Ryosuke Sakamoto Plays Mass for Three Voices by Byrd

ByBradford Werner
2023

Ryosuke Sakamoto performs his own intabulation of the Mass for Three Voices by William Byrd (c.1540-1623) on Renaissance lute. This comes via Sakamoto’s YouTube channel. I’ve been subscribed to Sakamoto for a long time especially to see all his videos of Francesco da Milano which I’ve posted previously. This arrangement is a huge and impressive effort and, as he mentions, commemorates the 400th anniversary of the death of William Byrd. For those who don’t know, it was common for lute players to make arrangements of popular masses and compositions of the day and to set them to tablature or notation (just like today when people arrange pop tunes on guitar).

Bradford Werner

Bradford Werner is a classical guitarist and music publisher from Victoria, British Columbia, Canada. He originally created this site for his students at the Victoria Conservatory of Music but now shares content worldwide. Curating guitar content helps students absorb the culture, musical ideas, and technique of the classical guitar. Bradford also has a YouTube channel with over 94,000 subscribers and 13 million views. He taught classical guitar at the Victoria Conservatory of Music for 16 years and freelanced in Greater Victoria for 20 years and now dedicates much of his time curating content online and helping connect the classical guitar community. See more at his personal website.