Lifting the roof with sacred and secular

The respected New York Polyphony ensemble will sing glorious compositions from Tudor England at Ardee's Baroque Festival next month

THE CHURCH OF Ireland in Collon, Co Louth is dramatic and atmospheric, still evoking the period during which it was built. Designed in the Tudor Gothic style favoured by many in the early 19th century, it represents the dream project of Daniel Augustus Beaufort, who was rector here between 1789 and 1821.

This beautiful, slightly eccentric building has provided a wonderful setting for concerts. Soon, it will resound to the glorious music of the English composers William Byrd and his mentor Thomas Tallis, as performed by the rich, dark and elegant unaccompanied sound of New York Polyphony. This dynamic, musically sophisticated ensemble makes its European debut in Collon's parish church as part of this year's Ardee Baroque Festival, which takes place at venues in and around Ardee next month.

Now in its fifth year, the festival has brought magnificent baroque music, performers and growing audiences to Ardee. New York Polyphony, three Americans and one Briton, under founder and musical director Malcolm Bruno, bring an exciting repertoire of pre-baroque, early music dating from the Renaissance period, well before the dawning of what would become the baroque era dominated by Vivaldi and Bach. The ensemble, consisting of countertenor Geoffrey Williams, tenor Geoffrey Silver, baritone Scott Dispensa and bass-baritone Craig Phillips are part of an emerging wave of early music that is winning an enthusiastic following in the United States.

Each of the four is an established individual performer. Midwesterner Geoffrey Williams is a former member of the American Boychoir and an experienced early-music specialist. He has performed with Early Music New York and Vox Vocal Ensemble. Tenor Geoffrey Silver is British and began singing in a choir at the age of six. A former chorister of Westminster Abbey, he studied music at Cambridge. Baritone Scott Dispensa studied at the Julliard School, in New York, while bass-baritone Craig Phillips has a busy operatic career.

The four came together in 2006 and last year, their debut CD of ancient and modern Christmas music I Sing the Birth impressed international critics, emerging as an Editor's Choice for Gramophone magazine, and was the Christmas Music Choice of BBC Music magazine.

One of the strongest performances on what is a superb CD is Byrd's O Magnum Mysterium which the group will be performing in Collon. Byrd is a remarkable composer whose range and versatility, as well as his balance of the precise and the sensual, makes him the English counterpart of Palestrina and Lasuss. He was also the last great English composer of Catholic Church music, and the first major figure of what became the Elizabethan age of secular and instrumental music.

Born in 1543, possibly in Lincoln, his childhood and youth coincided with the Catholic reign of Mary Tudor. However on her death in 1558, England reverted to Protestantism under Elizabeth I and Catholics lived in fear. Yet Byrd, who remained in court service throughout his life, must have enjoyed some level of royal protection as he is not known to have suffered persecution. Perhaps his survival may be attributed to his composing for both churches. He wrote many anthems - the English equivalent of the European motet - for Anglican services.

It was Byrd who wrote in his preface to Psalms, Sonnets, and Songs of Sadness and Piety (1588), "To sacred words . . . there is such a profound and hidden power that to one thinking upon things divine, and diligently and earnestly pondering upon them, all the fittest numbers occur and freely offer themselves to the world."

He is believed to have been the son of Thomas Byrd who was a colleague of Thomas Tallis, which helps explain how Tallis came to be Byrd's mentor. It is known that at the age of 20, in 1563, Byrd was appointed the organist and master of the choristers at Lincoln Cathedral. In 1572, he moved to London and became joint organist with Tallis at the Chapel Royal - a post later held by Purcell. Although Byrd's music is elegiac, there is also a buoyancy in it. As he grew older, he composed increasing amounts of secular works.

Geoffrey Williams enjoys the balance of the sacred and the secular. He is particularly drawn to the English Renaissance sound which is more robust and less ornate than the Italian and French music of the same period. "I like to think I know a lot about these composers, it helps us getting to the sound that the composer intended . . . I think Byrd was certainly more devout than Tallis.

"As the son of a clergyman, I guess I try to be a bit tougher. We test ourselves and our voices and tend to bring them down to lower registers. But, we don't want to sound like a choir, we aim to balance our sound, not blend it. We have four individual voices." The listener remains very aware of the individual voices that are contributing to that sound; it is cohesive without becoming blurred.

Bach certainly believed in testing the human voice which he regarded as another instrument; he made no concession for the singer. To sing Bach is to work hard. Williams laughs his booming laugh, and says, "Singing is not easy, but it's fun".

Another aspect of the English sound is its closeness to the folk tradition of, say, Dowland. John Dowland (1563-1626) was a troubadour who brought his vocal talents and his lute playing across Europe. His songs, with their peculiarly English tone, have already proved a challenge for the great German countertenor Andreas Scholl.

It is interesting to note that New York Polyphony is performing Byrd and Tallis, juxtaposing the music of men who worked together. They collaborated on Cantiones Sacrae, a collection of motets dedicated to Queen Elizabeth I.

As Williams says, "Tallis was a very different kind of man than Byrd, he was not as religious." Still, his sacred music is beautiful and evocative. His lamentations are as spiritual as they are personal.

Thomas Tallis was born in about 1505 and died in 1585, exactly 100 years before the birth of Bach. He witnessed some of the harshest periods in English history dominated by religious upheaval, and composed a variety of music under a succession of monarchs: for Catholic rites under Henry VIII, for English vernacular services under Edward VI, for the reinstated Catholic Latin liturgy under Mary Tudor and under Elizabeth I, composed both Latin and English compositions according to her moods, as her approach to liturgical matters did swing from side to side.

The changing emphasis of English church music helps explain the shifts in Tallis's music. There is no disputing that if Byrd surpassed his great mentor, it is probably because Tallis was such a master. He was also a virtuoso organist. New York Polyphony will perform Tallis's Mass for Four Voices.

Tallis and Byrd remain central to the English musical sensibility. It was they who articulated a sense of loss that would affect 20th-century English composers such as Delius and Vaughan Williams, and, of course, Elgar whose Sanctus Fortis (from The Dream of Gerontius) has echoes of Byrd. Always present throughout the music of Tallis and Byrd is an almost palpable sense of the imagination that would produce a poet such as Milton.

• New York Polyphony performs as part of the Ardee Baroque Festival which takes place Nov 14-16.