Secret Byrd, Brooklyn — a profound celebration of the Renaissance composer

William Byrd, the great English composer of the Renaissance, died 400 years ago, making this an obvious year in which to honour his work. That’s what Bill Barclay, of Concert Theater Works, has done in creating and directing Secret Byrd, a performance piece that includes Byrd’s Mass for Five Voices and a near-dozen works for viol consort. Secret Byrd is not a concert, though. Co-commissioned by St Martin-in-the-Fields in London and the Washington National Cathedral, it’s a social ceremony imagined as a way to know not just a bit of Byrd’s music but his place in society, and in life.

On tour this year, Secret Byrd came to the catacombs in Brooklyn’s Green-Wood Cemetery. Presented by Death of Classical, it was performed by the Abendmusik String Ensemble — a viol sextet — and five singers of the Cathedra Ensemble. The long, narrow corridor of the catacombs was an exceptional place for this.

As the audience eased in, the strings were playing some of Byrd’s Fantasias in Three parts. Byrd himself was a Catholic, which was outlawed in England at the time, and the singers, dressed in early 17th-century costumes, greeted attendees by inviting them to a “clandestine mass”. In the centre of the catacombs was a long table set for dinner, with Byrd songbooks at each place. In several chambers, banners printed with Byrd’s history and details of Catholic life in England in his time were hanging, as sort of programme notes.

Already atmospheric and resonant, the space became a time machine. The performers invited a few in the audience to join them at the table and when they started singing, it was more than the Mass for Five voices — they celebrated a secret mass through song.

Indeed, it was a mass (though likely not officially consecrated), with confession in a separate chamber — the priest asked audience members if they wanted to confess — and communion, and it was undercover; at one point everything was interrupted by a loud and shocking pounding on the outside door. The performers quickly snuffed the lights and hid quietly until it was safe. When it was, the mass continued with Byrd’s Elegy on the death of Thomas Tallis, soprano P Lucy McVeigh’s lamenting “Tallis is dead” intense and tragic.

That this all had a beautiful sound goes without saying; it also had a deep and beautiful spirit and effect that went beyond music. Secret Byrd mixes music, history and drama, and what emerges is an experience that is neither concert nor theatre, but something out of life itself. Recordings, broadcasts and the modern concert hall experience turn music into something encountered at a distance, from the stage or through speakers or earbuds. Concerts, albums, and playlists have defined beginnings and endings, everything adding up to music being a discrete thing that we bring into our lives for moments and then put away.

But music-making is a social activity, and Byrd’s masses were not the concert pieces we hear today — they had a social and ceremonial purpose and meaning that existed beyond the music’s duration and cemented social bonds. Secret Byrd brings this together again into something real and profound.

★★★★★

Touring the UK and US through to December, concerttheatreworks.com