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Composer and collections

Composers

John Blow (1649-1708)

John Blow’s distinguished musical career included the post of organist of Westminster Abbey (1668–79 and 1695–1708; in the interim period he relinquished the position in favour of his pupil Henry Purcell); Master of the Children of the Chapel Royal (1674–1708); and, concurrently, ‘musician for the virginals’ (1669–85), ‘composer for voices’ (1672–1708), ‘composer for the violins’ (1674–85), and, a newly established post, ‘composer to the Chapel Royal’ (1700–8). He was also Almoner and Master of the Choristers at St Paul’s Cathedral from 1687 to 1703, and was the first holder of the Lambeth degree of Doctor of Music (1677). It is fair to say that he dominated London musical life and, as a notable composer of odes, songs and, in particular, church music, his esteem was exceeded only by that of Purcell.

The nine Latin pieces by John Blow are all early works (dating from the mid 1670s) that seem to have been inspired by the composer’s study of early seventeenth-century Italian vocal music. As a result, the motets are his most Italianate works and, in the tradition of Dering and Jeffreys, include affective declamation, virtuoso solo writing, expressive dissonance, melodic and harmonic chromaticism, contrasting triple-time sections, and a number of examples of ground basses in the duet motets. The volume also includes an hitherto anonymous 3-voice psalm setting ‘Confitebor tibi Domine’ which appears uniquely alongside Blow’s copies of his motets. The psalm is tentatively attributed to Blow.

Jean-Jacques Boësset (1614-1685)

The French composer Jean-Baptiste Boësset (1614 – 85) served Anne of Austria (King Louis XIV’s mother and regent during Louis’ minority) from 1643 to 1662, and Marie-Thérèse (Louis’ queen) from 1660 to 1679. Only eight works are attributed to Boësset, and they all appear in a single manuscript now held in the Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris, dating from the 1650s; it is likely that many of the other pieces in this source are also by Boësset. In common with other French publications from this time, Boësset’s music exudes melodic simplicity over virtuoso display. Three masses and two motet collections are currently available, and further anthologies are in preparation.

John Camidge (1734-1803)

John Camidge was baptized on 8 December 1734 in the church of Holy Trinity, Goodramgate, York. William Barclay Squire, probably acting on information supplied by Thomas Simpson Camidge, John Camidge’s great grandson, asserted that John ‘was articled [to James Nares, the organist of York Minster] for seven years, after which he studied in London under Dr Greene, and received some lessons from Handel’. There is now no corroborating evidence to support either assertion, although his articled instruction under Nares is likely given that when, at the age of twenty-one, John Camidge was appointed organist of Doncaster parish church, a press notice indicated that he had received ‘his Education under Mr Nares, Organist of our Cathedral’ [ie York Minster]. Just over five months later, at the beginning of 1756, John was appointed organist at the latter place, a post he occupied until his resignation on 11 November 1799 in favour of his son Matthew. John died on 25 April 1803 and was buried three days later in the church of St Olave, York.

The works published in this anthology, all of his small output of sacred music that remains, comprise a very short full anthem and six verse anthems, five of the latter having been composed before 1782. They have never before been published and have been transcribed from partbooks formerly used by the choir of York Minster, which are now located in the library of that institution. A further verse anthem of his, ‘Blessed are all they that ear the Lord’, is now lost.

John Camidge (1790-1859)

John Camidge was born in York in 1790, the son of Matthew Camidge, organist of York Minster, and was a pupil of the Polish violinist and composer Feliks Janiewicz and of Dr Charles Hague, professor of music at the University of Cambridge. John took the degree of Mus.B. at Cambridge in 1812 and followed this with that of Mus.D. in 1819. From the age of seven, John Camidge performed widely in public concerts, in York and elsewhere, both as organist, pianist, and violinist respectively. He published several works for the piano and in 1830 his collection entitled Cathedral Music, which contains a Morning Service in A (comprising a Te Deum and Jubilate), an Evening Service in A (comprising a Cantate Domino and Deus Misereatur), an Evening Service in Eb (comprising a Magnificat and Nunc Dimittis), and four anthems: Fret not thyself because of the ungodly; Holy, Holy, Holy; I will cry unto God; and Sing unto the Lord.

Matthew Camidge (1764-1844)

Matthew Camidge was born in 1764 and baptized at Holy Trinity, Goodramgate, York, on May 25 of that year. He became a chorister in the Chapel Royal, where he stayed until 1779 when he returned to York. From 1784 to 1822 he performed regularly in the concert series in the York Assembly Rooms and from 1799 to 1842 was organist at York Minster. He died in 1844 at the age of eighty. To his activities as a performer, Matthew Camidge added those of a composer and, beginning in 1789, his works were published until 1826 or so, of which can be mentioned the sonatas for pianoforte, mostly with accompaniments for violin and violoncello; some songs; two works of psalmody; and his Six Concertos for the Organ or Grand Piano Forte (c.1815), by which he is mostly remembered today.

His Cathedral Music, containing six anthems and a Service in F, was published in 1806. Of the anthems, which were probably composed between 1794 and 1801, the longest and most imposing is ‘Thy way, O God, is holy’, which contains a bravura baritone solo, most probably written with Edward Bennington, a York Minster songman, in mind. The Service in F, an example of the so-called ‘short service’, was composed in 1779 with the encouragement of William Mason, Precentor of York Minster.

William Child (1606/7-1697)

William Child was born in Bristol in 1606 or possibly early in 1607 and, according to Anthony Wood, was taught by the Bristol Cathedral organist, Elway Bevin. He spent his entire professional career at St George’s Chapel, Windsor: first as lay-clerk (from 19 April 1630) and then organist (from 26 July 1632); St George’s Chapel was closed between 1643 and 1660 and he ‘retired to a small farm’ and composed; at the Restoration he returned to his post as organist at Windsor where he remained until his death in 1697. In 1660 he also became one of the three organists of the Chapel Royal and was in addition appointed composer in ordinary for wind music. He took the Oxford degrees of B.Mus. and D.Mus. in 1631 and 1663 respectively. Child’s career was relatively uneventful but his name appears frequently in the diary of Samuel Pepys who provides information about Child’s activities and contacts, including the fact that he served as private organist to Lord Sandwich.

Child’s First set of Psalmes… newly composed after the Italian way is one of the earliest examples of an Italianate concertato sacred-music publication by an English composer. The Psalmes are simple pieces that mix homophony with sections of imitation following Italian models. They were composed for two high voices and a bass voice with basso continuo and were designed for a devotional context in, according to the title-page, ‘private Chappells or other private meetings’. Such settings proved popular – particularly during the Commonwealth period – for Child’s psalms were reprinted in 1650 and, under the title Choise Musick to the Psalmes of David, again in 1656.

Francesco Costanzo da Cosena (fl. 1621)

F[rancesco] Buonaventura di Rogliano alias Francesco Costanzo da Cosena is known only as the composer of II Primo Libro delli Mottetti à Due, à Tre, & à Quattro. Con un Vespero, Hinni, Compieta, e Messa à Quattro, con il suo Basso Continuo (Naples: Costantino Vitale, 1621). Locke’s copies in British Library Add. 31437 add one or possibly two more works to the composer’s output.

William Davis (c.1675/6–1745)

William Davis was a church musician who spent the majority of his life in the employ of Worcester Cathedral, successively as a chorister, player of the ‘little organ’, King’s Scholar, Lay Clerk and Master of the Choristers. He was a highly accomplished composer of sacred music and his output includes 16 anthems (six of which are incomplete), a service in G minor that includes canticles for Matins and Evensong, and a Jubilate in D minor, which was intended to accompany a setting of the Te Deum by Elway Bevin. Also among Davis’ extant compositions are two multi-voiced secular pieces, a number of solo songs and several duets and catches, some of which were published in The Monthly Mask of Vocal Music.

Andrea Gabrieli (c. 1532-1585)

Little is known of Andrea Gabrieli’s (1532/3–1585) early life beyond that he had some employment as organist at the church of San Geremia, Venice, and appears to have enjoyed the musical influence of Orlando di Lasso who probably came across Gabrieli (probably as early as 1562) on one of his frequent trips to Venice to recruit musicians for the Bavarian court in Munich where Lassus was employed in the chapel choir. It seems that, after a period of work in Munich, Gabrieli was eventually given a permanent appointment as one of the organists at San Marco, Venice, in 1566 alongside Claudio Merulo. He provided a considerable corpus of everyday music for the church’s year aimed partly at the needs of the surrounding churches and partly for use in San Marco on days other than the great feasts. We should not overlook Andrea’s role in the establishment of the international status of native Venetians after the dominance of Netherlandish composers.

The ‘Quando lieta sperai’ setting is a parody mass based on Cipriani Rore’s (or, just possibly, Morales) 5-part madrigal of 1549 to a sonnet text by Emilia Anguisciola. The quality of the harmonic material and the clarity of the word-setting in this (previously unknown) mass allow it to stand easily alongside better-known masses by such as Palestrina and Lassus. The setting is for SSATTB with optional organ seguente.

Nicolas Gombert (c.1495–c.1560)

Gombert was probably born in southern Flanders and was, according to Hermann Finck’s Practica musica (1556), taught by Josquin (if this is true it would probably have been during Josquin’s last years in Condé). In 1526 Gombert joined the chapel choir of Emperor Charles V in Spain, and by 1529 was its maître des enfants. His position at the most prestigious court in Europe allowed him to travel throughout the continent with the Imperial entourage and, as a result, his reputation spread. It seems that Gombert served unofficially as a court composer and his compositions were printed by all the major European publishers; his fame was such that the Venetian firms of Scotto and Gardano issued collected editions of his motets. However, in about 1540, his career was halted when he was sentenced to the galleys for gross indecency with a choirboy. He earned his release and finished his career as canon at the cathedral of Tournai.

Gombert’s compositions are all vocal, some for ensembles of up to twelve parts. His contrapuntal language is based on that of Josquin, but taken to the next level of complexity. Imitation is used even more consistently than did Josquin, and Gombert’s vocal textures are often densely packed and the individual lines are characterised by an avoidance of rests. A substantial number of Gombert’s compositions survive, and are here represented six motets for 4–6 voices and by the five-voice Missa ‘Media vita’, a ‘parody mass’ based on his own six-voice motet (which is included Motets volume). These editions were first prepared for The Hilliard Ensemble’s Gombert recording (ECM New Series 1884).

Bonifatio Gratiani (1604 - 1664)

Bonifatio Gratiani (1604-64), priest and composer, was active in Rome during the 1640s– 60s, as maestro di capella at Il Gesu and the Seminario Romano and other Jesuit institutions in the city. He wrote large- scale works, including two oratorios, and also smaller concertato-style motets. It is largely for his contribution to the latter genre that Gratiani was remembered, and during the second half of the seventeenth century his motets were reissued and appear in collections published in Antwerp.

John Hebden (c. 1701 - 1765)

John Hebden's place and date of birth are not known but he was probably born in Yorkshire in 1701 or so. He was active in the concert series given in York during the period from 1732-1742, after which he settled in London where until the end of his life in 1765 he was a concert performer on the bassoon and violoncello. He published 'Six solos for a German flute with a thorough bass for the harpsicord' (c.1740) and 'Six concertos in seven parts for four violins, a tenor violin, a violoncello with a thorough bass for the harpsicord' (c.1745).

Charles d'Helfer (? - 1664)

The French composer Charles d’Helfer (d. after 1664) spent his whole career outside Paris based as maître de musique at Soissons Cathedral, and his reputation as a mass composer is reflected by the extensive publication of his works after his death (his Missa pro Defunctis, published in 1656, continued to be used up to the obsequies of Louis XV in 1774). The Missa Benedicam Dominum and Missa Laetatus sum are typical of Helfer’s preference for a severe syllable-to-a-note style, although the vocal lines retain an elegant melodic charm.

George Jeffreys (c.1610–1685)

George Jeffreys was born around 1610 and by the early 1630s he was in the employment of the Hatton family of Kirby Hall in Northamptonshire, serving Sir Christopher (later the first Baron) Hatton first as a junior secretary and eventually as his steward. He continued in the Hattons’ employment for the rest of his life, managing their estates in Northamptonshire and, on occasions, representing their interests in London. Despite these weighty administrative responsibilities, Jeffreys was active as a composer from at least 1631, when he set four songs ‘made for some Comedyes by Sir Richard Hatton’, until the mid 1670s. His early work comprises instrumental chamber music, secular songs and dialogues, music for plays and masques, twelve Italian songs for three voices and an Italian cantata for five-part voices and strings. Later, he concentrated exclusively on sacred music, producing some thirty English anthems and devotional songs, more than twice that number of Latin motets, six Latin canticles, a three-part English Gloria, and music for the English Communion Service.

By far the largest group of Latin sacred settings is the series of motets (devotional songs) with basso continuo for one, two and three voices. In general style and structure these sacred songs superficially resemble the few-voiced motets of Dering: both composers model their settings on the work Grandi, but Jeffrey’s greater harmonic sophistication and occasional use of arioso reflect more modern influences, particularly that of Carissimi.

William Lawes (1602 - 1645)

William Lawes (1602-45) spent much of his career in the service of Charles I. He lost his life fighting for his king during the English Civil War at the Battle of Chester, a few years before Charles I himself was executed. While Lawes is well-known for his instrumental and stage works, he also wrote sacred music, mostly for Italianate three-voice scoring, and his typical vocal style, with Italianate declamation exploiting the limits of vocal range, chromaticism, dissonance and harmony, is not matched by any of Lawes’ contemporaries. These twelve remarkable Psalms to common tunes have elaborate solo sections alternating with unison chorus verses sung to the popular ‘common tunes’. There are few occasions when these pieces may have been performed, but it seems likely that they were heard in York Minster during the Siege of York in 1644. All twelve psalms are published in a single volume, with an extensive introduction on the historical, political and musical background.

Valentine Nalson (1683-1723)

Valentine Nalson was baptised in Doddington (in the Isle of Ely) on 26 February 1683. He went to Huntington School and St John's College, Cambridge, taking the degrees of BA in 1703 and MA in 1711. He then followed the ordination in the Church of England as a deacon in 1706 and as a priest in 1707. In the latter year he was appointed a vicar choral at York Minster and in 1708 subchanter of the vicars choral. He died in 1723 and was buried in the church of St Martin-le-grand, York, where he had been vicar since 1707, and where there is a memorial to him on the south wall.

Neither the occasion nor the date of composition of the Mass is known, and both remain something of a puzzle. The Mass could not be performed in the Minister in the early 1700s, but the existence of a set of parts does, however, suggest performance; and it is easy to imagine one taking place at York, in a domestic context, somewhere in the Minster Close.

Pomponio Nenna (bap. 1556–before 1618)

Pomponio Nenna was born in Bari and was the son of a minor nobleman; being a gentleman he did
not hold musical appointments. Nenna was probably taught by Stefano Felis (c.1550–1603) and other
local musicians while in Bari, and by c.1594 he was in the service of Prince Carlo Gesualdo
(1566–1613) in Naples where he remained until 1599. (It is an interesting fact that Nenna’s first book
of five-voice madrigals (1582) is dedicated to Fabrizio Carafa, Duke of Andria who together with his
lover, Gesualdo’s wife Maria d’Avalos, was murdered by the composer-prince in 1590.) It seems that
Gesualdo was an influence on Nenna – although Nenna’s mannerist madrigal style is not as extreme
as that of Gesualdo. Nenna published eight books of five-voice madrigals (i: 1582; books ii and iii are
lost; iv: 2/1608 [first edition lost]; v: 1603; vi: 1607; vii: 1608; viii: 1618 [posthumous]), a book of
four-voice madrigals (1613), and two books of Responsories (for Christmas and Holy Week, 1607 and
1622 [posthumous]), most of which were printed in Naples or Venice. After service at Gesualdo’s
court, it seems that Nenna moved to Rome where his eighth and last book of five-voice madrigals was
published posthumously by Ferdinando Archilei (who was probably the son of the singing virtuoso
Vittoria Archilei (fl. 1582–1620)). Nenna’s madrigals proved so popular that, from 1609, the Venetian
publishing house of Gardano began to reprint his madrigals books; the sixth and seventh books were
particularly admired and were re-issued four times.

Giovanni Rovetta (1595/7–1668)

Giovanni Rovetta appears to have spent his entire life in Venice as a musician at S Marco.
He may have been a choirboy at S Marco (where his father was a violinist between 1614 and
1641) but the first documentary evidence of his career dates from 7 December 1614, when he
was appointed to the permanent staff of instrumentalists. On 22 November 1627 he
succeeded Alessandro Grandi as Monteverdi’s assistant maestro di cappella and became
maestro on 21 February 1644 in succession to Monteverdi. Although in the shadow of
Monteverdi (who may well have been his teacher), Rovetta’s works, both sacred and secular,
do show a distinctive voice.

Galeazzo Sabbatini (1597–1662)

Galeazzo Sabbatini was a canon of Pesaro Cathedral from 1626 to 1630, and from 1630 to
1639 was maestro di cappella at the court of the Duke of Mirandola, before returning to
Pesaro Cathedral in 1641. Between 1639 and 1641 he may have lived in Bergamo, and it is
known that he visited Rome in 1652–3 and 1657–9. He composed both sacred and secular
music in the new concertato styles and he was also a theorist, publishing a manual on
continuo playing: Regola facile, e breve per sonare sopra il Basso Continuo nell’Organo,
Manacordo, ò altro simile stromento (Venice, 1628).

Thomas Shaw (c.1750-c.1830)

Thomas Shaw was born around 1750 in Bath, where he spent his early years. By the end of the 1760s he showed sufficient skill on the violin as to become leader of the band which performed in Thomas Linley’s subscription concerts in that city. His last performance in Bath was in 1774, after which year he moved to London, where he probably spent the summer months, alternating this residency with one in York during the winter months of the years between 1775 and 1785. He was leader of the band which played in the concerts at York, held in the Assembly Rooms; and it is quite possible that his violin concerto was composed specifically with performance at the York concerts in mind. 

The concerto, which was published in 1780 or so, is in three movements, the first of which adopts a ritornello form, based on the alternation of four tutti and three solo sections. A short slow movement follows, with the suggestion of a tune of Irish, Scottish, or Welsh origin; and the work concludes with a rondo.

Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck (c. 1562 - 1621)

Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck (c.1562-1621) spent most of his life in Amsterdam where he was organist at the Oude Kerk. These motets are taken from his Cantiones sacrae, published in 1619, which takes texts (mainly) from the Catholic Latin liturgy and employs some of the latest musical techniques of the time eschewing any use of cantus firmus, employing some chromaticism and providing a so-called bassus continuus, although this is much more of an organo seguente. The motets can be performed unaccompanied and work well either as concert pieces or anthems. Of the 37 motets in this collection, 14 have closing sections to the word ‘Alleluia’; these codas show a considerable imagination ranging from the ecstatic to the mystical according to the preceding text. 12 of the motets are available in three anthologies; the complete collection will be available in the near future.

Robert Tailour (fl.1610–c.1637)

No information is currently available concerning the life of Robert Tailour [Taylor, Taylour] before 13 November 1610 when he registered the birth of his son (also) Robert in the parish of St Dunstan-in-the-West, London. On 13 February 1613 he received £2 as part of a group of Prince Henry’s musicians for playing the lute in a performance of George Chapman’s The Memorable Masque of the Middle Temple and Lincoln’s Inn. He was formally appointed to the musicians of Charles, Prince of Wales from Lady Day 1617. This was an important group that contained musicians such as Alfonso Ferrabosco the younger (c.1575–1628), John Coprario (c.1570/80–1626), Orlando Gibbons (1583–1625) and Thomas Lupo (1571–1627), and together they were responsible for extending the range of scorings employed in the English fantasia idiom and for the introduction of the violin into contrapuntal music. It is significant that in a warrant dated 4 June 1621 Tailour was paid £23 for ‘five Instrumentes [probably viols] boughte and delivered’ for Prince Charles’s household. In 1620 he was appointed as a member of the London Waits to play ‘orpheryon and basse vyoll and poliphon’, and in the 1620s he was paid 6s a month to teach viol to a member of the Middle Temple. At Charles’s accession to the throne in 1625, Tailour joined the newly formed ‘Lutes, Viols and Voices’ and served until his death in the autumn of 1637 (sometime before 11 October) when he was succeeded by his son John. He was also a member of the Corporation of Musick of Westminster after it was reconstituted by charter on 15 July 1635. Sacred Hymns (1615) is Tailour’s only published work.

Tomás Luis de Victoria (c.1549 - 1611)

Tomás Luis de Victoria (1548–1611) was born in Avila, Spain and died in Madrid in 1611. His early musical education was in Avila until 1563/5 when he was sent to the Jesuit 'Collegio Germanico' in Rome to continue his education. Palestrina may have been one of his teachers in Rome and it was there too that he published the psalms and antiphons in these collections. The editions of these compositions, suitable for any festive occasion, are taken from revisions made by Victoria and published in Madrid in 1600; the sets of four and three psalms and the complementary anthology of four Marian antiphons may be performed either unaccompanied, with organo seguente or with instrumental doubling.

John Wilson (1595–1674)

The singer and lutenist John Wilson was an actor and later one of the principal songwriters with the King's Men; it is possible that he is the 'Iacke' Wilson cited in the First Folio (1623) of Shakespeare's Much Ado about Nothing. By 1641 he had been appointed to the King's Musick as one of the 'lutes and voices' and he was one of the musicians who attended Charles I at Oxford after the court's enforced move out of London. He remained in Oxford after the Civil War and in 1656 he was made Professor of Music at the University. He composed over 300 songs and a remarkable set of pieces for 12-course lute.

Collections

Matthew Locke’s Copies of Italian Music in British Library Add. MS 31437

Matthew Locke (c.1622–1677), an English Roman Catholic composer who was to become
organist to Queen Catherine of Braganza (1662–77), copied fifteen Italian motets (by
Galeazzo Sabbatini, Giovanni Rovetta and Francesco Costanzo da Cosena) when he was ‘in
the Low-Countreys 1648’. There are a number of reasons why an edition of Locke’s copies of
Italian music should be published: 1) the sheer quality of the music which Locke chose from
printed sources available to him while he was resident in the Low Countries; 2) the
information that the copies offer to scholars for the study of the influence on, and the
development of, Locke’s own concertato style of writing (for example, the vocal textures; the
melodic figurations; use of triple metre; and harmonic procedures); and 3) the fact that
Locke’s manuscript contains unique music by Francesco Costanzo da Cosena copied from his
now lost second book of motets.

York Masses (c.1500)