Byttering

Extremely little is known of Byttering, whose name is variously spelled as Bytering, Bytteryng, and Biteryng. The musicologist Margaret Bent has suggested he was Thomas Byteryng, though his identity remains uncertain. Byteryng was a canon at Hastings Castle between 1405 and 1408, and was a rector somewhere in London in 1414. There is no information on the composer in the Old Hall Manuscript other than that his surname is attached to several pieces. Those pieces stand out from many of the works in the manuscript by their relatively advanced stylistic traits.

Byttering's surviving music includes five compositions: three mass sections—two Glorias and a Credo—a motet and an antiphon. The latter, Nesciens Mater, is "famous for its remarkable camouflaging of the plainsong by means of transposition and migration". His motet is a substantial three-voice isorhythmic piece and his best known work, En Katerine solennia/Virginalis contio/Sponsus amat sponsum; it was almost certainly written for the wedding, on 2 June 1420, of King Henry V and Catherine of Valois. The four-voice Gloria, No. 18 in the Old Hall MS, is one of the most complex canons of the early 15th century, and represents what was probably the extreme of stylistic differentiation between English and continental practice. Canons in continental sources are extremely rare, but there are seven in the Old Hall MS, and Byttering's is the only one with the standard arrangement of the same tune in all four voices.

List of compositions by Byttering • Title — No. Number of voices — Genre — Manuscript source • Credo — 3 — Mass movement — OH No. 79 • Gloria — 3 — Mass movement — OH No. 17 • Gloria — 4 — Mass movement — OH No. 18 • Nesciens mater — 3 — Antiphon — OH No. 50 • En Katerine solennia/Virginalis contio/Sponsus amat sponsum — 3 — Motet — OH No. 145 • No other works by Byttering survive