PAST EVENTS

Friday, September 8 at 7:00 PM

Res Facta

Ryan James Brandau ~ director

Byrd @ 400: The Choral Works

Res Facta, led by Ryan James Brandau, is a project-based vocal ensemble comprised of fourteen of New York, Chicago, and Washington D.C.’s finest consort singers. The program offers a rich and diverse survey of William Byrd’s body of work for choral ensemble. It combines motets, anthems, mass movements, and songs curated from volumes published across five decades highlighting the breadth and impact of Byrd’s consummate skill. At the core of the program stands a selection of Byrd’s large-scale motets from the 1589 and 1591 Cantiones Sacrae collections. Exquisitely crafted, they present the composer at the height of his expressive and rhetorical power from the aching poignancy of Ne Irascaris, Domine and Tribulationes Civitatum, to the pathos of Miserere Mei and jubilance of Haec Dies. Their intensity juxtaposes the buoyant joy of English anthems Sing We Merrily and Blow Up the Trumpet, the tender intimacy of movements from the Mass for Four Voices and Mass for Five Voices, and the cheeky pithiness of miniatures from the 1588 and 1611 song collections. Join us for a moving, beautiful experience celebrating one of the greatest contributors to the choral repertoire.

Tickets (General Seating by Section):
$50 Premium Seating
$30 General Admission

Saturday, September 9 at 2:00 PM

Elm City Consort
The New Consort

Michael Rigsby ~ director
Brian Mummert ~ director

To Ornament Things Divine: Sacred and Devotional Music of William Byrd

The New Haven-based Elm City Consort will collaborate with the vocal ensemble, The New Consort, in a program of music by William Byrd, whose 400th death anniversary we observe this year. This program continues the Elm City Consort’s tradition of performing Renaissance masterpieces with combinations of voices and viols. The upcoming concert is built around the Mass for Three Voices (ca. 1592) with additional works in English and Latin from all of Byrd’s major collections as well as pieces for viol consort. The Elm City Consort has performed wide-ranging programs of music from the 14th–18th centuries for New Haven audiences for over 15 years. The New Consort is a project-based vocal ensemble directed by baritone Brian Mummert. The New Consort is based in New York City and performs a wide repertoire including early music and newly commissioned works for vocal ensemble.

Admission:
$25 suggested donation
Available at the door on the day of the concert

Sunday, September 10 at 1:30 PM

Gwendolyn Toth ~ speaker

Byrd Celebration Opening Lecture

The Telegraph of London writes “Four-hundred years since William Byrd's death, we should be shouting his name from the rooftops.” Yet even though William Byrd is one of the most famous English composers, much remains an enigma about the man and his music. Gwendolyn Toth, music director of Saint Ignatius of Antioch Episcopal Church as well as the coordinator for the Byrd Celebration, presents a 45-minute lecture on the life and music of William Byrd.

Admission:
Free

Sunday, October 1 at 4:00 PM

Elizabeth Weaver ~ soprano & Charles Weaver ~ lute

Private Music for Recusant Catholics: Songs and Motets of William Byrd

One of the greatest champions of William Byrd’s music in his own day was his friend Edward Paston, a member of the landed gentry of Norfolk, England. Byrd and Paston both adhered to the Roman Catholic faith which was illegal in England at that time. Paston’s remarkable private music collection includes both secular and sacred music, even large-scale choral music, preserved in intabulations for a single voice and lute, intended for entertainment and devotion, or possibly even for Masses celebrated in secret by itinerant Jesuits. Hear this unusual repertoire performed by longtime duo partners Elizabeth and Charles Weaver. Elizabeth Weaver is a soprano acclaimed for her “angelic brightness and dedication” and the “remarkable clarity” of her declamation. Charles Weaver is a sought-after performer on early plucked instruments. He is on the faculty at The Juilliard School and holds a PhD in Music Theory from the City University of New York.

Admission:
$25 suggested donation
Available at the door on the day of the concert

Saturday, October 21 at 8:00 PM

Pomerium

Alexander Blachly ~ director

Songs, Hymns, and Psalms by William Byrd

Byrd’s choral music reveals a series of compositional phases, though not ones as differentiated as those we associate with Du Fay or Stravinsky. Many of his early sacred works are based on Gregorian chant. As a young composer Byrd also liked to display his technical prowess in challenging canons such as we hear in the third stanza of the hymn O lux beata Trinitas. Byrd’s middle and late periods both focus on extending phrases through contrapuntal skill, and both contain many somber, contemplative works. Byrd’s music in the two volumes of Gradualia (1605 and 1607) reveal his late style. Here, he focuses on the beauty of pure, serene counterpoint, with motives that emphasize the declamation of specific words or phrases which he then skillfully weaves into a fabric of asymmetrical imitative polyphony. Pomerium’s program traces Byrd’s compositional trajectory, including works from all but one of his self-published printed collections in chronological order, plus two works that survive only in manuscript copies.

Tickets:
$30 General Admission
$20 Seniors (65+)
$5 Students (ID required)

Saturday, October 28 at 7:00 PM
Sunday, October 29 at 4:00 PM

ARTEK

Gwendolyn Toth ~ director

Byrd 1589: Songs of Sundrie Natures I

As its name suggests, Byrd’s 1589 volume of songs varies widely in scoring, style, and mood. Byrd’s preface says that he is “desirous to delight thee with varietie, whereof (in my opinion) no Science is more plentifully adorned then Musicke,” and he offers the book as a musical compilation “to serve for all companies and voyces,” signing himself “The most affectionate freend to all that love or learne Musick.” ARTEK singers Laura Heimes ~ soprano, Eric Brenner ~ countertenor, Richard Pittsinger ~ tenor, Andrew Fuchs ~ tenor, Elijah Blaisdell ~ baritone, and Peter Becker ~ bass perform a selection of both sacred and secular masterpieces for 3, 4, 5 and 6 voices with keyboard and lute accompaniment, including the 7 Penitential Songs and the beautiful partsong If In Thine Heart.

Tickets (General Seating by Section):
$50 Preferred
$25 Regular
$15 Rear

Friday, November 3 at 7:00 PM

Rebecca Pechefsky ~ virginal and muselar

Will You Walk the Woods So Wild: Byrd’s Keyboard Fantasies, Songs, and Dances

Rebecca Pechefsky will perform some of William Byrd’s most popular fantasies, dances, and keyboard variations, including Will You Walk the Woods So Wild, the Pavana Bray, and his monumental Fantasia from the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book (FVB 52), as well as some that are performed less often, including the Gypsie’s Round. She will play two different instruments: an Italian virginal after Pisaurensis and a Flemish muselar after Ruckers — both built in Brooklyn by Garrick Dolberg.

Tickets:
$20 General Admission
$15 Students and Seniors
Available at the door on the day of the concert

Saturday, November 4 at 7:30 PM

The Western Wind Vocal Ensemble

Make Me To Know Thy Ways: A Recusant Catholic in a Protestant Court

Linda Lee Jones & Christina Kay ~ sopranos
Eric S. Brenner ~ countertenor
Bradley King & David Vanderwal ~ tenors
Paul Greene-Dennis ~ bass

William Byrd navigated the tricky and precarious divide between his devout Catholic faith and the Anglican reform embraced by the court of Henry VIII and his daughter Elizabeth I. As a Gentleman of the Chapel Royal and a favorite of Queen Elizabeth, Byrd produced prodigiously in English for the Anglican rite and privately, in Latin, for the traditional Catholic rite. All the while he produced Songs of Sundrie Natures, a large body of partsongs in English about love and courtship, village and country life, and religious devotion.

His Latin Mass settings were meant to be sung at clandestine Mass celebrations in recusant households. These services were illegal and might well have resulted in the arrest of anyone participating in them. Byrd was lucky, though. A favorite of the music-loving Elizabeth I, he escaped severe punishment, receiving instead an indictment for failing to attend Protestant church services, a crime under the Act of Uniformity.

Tickets:
$50, $35 ($20 students and seniors)
Online tickets available at westernwind.org

Sunday, November 5 at 10:30 AM

Choir of Saint Ignatius of Antioch Episcopal Church

Gwendolyn Toth ~ music director

Feast of All Saints

In honor of the Byrd Celebration, the Church’s regular Sunday morning worship on November 5 will include Byrd’s complete Mass for Five Voices and the All Saints propers as set by Byrd in the Gradualia I, 1605: Gaudeamus omnes in Domino; Timete Dominum; Venite ad me; Justorum animae; and Beati mundo corde. The Choir of Saint Ignatius of Antioch: Audrey Fernandez-Fraser ~ soprano, Emily Addis ~ soprano, Richard Pittsinger ~ tenor, Bennett Mahler ~ tenor, and Peter Becker ~ bass.

Admission:
Free

Saturday, November 11 at 7:00 PM
Sunday, November 12 at 4:00 PM

ARTEK

Gwendolyn Toth ~ director

Byrd 1589: Songs of Sundrie Natures II

As its name suggests, Byrd’s 1589 volume of songs varies widely in scoring, style, and mood. Byrd’s preface says that he is “desirous to delight thee with varietie, whereof (in my opinion) no Science is more plentifully adorned then Musicke,” and he offers the book as a musical compilation “to serve for all companies and voyces,” signing himself “The most affectionate freend to all that love or learne Musick.” ARTEK singers Sarah Chalfy ~ soprano, Kim Leeds ~ mezzo-soprano, Richard Pittsinger ~ tenor, Andrew Fuchs ~ tenor, Elijah Blaisdell ~ baritone, and Peter Becker ~ bass perform a selection of both sacred and secular masterpieces for 3, 4, 5 and 6 voices with keyboard and lute accompaniment including the partsong I thought that Love had been a boy and the anthem Unto the Hills Mine Eyes I Lift, a setting of Psalm121.

Tickets (General Seating by Section):
$50 Preferred
$25 Regular
$15 Rear

Saturday, November 18 at 7:30 PM
pre-concert lecture at 6:30 PM

Polyhymnia

John Bradley ~ director

Inextinguishable Light: A 400th Year's Mind for William Byrd and Thomas Weelkes

Join Polyhymnia to celebrate two very different English composers who died in 1623: William Byrd, a devout Catholic, who lived into his 80s, and Thomas Weelkes, a Protestant libertine and a generation younger, died at 47. Both composed music for Elizabeth I and James I, but while Weelkes was firmly planted in English language cathedral repertoire, William Byrd composed music for clandestine Catholic celebrations of the Roman Mass at the country houses of Catholic nobility while at the same time placating Elizabeth I as a gentleman of the Chapel Royal. Polyhymnia will sing a major work by both composers, the Mass for Four Voices by Byrd and the grand Ninth Service of Weelkes, as well as motets and English anthems by both composers.

Tickets:
$30 General Admission
$20 Students and Seniors

Purchase tickets online here

Friday, December 1 at 7:30 PM

Abendmusik

Patricia Ann Neely ~ director

A Father of Musick

In honor of William Byrd, on the occasion of the 400th anniversary of his death, Abendmusik presents his most treasured compositions for viol consort: fantasies, In Nomines, dances, and arrangements of vocal works and keyboard pieces from the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book and My Lady Nevell’s Book. Patricia Ann Neely ~ director and treble viol, Rosamund Morley ~ treble viol, Lawrence Lipnik ~ tenor viol, Dan McCarthy ~ tenor viol, Arnie Tanimoto ~ bass viol, and Caroline Nicolas ~ bass viol.

Tickets:
$25 General Admission
$10 Students and Seniors

Friday, December 15 at 7:00 PM

ARTEK Candlelight Concert

Gwendolyn Toth and Dongsok Shin ~ Keyboards

Byrd, Battles and Bells

Partners in life and in music, Gwendolyn Toth and Dongsok Shin perform music from the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book and My Lady Nevell’s Book. Music includes artful arrangements for two keyboards of The Battell and The Bells as well as pieces for solo keyboard. The concert will be performed on two chamber organs, harpsichord, muselar, and virginals, all in a candlelight setting in the beautiful sanctuary of Saint Ignatius of Antioch Church. A triumph of nimble fingers — and tuning!

Tickets (General Seating by Section):
$50 Preferred
$25 Regular
$15 Rear

Sunday, December 17 at 5 PM

Choir of Saint Ignatius of Antioch Episcopal Church

Gwendolyn Toth ~ music director

Choral Evensong

To close the Byrd Celebration, Saint Ignatius of Antioch Church will celebrate Choral Evensong with plainchant, hymns and settings from Byrd’s masterpiece of Anglican church music, The Great Service, including the monumental 10-part Magnificat. The Saint Ignatius of Antioch Choir and guests will sing the candlelight service.

Admission:
Free