Gibbons, Byrd and Bull were very fine organists. Gibbons was organist of Westminster Abbey, and we are told by a writer of his own day that “the organ was touched by the best finger of that age, Mr. Orlando Gibbons.”
Dr. John Bull (1563–1628) was brought up, as were many of the young English musicians, as one of the “Children of the Chapel Royal Choir.” Later he became organist and player to King James I. Bull left England, entered the service of a Belgian archduke, was organist at the Antwerp Cathedral, and when he died in 1628, he was buried there. In the University of Oxford, where Bull took his degree as Doctor of Music, is his portrait around which is written:
The Bull by force in field doth rayne
But Bull by skill good-will doth gaine.
John Milton, father of the great poet, was an important composer of this period. It is well known that his famous son was very fond of music, was a good musician himself, and had many friends among these composers and musicians.
The music for Milton’s famous Masque, Comus, was written by Henry Lawes (1595–1662) and was first produced in 1635. Lawes studied with an English composer named John Cooper who lived for so many years in Italy, that his name was translated into Giovanni Coperario. He turned the thoughts of his pupil to composing music for the stage, instead of church music. It looks as if Milton had been a pupil of Lawes, and had written Comus specially for him.
Lawes played a very amusing joke upon the concert-goers. At that time, as now, many thought that the music of other countries, and songs in foreign languages were better than their own. While Lawes himself knew the Italian music very well, he was eager to compose music that should be truly English. In the preface to his Book of Ayres he confessed: “This present generation is so sated with what’s native, that nothing takes their ears but what’s sung in a language which (commonly) they understand as little as they do the music. And to make them a little sensible of this ridiculous humor, I took a Table or Index of old Italian Songs and this Index (which read together made a strange medley of nonsense) I set to a varyed Ayre, and gave out that it came from Italy, whereby it has passed for a rare Italian song.” (Quoted from Bridge’s Twelve Good Musicians.)
Lawes helped to compose a work that is looked upon as the first English opera, The Siege of Rhodes. This was played during the time of Oliver Cromwell and the Commonwealth, and in this piece for the first time in England, women appeared upon the stage.
A year after the Commonwealth was overthrown, Henry Lawes died and was buried in Westminster Abbey, but the spot where his body lies is not known.
From 1641 to 1660, music must have had a hard time for this was the period of the Commonwealth, when the country was going through all the horrors of civil war, and Cromwell’s soldiers destroyed many things of great artistic value, that could never be replaced. Among them were the works of art found in the wonderful old English cathedrals, including organs and musical manuscripts. At Westminster Abbey, the Roundheads (the name given to Oliver Cromwell’s soldiers) “brake down the organs for pots of ale.”