In the golden twilight of the English Renaissance, when the echoes of Shakespeare's verse still rang through London's theaters and the madrigal reached its most exquisite flowering, Thomas Weelkes emerged as one of the most distinctive and emotionally powerful composers of his generation. Born around 1576 and dying in 1623, Weelkes lived through one of the most extraordinary periods in English cultural history, creat…
“My years yet unripened, and this work not a little hastened, cannot promise any choice notes of music.”
Neighbourhood:
Elizabethan Poets, Lute-Song Composers
Emotional landscape: Longing, Irony, Sensuality
Robert Herrick was born in London on 24 August 1591 and died at Dean Prior in Devon on 15 October 1674. He is remembered as one of the supreme lyric poets of seventeenth-century England: a writer capable of making a four-line epigram feel as complete as a polished jewel, and of making flowers, ribbons, country festivals, kisses, bells, tears, and prayer seem charged with extraordinary significance. His poetry is ofte…
“The best of life is but intoxication, and the soberest men are the most deceived.”
Neighbourhood:
Cavalier Poets, Devotional Poets, Love Poets, Metaphysical Poets
Emotional landscape: Longing, Tenderness, Sorrow
