GIBBONS, ORLANDO

born 1583, Oxford, Oxfordshire, Eng. died June 5, 1625, Canterbury, Kent composer, one of the last great figures of the English polyphonic school. He was the most illustrious of a large family of musicians. His father, William Gibbons (c. 154095), was appointed one of the waits at Cambridge in 1567. Four of William's sons were accomplished musicians. At the age of 21 Orlando Gibbons was made organist of the Chapel Royal, a post that he retained for the remainder of his life, receiving many marks of royal favour. In 1619 he was appointed one of the musicians for the virginalles to attend in his highnes privie chamber, and in 1622 he was made honorary doctor of music of the University of Oxford. The following year he became organist at Westminster Abbey, where he later officiated at the funeral service of King James I. Gibbons was part of the retinue attending Charles I when the king traveled to Dover to meet his bride, Henrietta Maria, on her arrival from France. Gibbons' full anthems are among his most distinguished works, as are the little anthems of four parts. His Madrigals and Motetts of 5 Parts was published in 1612. This collection contains deeply felt and very personal settings of texts that are, for the most part, of a moral or philosophical nature. It shows Gibbons' mastery of the polyphonic idiom of his day and contains many masterpieces of late madrigalist style, among them the well-known The Silver Swan and What Is Our Life? Two years previously there appeared Fantasies in Three Parts Compos'd for Viols (c. 1610), said to be the first music printed in England from engraved copperplates. Gibbons was famous as a keyboard player, and toward the end of his life he was said to be without rival in England as an organist and virginalist. Several of his virginal pieces were published in Parthenia (c. 1612), and more than 40 others survive in manuscript. Gibbons lived at a time when the polyphonic and basically vocal styles of the 16th century were becoming modified by a more markedly instrumental and harmonically conceived idiom. These changes left him almost untouched; his music, rather, sums up the achievement of the past generation.