Thy

Long-running celebration of English Renaissance polyphony brings three weekends of music and lectures to Oregon churches. July 28, 2022.

This Festival cares for the person and the music, cares for the liturgy, and–for many–cares for the soul. Hie thyselfe to one of the Original Practice Shakespeare Festival plays produced in parks throughout the Metro area from now through August. Fun, fairly family appropriate, and budget perfect–which is to say, free as a Byrd. Are you wondering if contemporaries Shakespeare and Byrd knew each other? A few years after A Man for All Seasons, he won an Oscar for Anne of the Thousand Days–a movie of suspect historic accuracy but dramatically much elevated by Delerue’s score. The extensive Festival history states that in the Festival’s first year all three of Byrd’s Masses were celebrated by Cantores in Ecclesia. All three will be sung this season as well. Tickets for the first and the final events, both at St. Philip Neri Church, can be purchased from the link on the schedule; all other events – concerts, services and lectures – are free-will-offering. Best pick for historic authenticity is the 1966 A Man for All Seasons, playwright Robert Bolt’s dramatization of the final days of devout Catholic St. Thomas More. Enjoy the Oscar-winning performances and bathe in the Renaissance music of, whoops, 20th century French film composer Georges Delerue. Maybe not so authentic. Now, for a totally inadequate speed history lesson: Byrd was born around 1540, less than a decade after the religious schism initiated by Henry VIII, and came into his productive composing years after Elizabeth I took the throne in 1558. Polyphony–literally “many sounds”–is a style of music that uses the compositional design element of two or more independent voices (melodic lines) woven together. So what other Byrd gems are programmed for the Festival’s premiere on the fifth? Since its kick-off in the summer of 1998 this celebration of England’s most important Renaissance composer has been a summer favorite. “The primary passion for me is Renaissance polyphony.” The William Byrd Festival is back in town.