A Short History of English Music

by Ernest Ford

To Tallis was entrusted the writing of such music as was to be allowed, and all musicians owe him a debt of gratitude for the beauty of his work, which remains to-day, as the highest type of Church music, of which he has often been called the father, so far as relates to that of England.

Of Byrd we have written.

With Orlando Gibbons we come to the third of that great trio of Church composers whose work may be termed the Apotheosis of Catholic music, so far as England is concerned. Although when Gibbons began to compose, the Latin language had been superseded by English in the Church liturgy, his music retains absolutely all the essential characteristics of the ancient Ecclesiastical style, and is as pure from outside influence as that of Byrd himself, who doubtless lent him aid and encouragement, being as he was, a comparatively young man when the latter died in a green old age.

Gibbons was a copious writer, and his works are one of the greatest treasures of English sacred music.

With him the glorious school of Catholic music may be said to have become extinct in England.

Henry Purcell, the last and greatest of the

old school of English musicians, was born in 1658. At the time of his birth the Reformation had long been an accomplished fact, and the country had accepted it, perhaps not entirely realising in all its bearings, the full extent of the consequences. Orlando Gibbons had only been dead about thirty years, so, happily for music, sufficient time had not elapsed to allow of the entire suppression of the ancient spirit of Catholic music.

Hence Purcell, whose early training came from those who were born and nurtured in its atmosphere, was fully equipped, on arriving at manhood, to deal with the position as he found it: that is to say, a firmly established body of foreign musicians basking in the favours, and enjoying the protection of a largely foreign Court.

With the assimilative power of genius, he was quick to seize upon anything he thought politic. But whatever he borrowed he soon turned into gold. He was a veritable alchemist.

It is only necessary to say here that for many centuries he has been universally accepted as the greatest of all English musicians, and that he was the last of that original school of English music whose origin goes back to the dark ages, and can only be sought for in the solitude and seclusion of the cells of ancient and long forgotten monasteries.