The Composers
William
Byrd (1540?-1623)
Born in London at the end of 1539 or early 1540s, William Byrd was the foremost
composer of the Elizabethan age and among the three or four English composers
since the Renaissance who have stood unequivocally as equals with their continental
contemporaries. A master of keyboard music and the madrigal as well as Latin
and English church music, he was an organist and member of the sovereign's
private religious establishment, the Chapel Royal. Yet he remained throughout
his life a dedicated Roman Catholic who was persecuted as a recusant and who
upheld through his art the old faith.
The spirit of his work survived undimmed through the neglect of the baroque
and classical periods. It was only with the publication of The Byrd Edition
earlier this century, however, that the full range of his genius became evident
and accessible to music lovers, an awareness enhanced by the wide range of
recordings now available, performed by many of
the world's leading early music specialists.
Thomas Weelkes (1575 -1623)
Thomas Weelkes, whose professional career spanned one of the most fertile periods in England's musical history, is without doubt one of her finest composers.
Like Purcell, he had a vivid imagination and love of experiment, and died prematurely at the peak of his creative powers, but not before he had composed a very large amount of music. Nowhere are Weelkes' outstanding musical abilities more evident than in his four sets of madrigals, which appeared between 1597 and 1608, and his splendidly sonorous full anthems. The English madrigal school reached its peak with Weelkes, the most original madrigalist, and John Wilbye, the most polished; both were deeply indebted to Thomas Morley, both surpassed him.
Probably the son of a Sussex clergyman, Weelkes was appointed organist of
Winchester College in 1598. There he composed some of his finest madrigals,
which appeared in two volumes published in 1598 and 1600. In July 1602 he
graduated BMus from New College, Oxford; and some time between October 1601
and October 1602 he was appointed organist and master of the choristers at
Chichester Cathedral, where he ended his days, dismissed from his post on
grounds of his being a habitual common drunkard and a notorious swearer and
blasphemer, a tragic end for the successful young madrigal composer of the
1590s, who had evidently aspired to higher things: several of his anthems
and services were written not with Chichester in mind but for the more sumptuous
services and ceremonies of the Chapel Royal, with which he eviodently had
some informal contact.
He never, however, consolidated the London connectionto the extent that he could leave provicial Chichester. We can only speculate whether the debuached habits were the cause of the stagnation in his career or the effect if it.
As a madrigalist, Thomas Weelkes owed a great debt to Thomas Morley, who had done more than anyone to establish the Italian form on English soil. But while Weelkes' madrigals may lack Morley's lightness of touch and fondness for nimble counterpoint, they are much more adventurous and possess stronger links with English musical tradition. Similarly, although Weelkes does not display the same elegant and carefully shaded sensitivity to the text as John Wilbye, arguably England's greatest madrigalist, he pushed the use of musical imagery to its limits and often attained a magnificent sonority in his writing.
Thomas Morley (c.1539-1623)
Born in London at the end of 1539 or early 1540, William
Byrd was the foremost composer of the Elizabethan age and among the three
or four English composers since the Renaissance who have stood unequivocally
as equals with their continental contemporaries. A master of keyboard music
and the madrigal as well as Latin and English church music, he was an organist
and member of the sovereign's private religious establishment, the Chapel
Royal. Yet he remained throughout his life a dedicated Roman Catholic who
was persecuted as a recusant and who upheld through his art the old faith.
The spirit of his work survived undimmed through the neglect of the baroque
and classical periods. It was only with the publication of The Byrd Edition
earlier this century, however, that the full range of his genius became evident
and accessible to music lovers, an awareness enhanced by the wide range of
recordings now available, performed by many of the world's leading early music
specialists.
Orlando di Lasso (1532 -1594)
Born
in Mons, Flanders. As a boy singer in the service of the vice king of Sicily
he went to Italy where he studied music. As a child he was so reknowned for
his voice that he was kidnapped three times!At the young age of about 20,
he became maestro di cappella in Rome, which shows that he must have been
highly talented. In 1556, the Duke of Bavaria contracted him as a singer.
From 1564 until the end of his life, he was maestro di cappella at the court
in München, where he died in 1594 as a wealthy and highly respected man.
Lasso was fluent in any style of the time: Villanella, Chanson, Motet, Madrigal,
Lied, Hymns, Lamentationes,... And he was fluent in French, Italian, German
and Latin, too. Over 2000 secular and spiritual works have survived to this
day.
The Flemish composer is considered by many the most important composer of
the 16th century. Rather than piecing together liturgy, Lasso's song texts
were connected to form a logical unit, a technique unusual for the time and
musical genre. His secular music includes chansons
(French part-songs), of which "Susanne un jour" (Susanna One Morn,
after the Book of Daniel) was internationally popular for decades; lieder
(German part-songs) on secular and religious texts; and works in the Italian
genre in which he excelled - the madrigal. Lasso died June 14, 1594, in Munich.
Orlando Gibbons (1583
- 1625)
One of the last great polyphonic english composers, Orlando Gibbons was the
last of four sons of a family of musicians. Born in Oxford in 1583 to William
Gibbons, who was appointed a wait at Cambridge in 1567, Orlando soon became
heavily involved in church music. His eldest brother, Edward was a priest
vicar at Exeter Cathedral where a few of his compositions still remain. Ellis,
another brother, managed to have two madrigals published in a Thomas Morley
collection in 1601, The Triumphs of Oriana. Orlando surpassed them all.
In 1695 at the age of 12 he became a chorister at King's College Cambridge. At King's he was continuously envolved in the music of the royal College, and a few times he recieved money for compositions written for special occasions. In 1606 he achieved his Bachelaureate in Music, after being appointed organist to the Chapel Royal at the age of 21; a position he retained for life. By 1622 Gibbons star was on the rise, and he was awarded an honorary Doctorate of Music from Oxford. Later that same year he was appointed organist at Westminster Abbey. There he presided over the funeral of James I. Surprisingly most of Gibbons music was never published in his lifetime. Gibbons did manage to publish a book of madrigals in 1612, a Viol book in 1610, and he remained the master of English organ music during his life.
While returning to London with his Majesty, Charles I from Dover, Gibbons died in Canterbury on June 5, 1625. He is buried in Canterbury Cathedral.
Michael Praetorius (1571-1621)
Born on February 15, 1571, in Creuzburg an der Werra, Thüringen, Germany. Michael Praetorius' real name was Michael Schultheiß (Schultheiß is German for “mayor,” which in Latin is “Praetorius”).
Praetorius' father was a former pupil of Martin Luther, and an associate to Johann Walter (who, with Luther, drew up the original Lutheran Hymnbook). Young Michael showed early promise as a musician and studied seriously at University of Frankfurt as early as 12 years old. Beginning in 1585, Praetorius studied theology at the University of Frankfurt an der Oder, where he was also an organist. Around 1592 to 1595, he became court musician to Duke Heinrich Julius von Braunschweig. In 1604, he was promoted to become master of the Duke’s court music.
In 1613 he moved temporarily to Dresden, at the request of the Elector of Saxony, returning to Wolfenbüttel in 1616. From that time on, he traveled frequently in central Germany and was very active as a musical adviser and Organisator (organizer). Praetorius was not only a composer, but also a musicologist. From 1605 to 1610, he edited Musae Sioniae, a collection of 1244 arrangements of songs and hymns in 9 volumes. From 1615 to 1619, he edited his 3-volume Syntagma musicum, about sacred and profane musicology.
His writings on music include the important Syntagma musicum, the second volume of which gives useful information on the musical instruments of his time. In 1621, he died in Wolfenbuttel, spending his last years there.
Tomás Luis de Victoria (1548
- 1611)
The greatest Spanish composer of the
second half of the 16th century, Victoria was born in 1548 in Avila, where
he had his early musical training as a cathedral chorister.
He studied further in Rome, continuing in the service of
the Jesuit Collegio Germanico before joining the newly formed order of Oratorians.
He returned to Spain to a convent chaplaincy in the service of the Dowager
Empress Maria, sister of King Philip II, retaining the chaplaincy until his
death in Madrid in 1611.
Victoria left some twenty settings of the Mass, in addition to a number of
Magnificat settings, Lamentations, responsories, anthems, psalms, motets and
hymns.
