The name was familiar, but I did not know that he was the composer of a couple of my favorite hymns and the Third Christmas Mass, Puer Natus Est. Queen Elizabeth appreciated his talent so much that she may well have suppressed any suspicions that he was a secret Catholic while keeping him at court. In his will, which he drew up a year before he died (1623) William Byrd’s inserted this prayer, “that I may live and die a true and perfect member” of the “holy Catholic Church, without which I believe there is no salvation for me.”
Regina Magazine: He was a hit-maker — Queen Elizabeth’s favorite composer, highly regarded at her wealthy and powerful Court. But in reality, William Byrd led a double life. Modern scholars, like Duke Musicology professor Kerry Robin McCarthy, continue to unearth more details of how Byrd somehow kept his reputation, his job, his property, and his life, as both a Court composer who played Elizabeth’s tune and as a heavily-fined recusant Catholic who wrote Mass music for hounded Catholic worshipers — all at the same time. It may be safe to say that Queen Elizabeth and his other Protestant contemporaries, like many of the rest of us, simply could not resist his genius. Read the brief but inspiring account of Byrd’s achievements here.
