An Archive in Three Parts (2025)
(after Sheppard and Byrd)

Composer Note:

An Archive in Three Parts is, on its surface, arrangements of the music of Byrd (1540 - 1623) and Sheppard (1515-1558). However, the original music should feel constantly under scrutiny: certain inner voices become illuminated by doublings at the octave, some pitches arrive slightly early or slightly late, and sudden changes of technique call attention to a subtle dissonance. The octave displacements seemed, to me, a way of illuminating the music from within, where the primacy of the upper voice is made somehow diffuse. My mind jumped forward to the 1930s, to Benjamin Britten’s Te Deum in C, in which a series of simple chords links the text “…the Comforter,” and “…redeemed with Thy precious blood.” Here, what was once an inner voice in the tenors is transposed into a solo treble to great effect, the entrance hidden and veiled. This sequence haunts the piece, linking the sections, and inviting everything to dissolve in the last few pages.

– Nico Muhly