For the past year, Westminster Cathedral Choir have been singing the entire Gradualia – settings of music for Mass – at the Cathedral choral services, to celebrate the 400th anniversary of William Byrd.
Beginning on 18 December 2022 and ending on Christmas day 2023, with a small reshuffle to accommodate the Coronation of King Charles III, all 109 pieces were sung during the appropriate times and seasons of the Church’s calendar.
William Byrd (c.1540 – 4 July 1623) was an English composer of the late Renaissance period, and considered to be one of the finest and most significant composers of his time and of his nation. He was a Catholic during the religious turbulence of the late 1500s when Catholicism was forbidden and many prominent Catholics were martyred for their faith.
The two collections of settings of the Mass Proper that make up the Gradualia were written for clandestine use by English Catholics. It would have been used privately during Masses across the country, and so it is highly symbolic that they were sung as part of the same services for which they were composed, in the very public setting of Westminster Cathedral, the mother church of the Roman Catholic community of England and Wales, in the 400th year of William Byrd’s death.
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