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…
“In truth I must confess, they are like young birds feared out of the nest before they be well feathered, and find no place so fit to light on as on the branches of your favour: where (such is your love to me and music) I hope they will be so shrouded in the leaves of your good liking, that you will give leave neither to any ravenous kite nor crafty fowler (I mean neither to any open-mouthed Momus nor more sly detractor) to devour, or harm them, that cannot succour nor shift for themselves.”
Neighbourhood:
Elizabethan Poets, Lute-Song Composers
Emotional landscape: Longing, Sorrow, Tenderness
In the twilight of the English Renaissance, as the sun dipped behind the hills of a vanishing golden age, there stood a solitary figure whose music shimmered with the last glow of that era’s brilliance — Thomas Tomkins, composer, organist, and quiet poet of sound. Born in 1572, in the cathedral town of St. David’s, Wales, and passing into silence in 1656, in the shadowed aftermath of civil war and Puritan upheaval, T…
“The Brife in to Fowre, the prick Brife into Sixe, The longe into Eight minums, still driving od”
Neighbourhood:
Lute-Song Composers
Emotional landscape: Sorrow, Tenderness, Joy
Themes they return to
Distinctive words drawn from each poet’s critiqued poems — what they keep writing about, not just what their biographies mention.
Shared
From the biographies
music
composer
cathedral
Thomas Bateson:
cheshire, anglo-irish, first set of english madrigals, second set of english madrigals, o'rianna's farewell, thomas morley, trinity college dublin, holy, lord god almighty.
Thomas Tomkins:
st. david's, wales, william byrd, gloucester cathedral, chapel royal, o sing unto the lord a new song, the triumphs of oriana, a sad pavan for these distracted times.
