the New Zealander twenty centuries hence reckons up
the European masters of music, he will place Byrde not very far down
on the list of the greatest; and he will esteem Byrde's Mass one of
the very finest ever written. Byrde himself has rested peacefully in
his grave for over three hundred years. One or two casual critics have
appreciated him. Fetis, I believe, called him "the English
Palestrina"; but I do not recall whether he meant that Byrde was as
great as Palestrina or merely great amongst the English--whether a
"lord amongst wits," or simply "a wit amongst lords." For the most
part he has been left comfortably alone, and held to be--like his
mighty successor Purcell--one of the forerunners of the "great English
school of church composers." To have prepared the way for Jackson in
F--that has been thought his best claim to remembrance. The notion is
as absurd as would be the notion (if anyone were foolish enough to
advance it) that Palestrina is mainly to be remembered as having
prepared the way for Perosi. Byrde prepared the way for Purcell, it is
true; but even that exceeding glory pales before the greater glory of
having written the Cantiones Sacrae and the D minor Mass. In its way
the D minor Mass is as noble and complete an achievement as the St.
Matthew Passion or the "Messiah," the Choral symphony of Beethoven or
the G minor symphony of Mozart, "Tristan" or the "Nibelung's Ring." It
is splendidly planned; it is perfectly beautiful; and from the first
page to the last it is charged with a grave, sweet, lovely emotion.

The reason why Byrde has not until lately won the homage he deserves
is simply this: that the musical doctors who have hitherto judged him
have judged him in the light of the eighteenth-century contrapuntal
music, and have applied to him in all seriousness Artemus Ward's joke
about Chaucer--"he couldn't spell." The plain harmonic progressions
of the later men could be understood by the doctors: they could not
understand the freer style of harmony which prevailed before the
strict school came into existence. Artemus Ward, taking up Chaucer,
professed amazement to find spelling that would not be tolerated in an
elementary school; the learned doctors, taking up Byrde, found he had
disregarded all the rules--rules, be it remembered, formulated after
Byrde's time, just as our modern rules of spelling were made after
Chaucer's time; and as Artemus Ward jocularly condemned Chaucer, and
showed his wit