Byrd: The Great Service & other works

It is not known when or for whom William Byrd wrote his monumental ‘Great Service’, but we can be sure that he would approve of this new recording from Westminster Abbey.

The second half of the sixteenth century was a heady time for the post-Reformation Church of England. Out of the ashes of the Catholic tradition a new—and decidedly Anglican—musical enthusiasm arose, and with it three distinct styles for settings of the Canticles, so central to Cranmer’s vision for the liturgy: ‘short’ services presented their texts efficiently and simply, while ‘verse’ services complicated proceedings with the addition of soloists and more intricate textures; ‘great’, or ‘full’, services extended this development to create musical structures of astonishing diversity, and at the very peak of the genre comes William Byrd’s masterpiece, widely regarded as the finest unaccompanied setting of the service ever made.

The ‘Great’ Service is here presented in its correct liturgical order (with the inclusion of the frequently omitted Kyrie) and is complemented by six of Byrd’s finest anthems and two organ voluntaries from My Lady Nevells Booke, a collection of Byrd’s keyboard music put together in 1591.

CDA67533  76 minutes 11 seconds
CD OF THE WEEK - The Sunday Times
‘A very polished and confident performance. Quinney gives equally fluent renditions of the Voluntary and 'Fancie for My Lady Nevell', completing a disc that fulfils its brief with distinction’ (Gramop ...
‘The Choir of Westminster Abbey revels in the score's complexity, animating the dialogues within its ten-part texture with clarity and conviction … this disc shows us clearly why the Great Ser ...
‘Byrd's Great Service was not discovered until the 1920s, and is one of his most magnificent creations, awesome in scale and hugely demanding, with its intricate and complex 10-part polyphony … F ...