Front cover of the 'Kyrie Eleison' from the Mass for Four Voices by William Byrd, probably published in London by Thomas East
All were welcome at the 11.00 am Sung Eucharist
service in St Margaret’s Westminster on Sunday 28 October, the day before the
400th anniversary of Sir Walter Raleigh’s death.
The Preacher was The Very
Reverend Dr John Hall, Dean of Westminster. An appropriate choice: it was the Dean of Westminster, Robert Tounson (1575–1621), who in 1618 gave Holy Communion to Raleigh, attended at his execution, and wrote afterwards of how Raleigh had behaved on that occasion.
Renaissance music lovers were not disappointed that
William Byrd’s 'Mass for Four Voices' had
been chosen to be part of the service.
Yet
the piece was a remarkable choice in view of the religious tensions of Raleigh’s
time. Byrd (c.1540-1623), a Catholic, composed
it around 1592-3 during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I, when settings of the Mass
were highly sensitive documents and might well have resulted in the arrest of
anyone caught with them.
Also chosen for the occasion was one of Raleigh’s best known poems, ‘Even such is Time’, with music composed by Bob Chilcott.
Chilcott was born,
appropriately enough in Devon, in 1955. He is one of the five eminent composers, seen above who have set the poem to music.
The Voluntary was the Toccata from the Suite
gothique by the French composer Léon Boëllmann in 1895.
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