Michael White on a clandestine retelling of William Byrd’s 16th-century Mass settings and a Buddhist interpretation of Bach’s Passions.
We had reached the Agnus Dei when there was a pounding on the door. With frantic speed the candles were extinguished, we were told to crouch down, and we waited – holding our collective breath in darkness – as the pounding on the door resumed. The Mass was over.
It’s as well that liturgy, although theatrical by nature, isn’t always so dramatic, otherwise the risk of heart attack in church attendance would be worryingly high. But this is how it was last month at an event to mark four centuries since the death in 1623 of the composer William Byrd – with a performance of his five-part Mass staged as immersive theatre.
As the audience arrived at the church of St Martin-in-the-Fields, we were led down to the crypt in small groups by someone in Elizabethan costume, with an air of secrecy and subterfuge. The crypt was candlelit and somewhere in the half-light a consort of viols, the group Fretwork, played hushed instrumental music from the 16th century. Beside them was a table, dressed like something from a Dutch Renaissance still-life, which became a sort of stage for five male singers and a “priest” – members of the elite vocal group Gesualdo Six – who gathered round it for the Mass.
The idea was that we were experiencing this music in something like the circumstances for which it was written: not a church but some hidden domestic space where Catholic liturgy could be performed away from prying eyes in a now Protestant England that had made Catholicism unlawful. The consequences of discovery – that pounding on the door – could be severe. And to be writing Mass settings, as Byrd did, was a high-risk activity.
That he got away with it, and quietly published this music, is hard to grasp – though it was probably due to personal intervention by Elizabeth I, whose private leanings were more Catholic than she made public, and who had the paradoxical habit of protecting court favourites like Byrd from the full force of her own laws. But participants in these clandestine Masses had no such protection. And Byrd’s settings were accordingly designed to be transportable – musical equivalents to the miniature altars and communion vessels that Catholic priests carried around with them surreptitiously – for small forces, one voice to a part, and without undue elaboration.
In all, Byrd wrote three Mass settings, all of them during the 1590s, and their practicality means that they rank nowadays among his most frequently performed works: churches the length and breadth of Britain will schedule them relentlessly during this anniversary year. But few accounts will carry quite the mixture of defiant joy and nervous tension that defined this staging. It was memorably atmospheric, wonderfully sung and played. And so compelling was the whole thing that the pounding on the door, which I had half-expected, came as a shock: I jumped out of my skin.
Called Secret Byrd, the show tours through the year – to Oxford, Lincoln, Bristol, Brighton, York, and venues in the USA including Washington, New York and Santa Fe. Recommended – though not for the over-anxious.
What if Bach had been a Buddhist? What if his great Passion settings had focused on the life and wisdom of the Buddha? Well, this thought occurred to the Chinese-American composer Tan Dun – known for his score to Ang Lee’s Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon – and with such force that he’s written a work called Buddha Passion, which had its UK premiere last month at the Royal Festival Hall. Performed by the London Philharmonic Orchestra with massed voices that included a Chinese choir, and soloists including a throat singer, it was the kind of East-meets-West spectacular Tan Dun is known for. It didn’t sound much like Bach but there was some semblance of his narrative intensity in the way it told stories of enlightenment under the Bodhi tree and proclaimed the texts of ancient sutras.
But best of all was an astonishingly vivid and exhilarating final section that framed the story of the Buddha’s death, where his disciples ask if he is God and are told: “No.” “Are you the son of God?” they press him. ‘No.’ “What are you then?” And he replies, just as his eyes close and his journey to nirvana starts: “I am… awake.” These closing moments blazed with energy, aliveness and the clarity of being so awake it was as heart-stopping as any door-knock in a 1590s English Mass – but in a joyous way. Like many in that audience, I left the hall wanting to dance. A feeling that the end of the Bach Passions doesn’t quite provide.
For Secret Byrd tour dates visit thegesualdosix.co.uk
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