The Marian Consort & Rory McCleery - Singing in Secret: Clandestine Catholic Music by William Byrd (2020) [Hi-Res]

Tracklist

01. Cantiones sacrae II (Excerpts): No. 13, Miserere mei Deus
02. Gradualia ac cantiones sacrae, Liber 1 (Excerpts): No. 23, Gaudeamus omnes
03. Mass for 4 Voices: I. Kyrie
04. Mass for 4 Voices: II. Gloria
05. Gradualia ac cantiones sacrae, Liber 1 (Excerpts): No. 30, Timete Dominum
06. Mass for 4 Voices: III. Credo
07. Gradualia ac cantiones sacrae, Liber 1 (Excerpts): No. 14, Ave Maria
08. Laetentur coeli
09. Mass for 4 Voices: IV. Sanctus-Benedictus
10. Gradualia ac cantiones sacrae, Liber 1 (Excerpts): No. 31, Justorum animae
11. Mass for 4 Voices: V. Agnus Dei
12. Gradualia ac cantiones sacrae, Liber 1 (Excerpts): No. 52, Deo gratias
13. Gradualia ac cantiones sacrae, Liber 1 (Excerpts): No. 32, Beati mundo corde
14. Cantiones sacrae II (Excerpts): No. 16, Infelix ego


In the turbulent religious climate of Elizabethan England William Byrd wrote — and, more audaciously, published — a huge amount of music for the Catholic rite, for services which he and his fellow Catholics had to celebrate clandestinely, in the private houses and chapels of sympathetic noblemen. The cloistered intimacy of those occasions is re-enacted in The Marian Consort's performances here, and their programme also explores the more coded ways in which Byrd was able to express his faith and his commitment to the recusant cause: settings of texts which had become associated with Jesuit martyrs, or biblical pleas for divine intervention which took on new, heightened meaning in these times of persecution. Most moving of all is the motet Infelix ego, with Byrd weaving in homages to a still-intact tradition of Continental composers stretching back a century and a half as the text arcs from dejection and misery to repentance and finally hope, made manifest in music of transformative power.

DOWNLOAD ALBUM [mp3]

DOWNLOAD ALBUM [flac]

DOWNLOAD ALBUM [Hi-Res]