Word Painting in William Byrd’s Vigilate and Ave Verum Corpus
Few composers have lived and nonetheless thrived in such a turbulent era as William Byrd. Born sometime between 1539 and 1543, Byrd grew up in newly Protestant England, Henry VIII having passed the Act of Supremacy in 1534, which completed the separation of the English Church (later becoming known as Anglicanism) from the Roman Catholic[…]