Among the many types of vocal pieces represented in William Byrd's final, wide- ranging 1611 publication Psalmes, songs, and sonnets are two six-voice "carolls" that represent very well Byrd's final, fully mature musical style and were surely composed shortly before the publication of that volume (whereas many of the works contained within were actually composed as many as twenty years earlier). Of these two works, the Christmas caroll This day Christ was born, really just an English setting of the well-known Hodie Christus natus est text, stands out as a particularly fine example of the species.

Many of the so-called "madrigals" contained in Byrd's various published collections are actually little more than solo songs to whose instrumental parts texts have been added. Here, however, is a real ensemble piece in which all six voices are of vital importance to the whole and carry a nearly equal weight in the presentation of the text, which is as follows:

This day Christ was born, This day our Saviour did appear, This day the Angels sing in earth, The Archangels are glad, This day the just rejoice, saying: Glory be to God on high. Alleluia.

Byrd allows himself fifty-one measures (as transcribed into modern 4-2 transcription) in which to set the text, and in hardly a one of them is there anything less than an almost overwhelming richness of motivic thought and imitative intricacy. Keeping wholly with tradition, each new bit of text is set to a different snatch of melody, so that the filled-in fourth gesture of "Christ was born" (separated in almost case from the initial "This day" by a quarter- note rest that, in breaking up a text-phrase, would have deeply troubled musicians only a few decades earlier) gives way to a dotted "Saviour" figure, and then to a rising figure for "The Archangels" that Byrd cleverly finds a way to turn upside-down before too long. Expansive triplets are developed as "the just rejoice", with the final word of that phrase set in an appropriately melismatic fashion. A strict, two-beat point of imitation is made to emphasize the "Glory [of] God on high", incorporating a very striking upward fifth leap for the word "high", while the final Alleluia is set at great length and in two little sections. The first of these offers the same kind of flowing triplets that we had before, while the second gives us skilful imitation on two separate motives that culminates in a final strong cadence to G major.

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