45 William Byrd’s Motets and Canonic Writing in England * Denis Collins Scholarship on music of the Elizabethan age has long been concerned with investigating the relationships amongst the great Elizabethan composers Thomas Tallis, William Byrd and Alfonso Ferrabosco the Elder. In particular, the inluences on Byrd’s compositional style have been traced not only in his earliest output but also in the mature Latin-texted works. 1 While Tallis and other English composers are generally credited with inluencing Byrd’s early development, much of Byrd’s mature writing reveals characteristics that can be traced to Ferrabosco. For instance, Joseph Kerman has identiied speciic points of similarity between the motets of these two composers, while David Wulstan has demonstrated that Byrd’s vocal ranges follow those of Ferrabosco rather than those generally found in English music. 2 In * I am grateful to Jessie Ann Owens and Philip Bracanin for comments on earlier versions of this study. A Faculty Fellowship at the University of Queensland Centre for Critical and Cultural Studies from February to June 2006 permitted dedicated work on this project. 1 The classic study of Byrd’s sacred music remains Joseph Kerman, The Masses and Motets of William Byrd [hereafter MMWB] (London: Faber & Faber, 1981). See also Joseph Kerman, ‘Byrd, Tallis, and the Art of Imitation,’ Aspects of Medieval and Renaissance Music: A Birthday Offering to Gustave Reese, ed. Jan LaRue (New York: Norton, 1966) 519–37; reprinted in Joseph Kerman, Write all These Down: Essays on Music (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1994) 90–105. Ferrabosco’s impact on English music is discussed in Joseph Kerman, ‘An Italian Musician in Elizabethan England,’ Write all These Down 139–51. Another useful source is David Wulstan, ‘Byrd, Tallis and Ferrabosco,’ English Choral Practice 1400–1650, ed. John Morehen (Cambridge: CUP, 1995) 109–42. Other details of Ferrabosco’s life are in Richard Charteris, ‘New Information about the Life of Alfonso Ferrabosco the Elder (1543–1588),’ Royal Musical Association Research Chronicle 17 (1981): 97–114. 2 Kerman, MMWB, in several places, especially 115–23; Wulstan, ‘Byrd, Tallis and Ferrabosco’ 120. 2009 © Denis Collins, Context 33 (2008): 45–65.