Byrd: Visita, quaesumus Domine

The Cardinall’s Musick’s award-winning Byrd series reaches its final volume, which includes some of the composer’s most sublime and adventurous music, drawn in the main from the 1591 Cantiones Sacrae collection. Throughout this series it has become evident that a comprehensive survey such as this shows the genius of the composer in a uniquely effective way: by demonstrating the extraordinary variety and unsurpassable quality of his musical and liturgical achievements.

Andrew Carwood defines Byrd as the greatest composer of the age in his booklet note—as he writes: ‘If there is an English musician who comes close to Shakespeare in his consummate artistry, his control over so many genres and his ability to speak with emotional directness it must be William Byrd.’

The ‘title track’ of this volume, Infelix ego, is the crowning glory of Byrd’s achievement as a composer of spiritual words and one of the greatest artistic statements of the sixteenth century. This remarkable text, taking the form of a number of rhetorical statements and questions, shows the whole gamut of emotion from a soul in torment—guilt, fear, embarrassment, anger, but crucially the gift of release when Christ’s mercy is accepted. It can be seen as a microcosm of Byrd’s sacred music and a fitting crown to this series.

This tenth volume in the series is the first to be released on the Hyperion label and the first to feature music from Byrd’s consummate collection of 1591. The first seven motets are featured on this disc including the scintillating setting of Psalm 150 (Laudibus in sanctis) as well as more meditative motets such as Quis est homo and the exquisitely devotional Salve regina.

From the Gradualia are the Propers for Lady Mass in Eastertide and some more general motets – two psalm settings and two motets which take their inspiration from Compline – which create one of the most varied and satisfying discs in the series.