William Byrd

“When you’re singing Byrd’s music today, you’re just taking his instructions from four hundred years ago, but you’re making contemporary music with them”.

William Byrd was a composer of sacred – and secret – Catholic music in Protestant England. To mark 400 years since his death, Andy talks to Early Music specialist Christopher Watson, who is gearing up to perform his work with the Song Company, and we’ll hear Byrd’s biographer Kerry McCarthy from the Music Show archives.