This is my barless transcription for SATB recorders of Ave Verum Corpus by William Byrd.

William Byrd composed for both Catholic and Protestant audiences, navigating the religious complexities of Elizabethan England. Ave Verum Corpus, a Latin motet from his Gradualia collection, reflects his Catholic faith and was likely intended for private devotion.

Performing barless music aligns with Renaissance rhythmic practices, where notation lacked modern bar lines, allowing natural phrasing shaped by the text. Instead of strict meter, musicians followed the tactus—a steady pulse around 60-80 bpm. Mensuration signs, predecessors to modern time signatures, indicated duple or triple divisions.
Byrd’s harmonic language includes cross-relations, or false relations—moments where chromatic variations of the same pitch appear in different voices, creating expressive dissonance. Accidentals applied to notes in this transcription match the original scores’ indications, affecting only the marked pitch. Bracketed accidentals provide courtesy clarifications, while musica ficta (accidentals above notes) reflect implied harmonic adjustments not originally written but were probably interpreted by Renaissance performers.