Jason Andrew Gersh, Ph.D. 2006

Advisor:Tim Carter

Dissertation Title: Text Setting in William Byrd’s Liber primus sacrarum cantionum quinque vocum (1589): Toward an Analytic Methodology

Find it in the library here.

Dissertation Abstract:

From Andrews through Kerman, it has become a commonplace that Byrd was acutely sensitive to text and somehow managed to translate that sensitivity into his musical settings. Yet remarkably little has been done in Byrd scholarship to examine just how his text setting might operate. However, within Byrd’s 1589 Cantiones lies an array of evidence of how Byrd prioritized various musical and extramusical factors in his setting of the texts. In my dissertation I shall begin to uncover this evidence through an examination of various compositional tools available to Byrd: rhetorical commonplaces, musical and spiritual; mode; texture; and sonority. While some compositional tools appear to lie almost entirely in the musical realm and bear little impact upon text setting, others play a powerful role in determining text-music relationships. In my conclusion, I shall compare and contrast these tools and the evidence they have brought forth in order to propose a methodology for analyzing text setting in Byrd’s sacred works. 

Dr. Gersh currently works as Director of Finance and Administration for the Office of the Provost at Drexel University in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He continues to work as a researcher and writer in musicology and music theory and is also active in multiple choral groups.