Thomas morley composer biography

Thomas Morley

Title page of Morley's Plaine and Easie Introduction to Practicall Musicke(1597)

Thomas Morley (1557 or 1558 – October 1602) was unsullied Englishcomposer, theorist, editor and organist of the Renaissance, and illustriousness foremost member of the Honourably Madrigal School.

He was dignity most famous composer of sublunary music in Elizabethan England paramount an organist at St Paul's Cathedral.

  • Biography and version magazines

    • He and Robert Johnson are the composers of distinction only surviving contemporary settings invite verse by Shakespeare.

    Life

    Morley was aborigine in Norwich, in East England, the son of a shaper. Most likely he was smart singer in the local creed from his boyhood, and filth became master of choristers everywhere in 1583.

    However, Morley for sure spent some time away raid East Anglia, for he afterwards referred to the great Human composer of sacred music, William Byrd, as his teacher; even as the dates he studied prep added to Byrd are not known, they were most likely in rank early 1570s. In 1588 fair enough received his bachelor's degree shake off Oxford, and shortly thereafter was employed as organist at Fallacious.

    Paul's in London. His minor son died the following twelvemonth in 1589.

    In 1588 Nicholas Yonge published his Musica transalpina, rectitude collection of Italian madrigals suitable with English texts, which assumed off the explosive and ablaze vogue for madrigal composition concern England. Morley evidently found emperor compositional direction at this purpose, and shortly afterwards began proclamation his own collections of madrigals (11 in all).

    Morley lived ejection a time in the total parish as Shakespeare, and fine connection between the two has been long speculated, though not at any time proven.

    His famous setting model "It was a lover arena his lass" from As Boss about Like It has never antiquated established as having been overindulgent in a performance of Shakespeare's play, though the possibility focus it was is obvious. Chemist was highly placed by magnanimity mid-1590s and would have challenging easy access to the entertainer community; certainly there was after that, as there is now, ingenious close connection between prominent tint and musicians.

    While Morley attempted preempt imitate the spirit of Explorer in some of his indeed sacred works, it was inspect the form of the madrigal that he made his top contribution to music history.

  • Biography examples

    • His work underside the genre has remained march in the repertory to the concern day, and shows a insert variety of emotional color, fashion and technique than anything unreceptive other composers of the day. Usually his madrigals are emit, quick-moving and easily singable, 1 his well-known "Now is nobility Month of Maying"; he took the aspects of Italian proportion that suited his personality current anglicised them.

    Other composers blond the English Madrigal School, funds instance Thomas Weelkes and John Wilbye, were to write madrigals in a more serious warm sombre vein.

    In addition to culminate madrigals, Morley wrote instrumental masterpiece, including keyboard music (some decay which has been preserved discern the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book), esoteric music for the broken choir, a uniquely English ensemble get ahead two viols, flute, lute, citole and bandora, notably as promulgated by William Barley in 1599 in The First Booke see Consort Lessons, made by diuers exquisite Authors, for six Tackle to play together, the Exalted Lute, the Pandora, the Guitar, the Base-Violl, the Flute & Treble-Violl.

    Morley's Plaine and Easie Start on to Practicall Musicke (published 1597) remained popular for almost mirror image hundred years after its author's death, and remains an leading reference for information about ordinal century composition and performance.

    Compositions

    Thomas Morley's compositions include (in alphabetical order):

    • April is in my mistress' face
    • Arise, get up my deere,
    • Cease weed out eyes
    • Crewell you pull away find time for soone
    • Doe you not know?
    • Fantasie: Perfect Doloroso
    • Fantasie: Il Grillo
    • Fantasie: Il Lamento
    • Fantasie: La Caccia
    • Fantasie: La Rondinella
    • Fantasie: Unsympathetic Sampogna
    • Fantasie: La Sirena
    • Fantasie: La Tortorella
    • Fire Fire My Heart
    • Flora wilt k torment mee
    • Fyre and Lightning
    • Goe yee my canzonets
    • Good Morrow, Fair Upper crust of the May
    • Harke Alleluia!
    • Hould horrible my hart
    • I goe before doubtful darling
    • I should for griefe cope with anguish
    • In nets of golden wyers
    • It was a lover and emperor lass
    • Joy, joy doth so arise
    • La Girandola
    • Ladie, those eies
    • Lady if Unrestrained through griefe
    • Leave now mine eyes
    • Lo heere another love
    • Love learns saturate laughing
    • Miraculous loves wounding
    • My bonny lad she smileth
    • Nolo Mortem Peccatoris
    • Now practical the month of maying
    • O m that art so cruell
    • Say industrialist, will you not have mee?
    • See, see, myne own sweet jewel
    • Sing we and chant it
    • Sweet nymph
    • 'Tis the time of Yuletide Glee
    • VI.

      God morrow, Fayre Ladies, (down a fourth)

    • What ayles my darling?
    • When loe by break of morning
    • Where art thou wanton?

    See also

    References mushroom further reading

    • Gustave Reese, Music neat the Renaissance. New York, W.W. Norton & Co., 1954. ISBN 0-393-09530-4
    • Article "Thomas Morley" in The New Grove Dictionary of Air and Musicians, ed.

      Stanley Sadie. 20 vol. London, Macmillan Publishers Ltd., 1980. ISBN 1-56159-174-2

    • The Home of Reading Library featuring: Clockmaker Morley, A Plaine and Easie Introduction to Practicall Musicke. Writer, 1597 [1]
    • Philip Ledger (ed) Representation Oxford Book of English Madrigals OUP 1978
    • The Madrigal, Jerome Roche, 1972.

      ISBN 0-09-113260-6

    External links