Oliver Mercer	William Byrd, the Euro-skeptic: His dedication to English style and sensibility A program of songs and keyboard pieces performed by Oliver Mercer, tenor, and Mark Williams, harpsichord and organ Friday, August 13, 2010 at 7:30 P.M. St. Stephen's Church This recital explores Byrd's setting of texts in his songs, which Byrd scholar Philip Brett described as having “a strong attachment to a native idiom rooted in Tudor court culture” as opposed to popular Italian styles, and distinguish Byrd’s music from other English composers such as Weelkes, Morley and, eventually, Dowland.  The program includes elegies written for Mary, Queen of Scots, English-style consort songs in foreign languages, and song settings of poems by Sir Philip Sidney, including the joyful “My mind to me a kingdom is”, and an elegy on the death of the poet “ O that most rare breast.” ADVANCE TICKETS: $20 general admission $15 seniors and students	Mark Williams

In Lamentation and in Joy:
Music by William Byrd

A choral concert performed by Cantores in Ecclesia and conducted by Richard Marlow, Trinity College, Cambridge

Sunday, August 29, 2010 at 7:30 P.M.
St. Stephen's Church

The closing concert of the thirteenth annual William Byrd Festival features music composed thirty years apart, thus illustrating Byrd’s range of style and emotional expression.  Early works, many from the Cantiones Sacrae or ‘sacred songs’ co-published with Byrd’s teacher Thomas Tallis in 1575, reflect the influence of Tallis and other earlier English composers in their grand scale and complexity. The concert includes the unpublished psalm motet for nine voices ‘Domine quis habitabit’ (Lord who shall abide in thy tabernacle) written when the composer was in his twenties, and the deeply moving and harmonically complex Lamentations of Jeremiah the Prophet for five voices. The later works on the program include the joyous and solemn compositions for a Lady Mass in Advent from Byrd’s 1605 Gradualia.

For more information, please see this year's program notes, written by Kerry McCarthy, Duke University.

ADVANCE TICKETS:
$20 general admission
$15 seniors and students

Richard Marlow and Cantores in Ecclesia, in rehearsal