"William Byrd: Loyal Heart or Traitor?" in Pictures

The Writtle Singers with Christine Gwynn (left) just before their production 'William Byrd: Loyal Heart or Traitor?' (14 May 2011).

The audience arrive

Candlelit church provides a lovely atmosphere for music by Stondon's composer, William Byrd (c.1540 - 1623)

The event was a narrative interspersed with Byrd song.

Interval refreshments. Many of the audience enjoy their wine and nibbles in the churchyard.

Festival Organiser and Master of Ceremonies Andrew Smith at the end of the production quotes from William Byrd's Will: "... that I may live and die a true and perfect member of His holy Catholic Church without which I believe there is no salvation for me. My body to be honestly buried in that parish and place where it shall please God to take me out of this life which I humbly desire if it shall please God may be in the parish of Stondon where my dwelling is ... "

William Byrd Festival Gains International Reputation: Press Release

Stondon Massey’s tribute to the Elizabethan composer, William Byrd, culminated last weekend with a concert by the Writtle Singers (photographed) at St Peter and St Paul Church (Saturday) and service of favourite hymns (Sunday).

The William Byrd Festival was organised by members of the congregation in order to raise money in support of the building of a new Garden of Remembrance in the churchyard where Byrd is believed to have been buried in an unmarked grave in 1623.

Last week one of the congregation visited the church in order to set up the space for a choir rehearsal to find affixed to the door a bunch of flowers with a request to place them on the grave of the ‘English composer’. The flowers were sent by well-wishers from ‘Tom Garrison and the Trinity Choir’ which following a little Internet research turned out to be the Episcopal Cathedral in Kansas City over in the United States of America.

Festival Organiser, Andrew Smith, said, “This was a lovely surprise. We were not able to place the flowers on an unmarked grave so instead decided to arrange them on the Memorial Tablet to the great composer inside the church. Our Festival website (www.williambyrdfestival.blogspot.com) shows that William Byrd is very popular in America with over a third of the hits coming from that country. We have received goodwill messages from many and some lovely comments on the singers who appeared at the Festival”.

“The William Byrd Festival has been a tremendous success, both in raising Byrd’s profile and financially. We have raised £2200 toward the Garden of Remembrance project”.

William Byrd Festival: "William Byrd: Loyal Heart or Traitor?"

We welcome the Writtle Singers this evening for the first time to Stondon Massey Church for their concert. ‘William Byrd: Loyal Heart or Traitor?’ explores in words and music Byrd's recusant Catholic faith and his honoured relationship with Queen Elizabeth I.

The Programme

trad. Fanfare

Claude Gervaise (c.1525 – c.1560): Bransle Double

Coronation of Queen Elizabeth

William Byrd (c.1540 – 1623): O Lord, make thy servant Elizabeth c. 1577

Protestant worship

William Byrd: Kyrie from Mass for four voices c.1592

Catholic Persecution and Edmund Campion

William Byrd: Why do I use my paper, inke and pen c.1581/2

The Lord's song in a strange land

Philippe de Monte (1521 – 1603): Super flumina Babylonis (psalm 136 vv 1,3,4,2) 1583

Foreign correspondent

William Byrd: Quomodo cantabimus (psalm 136 vv 4-7) 1584

Patronage

William Byrd: Gloria from Mass for four voices

Interval

Thomas Weelkes (c.1575 – 1623): Since Robin Hood

Recusant catholics

William Byrd: Credo from Mass for four voices

The Bye Plot and the Main Plot

William Byrd: Sanctus & Benedictus from Mass for four voices

The Gunpowder Plot

William Byrd: Rejoice, rejoice! 1589

Loyal hearts or traitors?

William Byrd: Agnus Dei from Mass for four voices

The Performers

Writtle Singers

Conductor: Christine Gwynn

www.writtlesingers.org

Sopranos: Glyn Buckmaster, Alison Connolly, Jenny Haxell, Clare Oddy, Frances Quintrell, Jean Rose, Liz Saward, Helen Sismey

Altos: Audrey Cassidy, Anne Fradd, Gavin Oddy, Elizabeth Tiplin, Nanette Wright

Tenors: Stephen Burdge, Graham Frankel, Martin Mason, Graham Reeve

Basses: Clive Beale, John Buckmaster, Martin Clarke, Peter Quintrell, Andrew Taylor

Writtle Singers is a chamber choir based near Chelmsford, Essex. In addition to featuring a diverse range of smaller, unaccompanied pieces, the Singers’ repertoire embraces many larger scale works, recently: J S Bach Mass in B minor, Mozart Mass in C minor, Rutter The Wind in the Willows, Finzi In Terra Pax and, Chelmsford Cathedral last year, Bernstein Chichester Psalms, Janáček Otče Náš and Panufnik Westminster Mass.

2004 saw the choir’s first continental tour, which featured high mass in the magnificent cathedral of Antwerp. Subsequent trips have included performances in Prague, York Minster, Bolton Abbey, Caius College Cambridge, and, just last month, in Zurich. Writtle Singers has performed live on BBC radio and recorded three CDs: Wrelax was released in 2001, Wrejoice! (Christmas music) in 2003 and Wroving, musical highlights from their tours, in 2009.

Christine Gwynn ~ Conductor

Christine read music at Southampton University and subsequently studied at the Guildhall with Norman Beedie, laying the foundations for a freelance career involving many facets and styles of music. Christine has been musical director of Writtle Singers since 1997. In addition to an extensive choral repertoire, Christine’s conducting experience embraces orchestral direction and music theatre, from Dido & Aeneas to West Side Story and contemporary pieces – a wide variety of experience which she has brought to bear on her work in the choral field. In 2008 Christine co-founded Arbutus Music which seeks to encourage and enhance participation in group singing within the community; she also leads workshops for pianists and is musical director of Valentine Singers and Jericho Ensemble.

Martyn Richards ~ Narrator

Martyn has narrated many Writtle Singers’ concerts, with readings ranging from scripture to the children’s tale by Rutter, Brother Heinrich’s Christmas, as well as historical scripts around several Tudor projects. As a speaker of French and Italian he has helped with translations of choral works for his local choir. Martyn is a specialist in primary education as well as a choral singer himself, and has a special love of the sacred choral repertoire. Writtle Singers are delighted to be working with him once again.

William Byrd: Loyal Heart or Traitor?

The second weekend of the ‘William Byrd Festival’ at Stondon Massey features the Writtle Singers in a programme entitled ‘William Byrd: Loyal Heart or Traitor?” (Saturday 14 May 2011. 7.30pm) The inspiration behind the programme, devised by Christine Gwynn their director, comes from two previous performances by the Choir: one celebrating Gloriana, the other ‘The Gunpowder Plot’ of 1605. The title come from Queen Elizabeth I’s anti-Spanish, anti-Catholic rhetoric delivered at Tilbury in Essex when the nation faced the threat of the Armada.

She said:

“My loving people,

“We have been persuaded by some that are careful of our safety, to take heed how we commit our selves to armed multitudes, for fear of treachery; but I assure you I do not desire to live to distrust my faithful and loving people. Let tyrants fear. I have always so behaved myself that, under God, I have placed my chiefest strength and safeguard in the loyal hearts and good-will of my subjects; and therefore I am come amongst you, as you see, at this time, not for my recreation and disport, but being resolved, in the midst and heat of the battle, to live and die amongst you all; to lay down for my God, and for my kingdom, and my people, my honour and my blood even, in the dust.

“I know I have the body but of a weak and feeble woman; but I have the heart and stomach of a king, and of a king of England too, and think foul scorn that Parma or Spain, or any prince of Europe, should dare to invade the borders of my realm; to which rather than any dishonour shall grow by me, I myself will take up arms, I myself will be your general, judge, and rewarder of every one of your virtues in the field.

“I know already, for your forwardness you have deserved rewards and crowns; and We do assure you in the word of a prince, they shall be duly paid you. In the mean time, my lieutenant general shall be in my stead, than whom never prince commanded a more noble or worthy subject; not doubting but by your obedience to my general, by your concord in the camp, and your valour in the field, we shall shortly have a famous victory over those enemies of my God, of my kingdom, and of my people.”

William Byrd trod the fine line of being a ‘loyal heart’ to the Queen by writing music which she simply adored and that of ‘treachery’ or being a ‘traitor’ in being a recusant Catholic writing illegal and subversive music.

Roman Catholic religious services were illegal in England and Wales between 1559 and 1778. The fear of revolution and invasion from Catholic Spain caused the law to be strengthened, in 1581 and 1585, whereupon the saying of Mass, even in a private home, was illegal; priests so doing faced the death penalty.

One such priest was John Payne, who was imprisoned during the winter of 1576-77 for being present with the Petre family of Ingatestone Hall. He is recorded in 1577 as a servant to Lady Petre, Sir William Petre’s widow. She died in 1582, ten years after her husband. After celebrating Mass at the house of William More, in Haddon, Oxfordshire, Payne was again arrested, betrayed into the hands of the authorities by the notorious priest-catcher George ‘Judas’ Eliot, who he had met at Ingatestone Hall in Christmas 1579. Unable to secure a conviction, a charge was made that he had tried to enlist Eliot in a plot to murder the Queen. Tortured on the rack, he was subsequently found guilty and hung, drawn and quartered at Chelmsford in 1582. Revd Reeve of Stondon Massey wrote, “The manuscripts of the Custos Rotulorum preserved at Chelmsford yield up the information that in April, 1582, one John Gaye, of Blackmore, was examined as to his knowledge of ‘Payne the traytour’, recently executed and of his accomplices. He confessed to having said at Writtle that Payne was reported to have ‘belonged to one Master Shelley’ [William Shelley of Stondon Massey]”. The irony was that Shelley was later effectively evicted from his home at Stondon Place, only to be rented by Byrd himself.

Byrd was the protest singer of his day, a kind of Bob Dylan figure, who, on the execution or martyrdom of Edmund Campion penned ‘Why Do I Use My Paper Ink and Pen’. Eliot too had betrayed Campion at Lyford in Berkshire in July 1581, as he had done a further thirty priests.

Byrd would have known of Payne’s execution too. He was friendly with the Petre family at that time: a friendship which became closer after Lady William Petre’s death, when John Petre became lord of the manor.

Byrd also set to music the secret text of Psalm 137, anglicised as ‘How Do We Sing The Lord’s Song In a Strange Land’, an undercover reference to his alien Catholicism in a protestant country.

Payne was later beatified by the Catholic church and was among forty martyrs canonised by Pope Paul VI in 1970. His feast day is remembered on 6 May.

Bibliography

Stewart Foster. The Catholic Church in Ingatestone

D.W.Coller. A Peoples History of Essex

F.G.Emmison. Tudor Secretary (Sir William Petre)