Cantiones Sacrae I (William Byrd)

A collection of Latin motets published by Byrd in 1589 and printed in London by Thomas East. Although mainly non-liturgical and intended as vocal "chamber music", many of these pieces would have carried a covert message to England's oppressed Roman Catholic community; notable are the frequent references to Jerusalem lying desolate and the pleas to God to remember his people. Indeed, Deus venerunt gentes, with its reference to the pouring-out of the blood of God's servants, is thought to have been written in specific response to the execution of St Edmund Campion in 1581.

The collection consists of 16 separate pieces, the subsections of which are numbered separately in the index:

1-2 Defecit in dolore - Sed tu Domine refugium
3-4 Domine praestolamur - Veni Domine noli tardare
5 O Domine adjuva me
6-7 Trisitia et anxietas - Sed tu Domine qui non derelinquis
8 Memento Domine
9-10 Vide Domine afflictionem - Sed veni Domine
11-14 Deus venerunt gentes - Posuerunt morticinia - Effuderunt sanguinem - Facti sumus opprobrium
15 Domine tu jurasti
16 Vigilate
17 In resurrectione tua
18-19 Aspice Domine de sede - Respice Domine
20-21 Ne irascaris - Civitas sancti tui
22-23 O quam gloriosum - Benedictio et claritas
24-26 Tribulationes civitatum - Timor et hebetudo - Nos enim pro peccatis nostris
27 Domine secundum multitudinem
28-29 Laetentur caeli - Orietur in diebus tuis

The Cantiones Sacrae were dedicated to Edward Somerset, Earl of Worcester.
--DaveF 13:26, 26 January 2006 (PST)