Attollite portas is a six-voice motet by the English renaissance composer William Byrd (1543-1623). The spirited and exuberant, yet slightly immature style belongs to Byrd's very early period of composition. The contrapuntal writing is rather rudimentary, but contains the germ of ideas later brought to bloom in Byrd's later Cantiones Sacrae of 1589.

Byrd and his older contemporary, Thomas Tallis (1505-1585), published Attollite portas in the Cantiones of 1575. Tallis and Byrd held the royal patent for music publishing and the Cantiones was, perhaps understandably, a collection of their work. For the older Tallis, this collection was something of a retrospective, but for the younger Byrd, it launched his London career. Attollite portas was an important part of this introduction.

There are strong links between this work and its neighbour in the Cantiones, Aspice Domine. They are almost the same length (around one hundred and four breves) and contain sections of the same length. Attollite portas, however, prudently avoids the complex and awkwardly handled opening of Aspice Domine, opting instead for an older-style, opening reminiscent of Tallis.



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