Orlando Gibbons
Biography
Orlando Gibbons (bapt. 25 December 1583 – 5 June 1625) was an English composer and keyboard player who was one of the last masters of the English Virginalist School and English Madrigal School. The best known member of a musical family dynasty, by the 1610s he was the leading composer and organist in England, with a career cut short by his untimely death in 1625. As a result, Gibbons's oeuvre was not as large as that of his contemporaries, like the elder William Byrd, but he made considerable contributions to many genres of his time. Musicologists characterize his music as exemplifying the transition from the Renaissance to the Baroque periods. Gibbons was born into a musical family where his father was a wait, his brothers—Edward, Ellis and Ferdinand—were musicians and Orlando was expected to follow the tradition. It is not known under whom he studied, although it may have been with Edward or Byrd, but he almost certainly studied the keyboard in his youth. Irrespective of his education, he was musically proficient enough to be appointed an unsalaried member of the Chapel Royal in May 1603 and a full-fledged gentleman of the Chapel Royal as junior organist by 1605. By 1606, he had graduated from King's College, Cambridge, with a Bachelor of Music degree. Throughout his professional career, Gibbons maintained good relations with many important people of the English court. King James I and Prince Charles were supportive patrons and others, such as Sir Christopher Hatton, even became close friends. Along with Byrd and John Bull, Gibbons was the youngest contributor to the first printed collection of English keyboard music, Parthenia, and published other compositions in his lifetime, notably, the First Set of Madrigals and Motets (1612) which includes the best known English madrigal: The Silver Swan. Other important compositions include "This is the Record of John", the eight-part full anthem "O Clap Your Hands Together" and two settings of Evensong. The most important
Bio from Wikipedia
Discography
Records they worked on — most-collected first.
Credited work
1,310 releases · 232 albums · active 1950–2026
- Performance · 1,833
- Other credits · 21
Studios: Chapel Of King's College, Cambridge · St Paul's Cathedral, London, England · Ely Cathedral · Forde Abbey
Frequent collaborators
- Various
- Glenn Gould
- The Cambridge Singers
- Colin Tilney
- Deller Consort
- Gustav Leonhardt
- The Choir Of Westminster Abbey
- Eastman Brass Quintet