rosarie of our blessed Ladie (1598), fo. C7r. 72. Brett, ed., Byrd Edition 7a, xi. Byrd gives an almost identical treatment—with a declamatory full-choir repetition—to the phrase “the truth doth speak in singleness” when he sets the metrical psalm Blessed is he in his 1588 Psalmes, sonets and songs. Such a technique is otherwise unheard-of in his metrical psalm settings. 73. See also the final alleluia of the Assumption offertory Assumpta est Maria for a similar technique, though no repetition is specified in the text here.

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218  •  Notes 74. Philips in fact takes up where Byrd leaves off. Beati estis, the fifth responsory at matins for the Common of Apostles, combines the rest of the familiar passage in Matthew 5 with an additional phrase from Luke 6:22. 75. John Steele, ed., Peter Philips: Select Italian Madrigals, Musica Britannica 29 (London: Stainer and Bell, 1970), xviii. 76. John Steele, ed., Peter Philips: Cantiones sacrae octonis vocibus, Musica Britannica 61 (London: Stainer and Bell, 1992). 77. Philip Brett, ed., Byrd Edition 6b (London: Stainer and Bell, 1993), viii. 78. Matthew Sutcliffe, Challenge concerning the Romish Church, her doctrines and practices (London, 1602), 155. 79. Ibid., 112: “Hail star of the sea, kind mother of God and ever virgin, happy gate of heaven, break the fetters of the guilty, bring light to the blind.” 80. Ibid., 65: “Mary, mother of grace, mother of mercy, protect us from the enemy and receive us at the hour of death.” 81. Thomas Bell, The woefull crie of Rome (London, 1605), 73. 82. John Field, A caveat for Parsons Howlet (1581), fo. Gvii r. 83. J. M., A pill to purge out Poperie (London, 1623), 6. 84. Brett, ed., Byrd Edition 6b, viii. 85. “Singulis autem diebus Officium Beatissimae virginis recitavi, immo non ter per annum omisi, nisi negotia et necessitates vel loci, temporis, aut conversationis amicorum multitoties haereticorum me impedivit”; see Anthony Kenny, ed., Responsa Scholarum (1598–1621), Catholic Record Society 54 (London: Catholic Record Society, 1962), 41–42. 86. “. . . q[u]o tempore non alium progressum in literis feci q[u]am officium Beatae Virginis posse legere nequidem intelligere.” Ibid., 203. 87. John Mush, Life of Margaret Clitherow, cited in John Morris, The Troubles of Our Catholic Forefathers, Related by Themselves (Farnborough, England: Burns and Oates, 1872–77), series 3, 393–94. 88. Edmund Campion, Oratio tertia: Ad iuvenes, de iuvene academico, in Orationes septendecim . . . (Ingolstadt, 1602), fo. c2 r: “Horarias preces B. Virgini et quidam memoriter quotidie recitabat; diem sine sole diceret abiturum, quo sacrum non audisset.” 89. The primer, or office of the blessed virgin Marie, in Latin and English: according to the reformed Latin: and with lyke graces privileged, trans. Richard Verstegan (Antwerp, 1599). 90. For bilingual Sarum and York primers, see Edgar Hoskins, Horae Beatae Mariae Virginis (London: Longmans, Green, 1901), 159ff. 91. John Sweetnam [“I. S. of the Society of Jesus”], The Paradise of Delights, or the B. Virgins Garden of Loreto. With briefe Discourses upon her Divine Letanies, by way of Meditation (St. Omer, 1620), 186. 92. Verstegan, Primer, fo. A3r. Verstegan’s translations can be found in Brett, ed., Byrd Edition 6b, xxxiii­–xxxiv. 93. These “little hours” are Prime, Terce, Sext, and None, as well as Compline. 94. Brett, ed., Byrd Edition 5, xxxii. 95. Ibid. 96. Verstegan, Primer, 269r ff.

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Notes  •  219 97. In this matter his approach resembles that of Byrd, who did not provide Office music for specific Marian feasts, with the exception of the somewhat anomalous four-voice antiphons for Candlemas. 98. Kerman, Masses and Motets, 227. Kerman also notes that Byrd’s text for O quam gloriosum “has not been traced elsewhere,” and that “the words ‘laudantes Deum’ seem to be a free addition” (156, n. 2). The text is found in the Institutiones of Peter Canisius; it appears in English as part of a weekly cycle of prayers printed in an anonymous recusant translation of the Exercitamenta (Certayne devout meditations [Douai, 1576]). These are “prayers to be said in the school before lectures be given,” and each short antiphon—all standard pieces from the liturgical repertory, though some are substantially adapted—is followed by a collect which asks specifically for help in studies. Wednesday is dedicated to All Saints; the antiphon for the day reads: “O how glorious is that kingedome wherein all saints rejoyse with Christ, and wearing white stoles, follow the lambe whether so ever he goeth, praysinge God, and sayinge: Blessinge, honour, wysdome, thancks, glory, power, and strength be given to our god, world without ende. Amen.” The original Latin of Canisius’s Institutiones was printed in England in a clandestine edition in 1566; did Byrd encounter this text as a young man, perhaps, while tutoring recusant children? 99. Brett, ed., Byrd Edition 6b, ix. 100. No other non-Gospel antiphon is set in the Gradualia, though, and O admirabile commercium may well be a piece for more general use, as the neighboring Matins responsory O magnum mysterium appears to be. 101. Daniel Page, “Uniform and Catholic: Church Music in the Reign of Mary Tudor,” Ph.D. diss., Brandeis University, 1996, 211–3. 102. John Harley, William Byrd: Gentleman of the Chapel Royal (Aldershot, England: Scolar, 1997), 18–25.5

Chapter 5 1. Henry Garnet, The Societie of the Rosary, Wherin is conteined the begining, increase, & profit of the same. Also the orders & manifold graces annexed unto it, with divers other things thereunto appertaining, 2d ed. (1596­/97), 38–39. 2. Joseph Kerman, Masses and Motets of William Byrd (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1981), 244–45; 251–59. 3. Ibid., 254. 4. Another consideration, of course, is Byrd’s tendency to privilege the feast-day cycle over the votive cycle, which he appears to have considered (at least in some places) as subordinate to the main project of the Gradualia; a case in point is the music for Corpus Christi, which requires a number of problematic or nearimpossible transfers if it is to be used for the votive Mass of the Sacrament. 5. John Milsom, “The Masses and Motets of William Byrd” (review), RMA Research Chronicle 19 (1983–85): 92. 6. Kerman, Masses and Motets, 227, argues that Byrd’s 1607 complaint about having “long since submitted” the second book to the press would have been unreasonable if he had handed in the music after the near-cataclysmic events of November 1605. 7. James L. Jackman, “Liturgical Aspects of Byrd’s Gradualia,” Musical Quarterly 49 (1963): 33.

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220  •  Notes













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8. See the explanatory note in Philip Brett, ed., Byrd Edition 7a (London: Stainer and Bell, 1997), xix. Brett notes that, at least ideally, five voices are required to sing the entire Christmas cycle: the alto of the introit and responsory would move to the tenor part (also in the c3 clef) of the higher pieces, while an extra soprano joined the group to sing the additional part in the c1 clef. In practice, though, a group of four singers with a moderately flexible second voice would have no trouble performing the whole cycle. Despite the difference of a fifth in clefs, the tessitura of that voice shifts by only a major third between the two groups of pieces. 9. Kerman, Masses and Motets, 294. 10. Ibid., 295; Brett, ed., Byrd Edition 7a, 2. 11. The closest parallel is with the opening of verses 2 and 4 in the Corpus Christi processional hymn Pange lingua, also citing the relevant chant—which Byrd takes seriously enough to let it determine the mode of the entire piece and remove it from the G-mixolydian orbit of the remaining Corpus Christi proper. 12. Kerman, Masses and Motets, 295. David Humphreys, in correspondence to Early Music 28, no. 3 (2000): 508–9, raises the intriguing possibility that the Puer natus Mass, with its “elaborate demonstration of musical learning,” may have been written by Tallis as an academic presentation piece; if so, the possible links with Byrd’s own compositional training deserve to be explored further. 13. M. Jennifer Bloxam, “Obrecht as Exegete: Reading Factor Orbis as a Christmas Sermon,” in Hearing the Motet: Essays on the Motet of the Middle Ages and Renaissance, ed. Dolores Pesce (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), 170–72. 14. Of course, this does not include the homophonic opening of the alleluia verse Dies sanctificatus; though listed as a separate number, it is explicitly introduced in the print with the rubric Chorus sequitur, and it is clear from the musical evidence of the cycle that Byrd conceived of his gradual/alleluia pairs as a single unit. The situation is precisely the same in the Candlemas gradual/alleluia pair; Senex puerum, with its homophonic beginning, does not use the otherwise ubiquitous head motive of the day’s music. 15. Kerman, Masses and Motets, 296, comments on the similarity of both material and method at the beginning of the two Viderunt omnes settings. 16. Per Kerman, Masses and Motets, 97, “Opening subjects that stress affective semitones are an impressive feature of many later motets [i.e. after the manuscript Lamentations of the early 1560s, in which Byrd first develops this technique at length], starting with the first two phrases of Peccantem me quotidie in the Cantiones of 1575—‘Peccantem me quotidie’ and ‘et non me poenitentem.’” Notably, the fifth is kept intact in the tenor’s opening viderunt, and only changed in the second and third iterations. 17. Brett, ed., Byrd Edition 7a, calls this communion a “visionary moment . . . a piece which, though barely a minute in length, sounds as though it does indeed encompass ‘the ends of the earth.’” 18. Alan Brown, “The Masses and Motets of William Byrd” (review), Journal of the American Musicological Society 38, no. 1 (1985): 166–67. 19. John Harley also points out this common thread of thematic material in William Byrd: Gentleman of the Chapel Royal (Aldershot, England: Scolar, 1997), 323–24.

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Notes  •  221 20. The countersubject here shows the same characteristic syncopations as the equivalent voice in the Christmas pieces. 21. Brown, “Masses and Motets,” 167. 22. For chronology of the Masses, see Peter Clulow, “Publication Dates for Byrd’s Latin Masses,” Music and Letters 47 (1966): 1–9, and Kerman, Masses and Motets, 188–215. 23. On the absence of head motives in the music for All Saints’ Day, see Kerman, Masses and Motets, 249, and Brown, “Masses and Motets,” 167. 24. Kerman, Masses and Motets, 249. 25. The four-voice hymn Jesu nostra redemptio is a similar anomaly within the fivevoice Ascension set, but it was likely conceived as a processional hymn for Corpus Christi, which suits its place with the Corpus Christi Office music and the Eucharistic votive Mass in the four-part fascicle of book 2. See Brett, ed., Byrd Edition 7a, 93. 26. Recall that the Candlemas gradual/alleluia pair also has a peculiarity of scoring that does not recur in any later Masses: the gradual verse begins in three voices and acquires a fourth as it goes on. 27. Philip Brett, ed., Byrd Edition 6b (London: Stainer and Bell, 1993), x. 28. The only other cycle using this clef arrangement is the equally well-loved celebration of Corpus Christi, notable both for its extensive contents (no other feast gets as many pieces, though Christmas runs a close second) and its scattered presentation over both the 1605 and 1607 books. Ave verum is demonstrably an older piece, with what appear to be two intermediate readings in manuscript; see Philip Brett, ed., Byrd Edition 6a (London: Stainer and Bell, 1991), 118. Could some of the remaining Corpus Christi music—the chant-based processional hymn Pange lingua, perhaps—also belong to the earliest layer of the Gradualia? 29. The Christmas set incidentally comes to rest on the G that would, strictly speaking, have been proper to the chant of the introit. 30. Jackman, “Liturgical Aspects,” 29–30. 31. The anomalous (and thus perhaps early) Christmas piece O magnum mysterium also includes one of Byrd’s rare rubrics—Beata virgo: ut supra—clarifying its responsorial form. 32. Kerman, Masses and Motets, 246. 33. Brett, ed., Byrd Edition 7a, vii, sums up the contents of Gradualia I as Byrd’s “fulfill[ing] his obligation to that part of the liturgy—the Marian Masses, All Saints and Corpus Christi—most crucial to the cause of the recusants and to the Jesuits with whom he was involved.” Kerman was the first to remark on the intense concentration of doctrinal and liturgical topics of “special interest to English Catholics” in the 1605 book; see Kerman, Masses and Motets, 226. It is worth recalling, though, that these were the preferred feasts for elaborate musical treatment even before the Reformation; see for example Mass settings on liturgical cantus-firmus melodies (Pange lingua for Corpus Christi, De beata Virgine and Ave maris stella for the multiple feasts of the Virgin, and Gaudeamus for All Saints), which mirror the exact contents of Gradualia I.

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222  •  Notes 34. The concentration of paraliturgical and nonliturgical items in book 1 is a further sign that this was seen as a large two-volume series rather than as two somewhat separate endeavors. Byrd was in no hurry to get all the core liturgical material out of the way and then turn to extra pieces; if anything, the order of publication suggests the opposite. Nine items in the first volume—one out of every seven—stand outside the central scheme, as opposed to only two in the second. 35. Kerman, Masses and Motets, 240. 36. Ibid., 228. 37. Edmund Fellowes, William Byrd (London: Oxford University Press, 1936), 43. 38. See Clulow, “Publication Dates.” 39. See Brett, ed., Byrd Edition 7a, x, 63. Two of the alterations needed for the votive Mass of the Sacrament at certain times of the year—the removal of the communion alleluia and the insertion of the tract Ab ortu solis—are in fact impossible to make in Byrd’s settings as they stand, and require either liturgical compromise or minor recomposition of the music. It is difficult to know which course of action would have offended the composer less. 40. Acts 1:6–11. 41. Philip Brett, ed., Byrd Edition 7b (London: Stainer and Bell, 1997), vii. 42. Kerman, Masses and Motets, 276. 43. Leeman Perkins, “The Masses and Motets of William Byrd” (review), Musical Quarterly 70, no. 1 (1984): 137. 44. Jackman, “Liturgical Aspects,” 30. 45. Both Gradualia prefaces, as we have seen, are saturated with references to liturgical order and decorum: • “being committed to the divine service” • “so the songs might be arranged, each in its own place, according to the parts of the Office” • “the Offices of the whole year, set out for your use” • “fitting for the solemn observance of these feasts” • “to fulfil my office” • “to adorn divine things with the highest art” 46. Joseph Kerman, “The Byrd Edition—In Print and on Disc,” Early Music 29, no. 1 (2001): 117; in this reading, the events of book 2 (Easter, Ascension, Pentecost, etc). are certainly crucial for resolution of the cycle. 47. Garnet, The Societie of the Rosary, 23. 48. Brown, “Masses and Motets,” 167. 49. It is worth recalling in this context that Mary was herself present at many of these non-Marian feasts, including Pentecost: see Acts 1:14. 50. G refers here to G-mixolydian—i.e., with no flats—as opposed to its minormode cousins, the one-flat signature of the two Christmas pieces that end on G (Viderunt/Dies sanctificatus and Viderunt omnes) or the two-flat G-dorian of a handful of anomalous Gradualia pieces (Plorans plorabit, Ave verum corpus, and Salve sola Dei genetrix).

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Notes  •  223 51. “Hoc accidit per mensem unum ante festum Nativitatis Salvatoris nostri et iussit mihi redire ad se circa festum S. Thomae Apostoli ut simul iter facere potuerimus ad celebrandum inter Catholicos festum totum Nativitatis Salvatoris nostri.” See Anthony Kenny, ed., Responsa Scholarum (1598–1621), Catholic Record Society vol. 54 (London: Catholic Record Society,1962), 33. 52. “Post festum autem Epiphaniae dum reverteremur Episcopus Wintoniensis in itinere orbavit me illo, et inclusit illum in carcere eiusdem Civitatis.” Ibid., 34. 53. Brett, ed., Byrd Edition 7a, x. 54 Edward Daniel, Meditations collected and ordered for the use of the English colledge of Lisbo. By the superiours of the same colledge (Lisbon, 1649), fo. §4v. 55. Ibid., 352: “where he shall see and abound and be enlarged,” an allusion to Isaiah 60:5, “tunc videbis et afflues et mirabitur et dilatabitur cor tuum.” 56. The only parallel in his earlier work is the 1575 O lux beata Trinitas, a setting of the hymn at Vespers on that day. 57. Brett, ed., Byrd Edition 6a, x. 58. The Corpus Christi Office antiphons O quam suavis and Ego sum panis vivus are in the four-part section of the 1607 book, along with the additional items required to adapt the Corpus Christi proper into the votive Mass of the Sacrament in various seasons. 59. Kerman, Masses and Motets, 308. 60. Ibid., 316–18. 61. Ibid., 272. 62. William Flynn, Medieval Music as Medieval Exegesis (Lanham, Md.: Scarecrow, 1999), 242. 63. Brett, ed., Byrd Edition 6a, xi. 64. Roger Bowers, “To Chorus from Quartet,” in English Choral Practice 1400–1650, ed. John Morehen (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 1–47, discusses the evolution of this distinctive English five-part sonority. In the same volume, see also David Wulstan, “Byrd, Tallis and Ferrabosco,” 120–22, for a somewhat different interpretation. 65. The term triplex was associated at any rate with high, often virtuoso treble lines sung by boy choristers; the superius of the Gradualia cycle was, from contemporary evidence, as likely as not a female soprano. 66. Bowers, “To Chorus from Quartet,” 42–43. 67. Kerman, Masses and Motets, 257. 68. Ibid., 253; see also Philip Brett, ed., Gradualia I: The Marian Masses, Byrd Edition 5 (London: Stainer and Bell, 1989), xiii. 69. Daniel, Meditations, 169. 70. Eamon Duffy, The Stripping of the Altars (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1992), 47; one proponent of this sacred/secular dichotomy is Charles Phythian-Adams; see his “Ceremony and the Citizen,” in The Early Modern Town, ed. P. Clark (London: Longman, 1976), 106–28. 71. John Bossy, The English Catholic Community 1570–1850 (London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 1975), 117. For pre-Reformation views on the matter, see B. F. Harvey, “Work and Festa Ferianda in Medieval England,” Journal of Ecclesiastical History 23 (1972): 289–308.

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224  •  Notes 72. At times, the music for this day recalls other places in the proper cycle. The resonant half-cadence at factus homo in the Nativity gradual verse Virgo Dei genitrix uses the same augmentation and climactic breve B flat in the bass as the Circumcision antiphon O admirabile commercium does at largitus est nobis suam deitatem. Both texts are (unusually for Mass proper texts) directly concerned with the mystery of the incarnation, and through this gesture of unusual intensity, Byrd links these two otherwise different pieces. 73. Kerman, Masses and Motets, 255. 74. Richard Bristow, A briefe treatise of diverse plaine and sure wayes to find out the truthe in this doubtfull and dangerous time of Heresie, 2d ed. (Antwerp, 1599), 132v. 75. Brett, ed., Byrd Edition 5, xix. 76. Kenny, ed., Responsa Scholarum, 82: “Optimam partem, confidenter spero, elegi cum Maria. Jesus faveat et Maria.” 77. Ibid., 181; recall that the original quotation from Luke 10:42 in fact applies to Mary, the sister of Martha and Lazarus (who was often conflated with Mary Magdalen), not to the mother of Jesus: “Hoc tamen dico nullo modo ab illa abhorerre me et sperare brevi fore ut optimam eam Mariae magdalenae partem eligam quae a me non auferetur, quod ipsa Diva Magdalena, Deus Optimus Maximus et Beata Virgo faxint.” 78. Brett, ed., Byrd Edition 6a, vii. 79. White, Vox fletus et vox clamoris, c. 1640, Newberry Library MS 3A 6, p. 61. 80. Kerman, Masses and Motets, 151. 81. Ibid., 130, shows the modal ordering of the Cantiones in table format. 82. The phrase is from the second Gradualia preface: “piis quibusdam ac mellitis Christiani ritus elogiis (licet Indignus et Impar) notulas pro coronide apponere sum conatus.” See Brett, ed., Byrd Edition 5, xxiii.

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228  •  Bibliography Haggh, Barbara. “The Archives of the Order of the Golden Fleece and Music.” Journal of the Royal Musical Association 120, no. 1 (1995): 1–43. Haigh, Christopher. English Reformations: Religion, Politics and Society under the Tudors. Oxford: Clarendon, 1993. Harley, John. William Byrd: Gentleman of the Chapel Royal. Aldershot, England: Scolar, 1997, 2nd ed. 1999. Harvey, B. F. “Work and Festa Ferianda in Medieval England.” Journal of Ecclesiastical History 23 (1972): 289–308. Herlin, Denis. Review of Philip Brett, ed., The Byrd Edition, vols. 5 and 6a. Revue de Musicologie 80 (1994): 152–53. Humphreys, David. “Aspects of the Elizabethan and Jacobean Polyphonic Motet, with Particular Reference to the Influence of Alfonso Ferrabosco the Elder on William Byrd.” Ph.D. diss., Cambridge University, 1976. Ignatius of Loyola. Personal Writings. Edited by Philip Endean and Joseph Munitiz. London: Penguin, 1996. ———. Spiritual Exercises and Selected Works. Edited by George E. Ganss. New York: Paulist, 1991. Irving, John A. “Penetrating the Preface to Gradualia.” Music Review 51, no. 3 (1990): 157–66. ———. “Words and Notes Combined: Some Questions of Text-Music Integration in Byrd’s Masses.” Music Review 52, no. 4 (1991): 267–78. Jackman, James. “Liturgical Aspects of Byrd’s Gradualia.” Musical Quarterly 49 (1963): 17–37. Karp, Theodore. Aspects of Orality and Formularity in Gregorian Chant. Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press, 1998. Kerman, Joseph. “Byrd, Tallis, and the Art of Imitation,” in Aspects of Medieval and Renaissance Music, edited by Jan LaRue, 519–37. New York: Pendragon, 1966. ———. “Byrd’s Motets: Chronology and Canon,” Journal of the American Musicological Society 14 (1961): 359–82. ———. “Byrd’s Settings of the Ordinary of the Mass,” Journal of the American Musicological Society 32 (1979): 408–39. ———. “The Elizabethan Motet: A Study of Texts for Music.” Studies in the Renaissance 9 (1962): 273–308. ———. The Masses and Motets of William Byrd. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1981. ———. Review of Philip Brett, ed., The Byrd Edition. Early Music 29, no. 1 (2001): 109–18 ———. “Old and New in Byrd’s Cantiones sacrae.” In Essays on Opera and English Music in Honour of Sir Jack Westrup, edited by Frederick Sternfeld, 25–43. Oxford: Blackwell, 1975. ———. “On William Byrd’s Emendemus in melius.” Musical Quarterly 49 (1963): 431–49. ———. “William Byrd, 1543–1623.” Musical Times 114 (1973): 687–90, with musical supplement. ———. Write All These Down: Essays on Music. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1994. Kilpatrick, George Dunbar. The Eucharist in Bible and Liturgy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983.

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230  •  Bibliography ———. “The Nonsuch Music Library.” In Sundry Sorts of Music Books: Essays on the British Library Collections, edited by Chris Banks, Arthur Searle, and Malcolm Turner, 146–82. London: British Library Publishing, 1993. ———. “Sacred Songs in the Chamber.” In English Choral Practice 1400–1650, edited by John Morehen, 161–79. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995. Monson, Craig. “Byrd, the Catholics, and the Motet: the Hearing Reopened.” In Hearing the Motet: Essays on the Motet of the Middle Ages and Renaissance, edited by Dolores Pesce, 348–74. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997. Morehen, John, ed. English Choral Practice 1400–1650. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995. ———. Review of Philip Brett, ed., The Byrd Edition, vol. 6a. Early Music 19, no. 4 (1991): 649–51. ———. Review of Philip Brett, ed., The Byrd Edition, vol. 6b. Early Music 22, no. 2 (1994): 329–30. ———. Review of Philip Brett, ed., The Byrd Edition, vol. 5. Journal of the Royal Musical Association 116 (1991): 324. Moroney, Davitt. “Under Fower Sovereygnes: Thomas Tallis and the Transformation of English polyphony.” Ph.D. diss., University of California–Berkeley, 1980. Morris, John. The Troubles of our Catholic Forefathers, related by themselves. Farnborough, England: Burns and Oates, 1872. Nasu, Teruhiko. “The Publication of Byrd’s Gradualia Reconsidered.” Brio 32 (1995): 109–20. O’Connor, Daniel. “Southwell’s and Cosin’s English Versions of the ‘Lauda Sion Salvatorem’ of St. Thomas Aquinas.” Notes and Queries 17 (1970): 405. Owens, Jessie Ann. “Palestrina as Reader: Motets from the Song of Songs.” In Hearing the Motet: Essays on the Motet of the Middle Ages and Renaissance, edited by Dolores Pesce, 307–28. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997. Page, Daniel B. “Uniform and Catholic: Church Music in the Reign of Mary Tudor.” Ph.D. diss., Brandeis University, 1996. Palmer, William. “Byrd’s Alleluias.” Music and Letters 33, no. 4 (1952): 322–28. Parkinson, Anne C. “Religious Drama in Kendal: The Corpus Christi Play in the Reign of James I.” Recusant History 25, no. 5 (2001): 604–12. Petti, Anthony. Recusant Documents from the Ellesmere Manuscripts. Catholic Record Society vol. 60. London: R. H. Johns, 1968. Phythian-Adams, Charles. “Ceremony and the Citizen: The Communal Year at Coventry, 1450–1550.” In The Early Modern Town, edited by Peter Clark, 106–28. London: Longman, 1976. Planchart, Alejandro Enrique. “What’s in a Name? Reflections on Some Works of Guillaume Du Fay.” Early Music 16, no. 2 (1988): 165–75. Questier, Michael. Conversion, Politics and Religion in England, 1580–1625. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996. ———. “‘Like Locusts All Over the World’: Conversion, Indoctrination and the Society of Jesus in Late Elizabethan and Jacobean England.” In The Reckoned Expense: Edmund Campion and the Early English Jesuits, edited by Thomas McCoog, 265–84. Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 1996. Raspa, Anthony. The Emotive Image: Jesuit Poetics in the English Renaissance. Fort Worth: Texas Christian University Press, 1983.

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Index of Byrd’s Works A

E

Ab ortu solis 127 Adoramus te Christe 61, 169 Adorna thalamum tuum 167 Alleluia / Vespere autem sabbati 163, 164 Ascendit Deus (alleluia) 128 Ascendit Deus (offertory) 140 Assumpta est Maria (alleluia) 105, 128 Assumpta est Maria (offertory) 105, 135, 140 Audi filia: see Diffusa est gratia Ave Maria (alleluia) 129 Ave Maria (offertory) 113, 134, 135, 137 Ave maris stella 131, 161, 162 Ave verum corpus 17–19, 137, 148, 169, 184

Ecce advenit 116 Ecce quam bonum 99 Ecce virgo concipiet 113, 114, 143 Ego sum panis vivus 164 Emendemus in melius 113

B Beata virgo: see O magnum misterium Beata viscera 143, 145, 155, 189 Beati mundo corde 100, 125, 128, 131, 144, 148, 155, 158–160, 179 Behold I bring you glad tidings (contrafactum of Ne irascaris) 111 Benedicta et venerabilis 189

C Caro mea: see Oculi omnium Christus resurgens 169 Cibavit eos 118 Civitas sancti tui: see Ne irascaris Confirma hoc Deus 134, 135, 137, 140 Constitues eos principes 140, 164, 185

D Deus venerunt gentes 112 Dies sanctificatus (alleluia) 174 Diffusa est gratia 127, 129–131, 133 Domine non sum dignus 112

F Factus est repente 113, 144, 145, 154, 155 Felix es sacra Virgo Maria 128, 189 Felix namque 105 Fortune my foe 60

G Gaude Maria Virgo 76, 82, 129, 187 Gaudeamus omnes (All Saints’ Day) 118–122, 146, 150 Gaudeamus omnes (Assumption) 118–124, 146, 150, 187 Great Service 115

H Haec dies (1591) 111, 112, 113, 191 Haec dies (1607) 113, 114, 133 Hodie Beata Virgo 164, 167 Hodie Christus natus est 164 Hodie completi sunt 163 Hodie Simon Petrus 103, 164

I Iesu nostra redemptio 105 In manus tuas 169 In resurrectione tua 112 Infelix ego 131 Iustorum animae 121, 134, 135, 137, 140

L Laetania 54, 137 Laetentur coeli 191 Lamentations 136 Libera me Domine et pone me 136

233

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234  •  Index of Byrd’s Works M Mass Ordinary settings 10, 68, 77, 105– 106, 111, 115, 125, 134–135, 177, 185–186 Memento Domine 112 Memento salutis auctor 162 Miserere mei Deus 112

Rorate caeli 79, 174, 187

S

Ne irascaris 111, 136 Non vos relinquam orphanos 163, 164 Nunc dimittis (1605) 114, 125, 127, 187, 188

Sacerdotes Domini 133, 137, 148, 149 Salve Regina (1591) 105 Salve sancta parens 167, 187, 189 Senex puerum (alleluia) 128 Senex puerum (Magnificat antiphon) 164, 167 Sicut audivimus 131 Solve iubente Deo 103 Surge illuminare 142 Suscepimus Deus 115, 187

O

T

N

O admirabile commercium 163, 164, 169 O gloriosa Domina 162 O lux beata Trinitas 132 O magnum misterium 103, 105, 168, 174 O quam gloriosum 163, 164 O quam suavis 164 O rex gloriae 164 O sacrum convivium 164 O salutaris hostia 184 Oculi omnium 114, 118, 129, 131, 148, 149 Optimam partem 143, 189–190

P Pange lingua 163, 184 Pascha nostrum 129, 144, 146, 151–154 Plorans plorabit 103, 151 Post dies octo 163, 164 Psallite Domino 126, 145, 185 Puer natus 115, 168, 169–171, 174

Q Quem terra pontus 161, 162 Quodcunque ligaveris x, 164 Quotiescunque manducabitis x, 143–144, 146, 153, 154

R Reges Tharsis 140–142, 151 Regina coeli 104, 105, 151 Responsum accepit Simeon 113, 141, 143, 188 Resurrexi 115, 151, 185

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Terra tremuit 130, 133, 135, 138-140, 186 Timete Dominum 113, 114, 128 Tribue Domine 131 Tristitia et anxietas 113 Tu es pastor ovium 103, 164 Tu es Petrus 76, 113, 142, 143, 148, 155, 185 Tui sunt coeli 126, 128, 133, 135-136, 172 Turbarum voces in passione Domini 137

U Unam petii a Domino 95

V Veni Domine 112 Veni sancte Spiritus (alleluia) 128 Veni sancte Spiritus (sequence) 131-132 Venite ad me: see Timete Dominum Vespere autem sabbati: see Alleluia / Vespere autem sabbati Victimae paschali laudes 131 Viderunt omnes (communion) 141, 143, 145, 148, 172 Viderunt omnes (gradual) 171-172 Vidimus stellam 142, 144 Viri Galilaei 178-179 Visita quaesumus Domine 137 Vultum tuum 187

W Why do I use my paper, ink, and pen 20, 110

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General Index A

B

Addison, James 188 Alexander VI (pope) 3 All Saints’ Day (November 1) ix, 26, 53, 64 Byrd’s music for 112, 118, 127, 128, 172, 179, 180–183, 190–191 in English Reformation controversy 71, 92, 94, 100, 106, 176 as figure of English Catholic unity 98–99 and Henry Garnet 101–102 All Souls’ Day (November 2) 81, 87, 92, 94 Alleluia: genre in Gradualia 125–131 in Heigham’s Devout exposition 79–80 Allen, William 72, 73, 85, 88, 110 Allison, A. F. 38, 78 Ambrose 96 Anderton, James 59 Androzzi, Fulvio: Opere spirituali 26–27, 36 Annunciation 22, 23, 25, 33, 45, 49, 52, 88, 180–183 Byrd’s music for 112, 128, 129–130, 143, 180–182, 186–187 Anselm of Canterbury 58 Aquaviva, Claudio 34, 73 Aquinas, Thomas 2, 81 Ascension 26, 46, 76, 89, 106 Byrd’s music for 112, 127, 128, 164–65, 180–183, 184, 189 as turning point in Gradualia cycle 177–180, 182, 185 Assumption of Mary (August 15) ix, 52, 64, 66, 87–88, 94, 165 “barbarous hymnes” 91, 162 Byrd’s music for 118–124, 127, 128, 129–130, 143, 180–182, 186–190 Augustine ix, 96 Autun 126, 186

Bagshaw, Christopher 99 Baillie, Alexander: True information 92–93 Baldwin, John 4 Becket, Thomas 94 Bell, Thomas: Woefull crie of Rome 161 Benham, Hugh 139 Bernard of Clairvaux 58 Berzetti, Nicolao 32–33 Bishop, William 109, 110 Reformation of a Catholike Deformed 90 Blackwell, George 90 Bloxam, Jennifer 170–171 Blundell, Nicholas 188 Bolt, John 44 Bonaventure: Meditationes vitae Christi 78 Book of Common Prayer 5 Brett, Philip xii, 19, 54, 95, 184 analysis of individual works 116, 118, 122, 138, 143, 160, 174, 177, 179, 189 on political implications of Gradualia 20, 100, 153 Brian, Alexander 61 Bristow, Richard: A briefe treatise (“Motives”) 78, 85–89, 94, 189 Brown, Alan 172, 182 Brown, Nancy Pollard 35, 67 Burchard, John 3 Busby, John 68

C Cambrai 4 Campion, Edmund 20, 30 Decem rationes 78 Candlemas (February 2) Byrd’s music for 112, 127, 128, 129, 141, 142, 143, 164, 180–182, 186–188 English Catholic celebration of 107 in English Reformation controversy 85, 87, 88, 91, 94, 176

235

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236  •  General Index

as topic of meditation 26, 33, 46, 52, 66, 188 unusual status among Gradualia sets 167–168, 172–174 Canisius, Peter 91 Cantiones sacrae (1589/91) ix, 9–10, 111–113, 131, 133, 151, 169, 176–177, 191 Cantiones, quae ab argumento sacrae vocantur (1575) ix, 4, 7, 8, 11, 13, 82, 106, 138, 177 Caraman, Philip 40 Carey, Henry (Lord Hunsdon) 8 Carpentras (Elzéar Genet) 6 Carruthers, Mary xii Censorship in Gradualia 82, 86, 176–77 Ceremonies, solemnities, and prayers, used at the opening of the holy gates of foure Churches, within the citie of Rome... 73–74 Chaderton, Henry 100, 107, 161, 183 Chants for the Mass Proper 126, 145, 169–72 mode 150, 187 Chapel Royal 7, 165, 187 Christmas ix, 126, 188 Byrd’s music for 127, 128, 141, 143, 164, 179–183, 185 English Catholic celebration of 107, 108–109, 169, 183 in English Reformation controversy 74, 86–87, 88, 92, 99 as topic of meditation 23, 24–25, 38, 46, 62, 66 unusual status among Gradualia sets 146, 168–172, 174–176 Cicero 1 Circumcision, feast of (January 1) 163, 164 Clemens non Papa, Jacobus 7 Clitherow, Margaret 161 Coke, Edward 101–102 Communion: genre in Gradualia 142–160 in Heigham’s Devout exposition 83–84 Compositio loci 123 Confession 107, 108 Cooke, Thomas 190

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Corpus Christi ix, x, 19, 26, 67 Byrd’s music for 112, 114, 116, 127, 132, 143–144, 146–151, 155, 163, 164–165, 179–183, 184–185 in English Reformation controversy 71, 73, 81, 87, 89, 91, 92, 99 John Rastell’s exposition of 95–98, 99, 106, 146 Cottam, Thomas 61 Crashaw, Richard: Epigrammata sacra 66

D Damian, Peter: Ad perennem vitae fontem 100–101 Daniel, Edward: Meditations collected and ordered 184, 188 Dering, Richard 44 Divine Office: see Office Douai-Rheims Bible 85, 86, 88, 95, 104, 142, 153, 189 Dow, Robert 4 Duckett, Francis 107–108 Dufay, Guillaume 4, 5 Duffy, Eamon 61, 188 Durand, Guillaume: Rationale divinorum officiorum 74–75

E Easter ix, 2, 26, 188 Byrd’s music for 112, 127, 130, 142, 151–155, 164, 178, 179–183, 185–186 “Easter duty” 84 “Easter sepulchres” 90 English Catholic celebration of 107–108 in English Reformation controversy 81, 86–87, 88, 89, 99 octave of 163, 164 Egerton, Thomas 30 Elizabeth I (queen of England): and dedication of 1575 book 7, 8, 9, 13, 177 scolds Master of Music 44 Emerson, Ralph 20 Epiphany (January 6) 24, 25, 94, 107

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General Index  •  237

Byrd’s music for 112, 116, 140–142, 143, 177, 179–183, 185

Howard, Henry (earl of Northampton) 8 Howard, Philip (earl of Arundel) 106

F

I

Fallows, David 4 Fasting 90, 106 Field, John: Caveat for Parsons Howlet 161 Fitzsimon, Henry: Justification and exposition of the divine sacrifice of the Masse 80 Flynn, William 126, 185–186 Fulke, William: Retentive... against the motives of Richard Bristow 91, 162

Ignatius of Loyola 19–27, 184; see also Spiritual Exercises Ingatestone 183; see also John Petre Innocent VIII (pope) 3 Introit: doxologies 116, 128, 142, 175–176 genre in Gradualia 115–124, 134, 169 in Heigham’s Devout exposition 78–79 Isaac, Heinrich 3

G

Jackman, James 68, 180–181 Jackson, John 161 James I (king of England) 106 Jamestown colony ix Jeay, Henry 32 “Jerusalem”: in Byrd’s music 142, 158 in English Catholic meditations 55, 100, 162 Jesuits xi, 10, 12, 19ff., 108–109, 110, 123; see also Spiritual Exercises John XXII (pope) 2 Jubilee Year 14, 73 Justin Martyr 58

Garnet, Henry 73, 90, 91–92, 99, 167 and All Saints’ Day 101–102 Societie of the Rosary 46–47, 51–54, 61, 181 Genera dicendi 1 Gerard, John 32; memoirs 40–45, 71, 72, 108 Golden Legend 22 Gombert, Nicolas 7 Gradual: genre in Gradualia 125–131 in Heigham’s Devout exposition 79–80 Green, John 99 Greenblatt, Stephen 6 Gregory: Dialogues 43 Griffith, James 107 Guéranger, Prosper: Institutions liturgiques 75 Gunpowder Plot 40, 51, 73, 101–102, 110, 177

H Haggh, Barbara 5 Hart, Nicholas 32 Hatton, Sir Christopher 8 Heigham, John: Devout exposition of the holie Masse 74, 77–80 Henry IV (king of France) 30, 32 Henry VIII 6, 42 Hodgson, Thomas 108–109 Holby, Richard 35

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J

K Kerman, Joseph ix, x, xi, 187–88, 191 on internal chronology of Gradualia 167–68, 172, 174, 181 on Mass Proper settings 111, 116, 134, 139, 146, 151, 176, 179, 187, 189

L Lassus, Orlando de 3, 7 Lateran Council, Fourth 84 Lauda Sion: not set by Byrd 131 Robert Southwell’s translation 67 Lawson, Dorothy 35 le Maistre, Mattheus 3 Lent, alleluia forbidden during 51, 137, 152

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238  •  General Index Leythwaite, Edward 161 Litany of Loreto 54–59, 162 Loarte, Gaspar de 47–51, 62–63 Ludford, Nicholas 3 Ludolph of Saxony: Vita Christi 21–23 Lumley, Lord John 8, 9 Luther, Martin 3, 75 Lyons Contrapunctus 3

M Magnus liber organi 1, 4 Maihew, Edward: Paradise of praiers and meditations 104–105 Manuall, or meditation (“I.R.”) 29–30 Martial (poet) 14, 188 Martin, Gregory: Roma Sancta 74 Martz, Louis 66, 67 Mary I (queen of England) 42 Mass Ordinary, sung by English recusant congregations 77 McGee, M. Ruth 35 McKinnon, James 145–146 Merit, theological controversy over 103–105 Methode to meditate on the psalter 51 Milsom, John 132, 168 Molina, Antonio de: Exercicios espirituales 58 Monson, Craig 61 Montague, Lady Magdalen 73 Monteverdi, Claudio ix More, Thomas 6, 61, 64 Moule, Peter: commonplace book 59–64 Mulcaster, Richard 7

N Nativity of Mary (September 8) 33, 52, 56, 64, 66 Byrd’s music for 127, 128, 143, 155, 167–168, 180–182, 186, 188–89 Nelson, John 110 Notker Balbulus 80

O Obrecht, Jacob 170–171 Offertory: genre in Gradualia 133–142 in Heigham’s Devout exposition 83

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Palestrina Offertoria totius anni 135–138, 140 Office: Byrd’s hymns and antiphons for 160, 162–164 of the Dead 13, 100 English adaptation by Richard Verstegan, 162, 163 of the Virgin Mary 34, 37, 106, 160–163 Ordinary/proper distinction 90 Origen 58

P Palestrina, Giovanni Pierluigi da 4 Offertoria totius anni 135–138, 140 Paris: University of 21 Notre Dame (cathedral) x, 2 Pater Noster des Jesuites 30–32 Peacham, Henry 8 Pentecost ix, 2, 22, 46, 48, 86–87, 89, 178 Byrd’s music for 112, 127, 128, 131– 133, 150, 151, 164, 179–183, 184, 189 Richard White’s meditations on sequence, 132–133 Perkins, Leeman 179 Persons, Robert (Jesuit) 20, 106, 161 Peter & Paul, Sts. 26, 53 Byrd’s music for 112, 127, 143, 164, 168, 179–183, 185 Petre, John 8, 44, 45, 183 Petrucci, Ottaviano: Odhecaton 6 Petti, Anthony 31 Philip III (king of Spain) 30 Philips, Peter 8, 54 Beati estis 155–159 Pius V (pope) 162 Platus, Jerome: De bono statu religiosi 43 Porta, Costanzo 4, 116 Pounde, Thomas 107 Prefaces to Gradualia ix, 10–15, 109, 112, 162, 191 Psalmes, Songs and Sonnets (1611) 112 Purification of Mary: see Candlemas

Q Questier, Michael 20

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General Index  •  239 R Radford, John: Directorie teaching the way to the truth 93 Rastell, John: Confutation of a sermon pronounced by M. Iuell 95–98, 110, 114 Ravaillac, François 30 Requiem Mass 2 Responsa Scholarum (English College, Rome) 40–41, 106–109 Richardson, Ferdinand 7 Rogers, G. M. 38 Rosary 19, 45–54, 161 Rossini, Gioacchino x

S Sarum rite 3 Savonarola, Girolamo ix Senfl, Ludwig 3 Sequence: as genre in Gradualia 127, 131–133 in Heigham’s Devout exposition 80–81 Sequence texts: Lauda Sion 67, 81 Veni sancte Spiritus 81 Victimae paschali laudes 80 Shakespeare, William ix Shell, Alison 100–101 Sheppard, John 3, 165, 187 Sixtus V (pope) 11 Somerset, Edward (earl of Worcester) 8 Southwell, Robert 17, 64, 72, 73 Burning Babe 65–66 Lauda Sion (translation) 67 Moeoniae 66–69 Saint Peter’s Complaint 59 Spanish Armada 40 Spenser, Edmund: Faerie Queene 7 Spiritual Exercises 12, 19ff., 99, 184; see also Jesuits Directorium in Exercitia Spiritualia 32, 34–40 English Annotations on 32, 38–40 women’s participation in 34, 35 “Standish” 42 “Starkie” 42 Strype, John: Annals of the Reformation 85

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Suarez, Michael 64 Sullivan, Ceri 46, 110 Supplication of certaine Masse–Priests 89 Sutcliffe, Matthew: Challenge concerning the Romish Church 90 Sweetnam, John: Paradise of Delights 54–57, 162

T Talbot, Thomas 32 Tallis, Thomas 3, 136, 165, 187 and 1575 Cantiones 7, 9, 12, 13 Gaude gloriosa 187 Puer natus Mass 170 Taverner, John 3; Mean Mass 134 Tayler, William 189 The pigeons flight, from out of Noes ARKE 94–95 Tinctoris, Johannes 1 Tract: in Heigham’s Devout exposition 81–82 Transfer system in Gradualia 3, 68, 167, 176, 177, 181–182, 186, 187 Transfiguration 86–87 Treatise with a kalendar 93 Trent, Council of 2, 10, 37, 92 Trinity Sunday 2, 64, 86–87, 132, 184

V Vaux, Elizabeth 108 Vaux, Laurence: Catechisme 74, 76–77, 79, 80 Verstegan, Richard: Primer, or office of the blessed virgin Marie 162, 163 Victoria, Tomás Luis de 169 Virginalia, or spirituall sonnets 57–59 Visitation 33, 66, 189 Voragine, Jacobus de 21 Votive Mass of the Sacrament 26, 177 Votive Mass of the Virgin Mary 2, 3, 143, 167, 168, 174, 180–181, 189

W Weston, William 44, 73, 75 White, Richard: Vox fletus et vox clamoris 132–133, 191 Wisbech controversy 98–99 Wright, Craig 2

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