In the twilight of the English Renaissance, when the golden age of madrigal composition was drawing to its close, there emerged a composer whose work would serve as both culmination and farewell to one of England's most distinctive musical traditions. Thomas Vautor, active from approximately 1590 to 1625, stands as one of the final masters of the English madrigal school, a musician whose single published collection c…
Neighbourhood:
Lute-Song Composers
Emotional landscape: Sorrow, Spirituality, Despair
In the golden twilight of the English Renaissance, when madrigals flourished in the courts and cathedrals of England and Ireland, few composers demonstrated such exquisite taste in wedding poetry to music as Thomas Bateson. Born around 1575 in the rolling countryside of Cheshire, this Anglo-Irish composer would become one of the most significant figures of the late Elizabethan and early Jacobean musical landscape, le…
“But whatsoever they are, yours they are, and for you only they were made. It was your good countenance that did encourage me to this; your love to music doth not only challenge it of me, but even the uttermost that music's art can afford; which if it were in me, I would most willingly offer to you.”
Neighbourhood:
Elizabethan Poets, Lute-Song Composers
Emotional landscape: Longing, Sorrow, Tenderness