Born about forty years after the birth of Byrd, Orlando Gibbons yet but survived him by two, being one of that long list of composers who have died young and whose premature death has robbed the world of who can tell how many masterpieces! His music was as distinct an advance on that of Byrd, as Byrd's was on that of Tallis.
The age was one in which the bonds, by which intellectual effort had been tethered, were being rapidly loosed or broken, and it is only natural that a young and greatly gifted man like Orlando Gibbons would revel in the sense of freedom from which the older one would shrink with something akin to horror.
He was thus fortunate to be born in such an era—an era made for ever memorable by the works of two of the greatest geniuses the world has possessed, William Shakespeare and Francis Bacon—and endowed with faculties that enabled him to grasp the opportunities it held out to him.
The substitution of English for Latin in the Church was, in itself, an event of striking importance to the composer, but, above all, the translation of the Bible into the vulgar tongue placed at his disposition the sources of limitless inspiration.
That Orlando Gibbons was quick to take advantage of the golden opportunity is proved by the list of superb anthems he bequeathed to
the English Church. It includes such glorious examples as those entitled "Hosanna," "O clap your hands" and "This is the record of John." Of other forms of sacred music, the service in the key of F is perhaps his most notable achievement.
He was also eminent as a composer of secular music, and was equalled by few and excelled by none as a writer of madrigals. His music for the viols and virginals not only emphasises the scope of his genius, but marks a veritable epoch in the history of instrumental music. So far did his originality carry him, that some of it might even be attributed to Bach or Handel, without violence to our sense of proportion. He died at Canterbury in 1625, the forty-second year of his age.
HENRY PURCELL
Purcell, the last of the great early English musicians—His genius—Supremacy of the foreign musicians in England—His short life—His originality—His power of invention—A pioneer—His harmony—His precocity—Handel—An irrepressible conjecture—A comparison—Purcell enters the Chapel Royal—Becomes Organist of Westminster Abbey—Dr. John Blow—Purcell as composer of dramatic music—Te Deum and Jubilate for St. Cecilia's Day—His death and epitaph.
With Henry Purcell we come to the last and greatest of the early English composers.