We try to offer some musical selections for our readers on these great solemnities – so more to come! – but why not begin with this marvelous live rendition of William Byrd’s Ave Verum, composed in the first years of the 17th century, published in 1605, during the time of Shakespeare and the beginning of the Elizabethan persecutions against the Holy Eucharist – there is evidence he intended his Eucharistic motets for us in underground Masses, making them all the more poignant:

 

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