The Byrd Ensemble - Penitence & Lamentation (2023)

For 20th Anniversary season, releasing a new recording of Renaissance motets on October 27, 2023. In honor of 400 years since the death of William Byrd, the album will also include the world-premiere recording of Fallings by American composer Nico Muhly, commissioned by the Byrd Ensemble.

Muhly says, “Fallings takes small melodic fragments and large harmonic building-blocks from the second part of Ne irascaris Domine — Civitas Sancti Tui, and explores them through repetition and mutation: sometimes quite subtle and other times dramatic. I tried to imitate Byrd’s contrasting textures of imitative counterpoint and hymn-like chords. The ‘burning of fire’ uses traditional word-painting, and the end obsesses over Byrd’s chords on Sion deserta (Zion has become a wilderness) on the words ‘O Lord, thou art our father.’”