Tristitia et anxietas is an five-part imitative Latin motet by the renaissance English composer William Byrd (1543-1623). It belongs to the middle period of Byrd's motet composition, between 1575 and 1590 when Byrd had settled hit his compositional stride. The motets he produced during this period were secure of writing and text-setting. Even so, Tristitia et anxietas is a work of unusual skill and beauty. Byrd particularly utilizes homophonic techniques in this work. For much of the work, the ensemble is divided in two, allowing Byrd to play them against each other.

Tristitia et anxietas is a work of particular interest to composers, as it utilizes an early form of 'cell' technique. Taken up by twentieth-century composers (notably the American, Milton Babbitt) this technique involves repeating the harmonic and melodic material at different pitch intervals or at different points in the work. Although different in conception and implementation to Babbitt's later work, its occurrence here displays the increasingly technical and mathematical direction in which music was moving in Elizabethan times.



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