BIRD

BIRD, WILLIAM, an eminent musician and composer, was one of the children of the chapel in the reign of Edward VI., and, as is asserted by Wood in the Ashmolean MS., was bred up under Tallis. It appears that in 1575 Tallis and Bird were both gentlemen and also organists of the royal chapel; but the time of their appointment to this latter office cannot now be ascertained. The compositions of Bird are many and various: those of his younger years were mostly for the service of the church. He composed a work entitled Sacra Canticiones, quinque vocum, printed in 1589; among which is that noble composition, Civitas sancti tui, which is occasionally sung as an anthem, to the words "Bow thine ear, O Lord." He was also the author of a work entitled Gradualia, ac Canticiones sacrae, quinque, quaternis, trinisque vocibus concinnatae, lib. primus. Of this there are two editions, the latter published in 1610. Although it appears by these works that Bird was in the strictest sense a church musician, he occasionally gave to the world compositions of a secular kind; and he seems to have been the first among English musicians who made an essay in the composition of that elegant species of vocal harmony, the madrigal. The Verginella of Ariosto, which he set in that form for five voices, is the most ancient musical composition of the kind to be met with in the works of English authors. Of his compositions for private entertainment, there are extant, Songs of sundry natures, some of Gravitie, and others of Myrth, fit for all companies and voyces, printed in 1589; and two other collections of the same kind, the last of them printed in 1611. But the most permanent memorials of Bird's excellencies are his motetts and anthems: to which may be added, a fine service in the key of D with the minor third, the first composition in Dr Boyce's Cathedral Music, vol. iii.; and that well-known canon of his, Non nobis Domine.