Contributions
Trained at the Chapel Royal under Thomas Tallis, Byrd became organist and master of the choristers at Lincoln Cathedral around 1563 before joining the Chapel Royal as a Gentleman in 1572. In 1575 Elizabeth I granted the two men a monopoly on music printing throughout the realm, and together they issued the Cantiones Sacrae. Byrd went on to master every genre of his age. He raised Latin polyphony to its height in his three Masses (for three, four and five voices) and in the two books of Gradualia, a vast cycle of motets spanning the Catholic liturgical year. He also enriched Anglican worship with his Great Service and anthems, wrote songs and consort songs, and all but founded the English school of keyboard music with his virginal pieces, gathered notably in My Ladye Nevells Booke. As publisher, teacher and acknowledged master, he trained Thomas Morley and shaped an entire generation.
Significance
Byrd is the greatest English composer of the Renaissance, the equal of the great continental masters and the only Englishman of his time to excel equally in the Latin motet, the English anthem, the secular song and keyboard music. His work spans half a century of religious upheaval without ever losing its ambition. Herein lies the paradox at the root of his greatness: a convinced Catholic and notorious recusant, listed with his wife among those who refused the reformed rite, prosecuted, fined and with his house searched, Byrd nonetheless remained a Gentleman of the chapel of a Protestant queen who protected him and admired his art. From this tension grew a music of two faces: Anglican services of exemplary nobility, and Latin motets charged with a more secret feeling. In pieces such as Ne irascaris Domine and its second part Civitas sancti tui, the desolation of a deserted Jerusalem seems to lament the silenced English Catholic community. Byrd thus made polyphony an act of faith as much as a work of art, leaving England its first universal musical monument.
Influence
He taught Thomas Morley directly and left his mark on Thomas Tomkins; his virginal writing founded the English keyboard school carried on by John Bull and Orlando Gibbons, and radiated to the Continent. At his death the Chapel Royal's record hailed him as "a Father of Musick" — a title posterity has never disputed. He himself drew on his master Tallis, on Franco-Flemish polyphony (Josquin, Gombert) and the continental motet, crossed with the English tradition of the votive antiphon and liturgical cantus firmus.
Anecdote
Byrd's three Masses, summits of Catholic polyphony, were printed around 1592-1595 with no title page, no publisher's name and no date — a prudent anonymity for volumes meant to be slipped into recusant households and used to celebrate Mass in secret. What the law forbade, Byrd offered to a clandestine England, turning music printing into an act of silent loyalty. The queen, who knew his faith, looked the other way: his genius was worth more than his obstinacy.