Byrd Song – Phantasm

William Byrd´s songs

From the 1850s into the years of his old age, William Byrd cultivated the native English tradition of songs for a high voice accompanied by a consort of viols covering a staggering range of expressive styles. Rather than producing songs for a solo voice with a background accompaniment of four viols, Byrd ensures the independence of each of the five lines on every page of the music. As a result, the instrumental parts, through the use of their own idiomatic means of expression, aspire to articulate the words or ´ditties´ in a form that both enhances and supersedes spoken speech.

The award-winning consort Phantasm, dedicated to music for viols, has previously recorded Byrd´s five- and six-part “Fantasies” and “In nomines” on the album “Still Music of the Spheres – Consorts by William Byrd and Richard Mico” on Simax Classics (PSC1134), and this time they embark on several other jewels from Byrd´s instrumental oeuvre – including his “Fantasia a4” – and several of his songs, with the help from soprano Geraldine McGreevy and tenor Ian Partridge, in what has become a remarkable recording.