There is a treat in store for early music enthusiasts and sacred music lovers this month when Salisbury Cathedral Choir marks the 400th anniversary of the death of Elizabethan composer William Byrd. 

From Friday, May 19 to Sunday, May 21, services will showcase some of Byrd’s most sacred music, and a special concert featuring songs that would have been played and sung in Elizabeth I’s court performed by acclaimed tenor Nicholas Mulroy, a former chorister of Liverpool Metropolitan Cathedral, accompanied by one of Europe's leading lute players, Elizabeth Kenny. 

Tickets for the concert, which will take place in the Trinity Chapel at 3pm on Sunday, May 21, are now on sale via the Cathedral website.

A composer of both secular and sacred music, Byrd was appointed organist at Lincoln Cathedral in 1563, moving to London nine years later to take up the post of ‘gentleman of the Chapel Royal’ or adult singer.

Together with his mentor Thomas Tallis he was granted the monopoly for the importing, printing, publishing and sale of music and the printing of manuscript paper. His music covers an enormous range of styles and moods, and his prodigious talent protected his position as a Catholic in Elizabeth I’s Protestant court.

Byrd’s passion for the ancient music of the church can be heard in the anthem Justorum animae which will be sung by the Cathedral Choir at 5.30pm on Friday, June 19. Equally comfortable with words sung in English and Latin, Sing Joyfully, which will be sung by the Cathedral Choir at 5.30 Evensong on Saturday, June 20, owes more to the madrigals and unaccompanied singing of Queen Elizabeth’s court.