Although William Byrd published far more music than any of his contemporaries (he did, after all, hold a Royally-sanctioned monopoly on the printing of music for a good part of his adult life), a large proportion of his works had to wait many generations before receiving anything more than cursory notice by the musical establishment. Such a work is the consort song Content is rich, dateless but presumed on stylistic grounds to have been composed during Byrd's so-called middle period (i.e. sometime in the years before 1590). Unlike the large, through-composed motets and Psalm-settings that most listeners quite naturally associate with the composer, Content is rich is a light, strophic song in five verses, complete with a catchy refrain and continuous, contrapuntal viol accompaniment.

The author of Content is rich's text remains unknown (indeed, the surviving sources bear no names at all, though Byrd's voice is unmistakable). The first verse will serve to give an idea of the text's expression:

Content is rich, but who is he Upon the earth that lives content? From high estate to low degree, they all proclaim'd with one consent, That he who hath what heart can wish Hath not content served in his dish.

Resolution of this problem is offered by the last line of the fifth and final verse, "Content but in a quiet mind". The musical refrain (which, however, presents a new bit of text with each verse and thus is not like a modern "chorus"), itself marked to be repeated, accounts for nine measures (transcribed into 4-2 meter), the rest of the piece for fourteen. Throughout much of Content is rich the viols go their own way musically, only offering vague shadows of the voice's melodic outlines, but a few notable moments of imitation do crop up, including a foreshadowing of the voice's very first gesture by the bass viol and a striking bit of detached quarter-note interplay for "They all proclaim'd". A few measures in a more homophonic vein (still, however, not entirely rhythmically unified), draw us to a rich G major cadence.



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