♪ Music Notes ♪

WILLIAM BYRD (ca. 1540/42-1623) was an English composer, keyboard player and teacher. Widely considered to be one of the greatest composers of the Renaissance, and one of the greatest of all British composers, he had a huge influence on composers both from his native England and those on the continent. He wrote in many of the forms current in England at the time, including various types of sacred and secular polyphony, keyboard, and consort music. Although he produced sacred music for Anglican services, sometime during the 1570s he became a Roman Catholic and wrote Catholic sacred music later in his life. Byrd’s exceptionally long lifespan meant that he lived into an age in which many of the forms of vocal and instrumental music which he had made his own were beginning to lose their appeal to most musicians. The native tradition of Latin music which Byrd had done so much to keep alive more or less died with him, while consort music (instrumental ensembles) underwent a huge change of character at the hands of a brilliant new generation of musicians.

SAMUEL WEBBE SR. (1740-1816) was an English composer and organist. His father died shortly after Samuel was born, and as a young child, his mother apprenticed him at the age of eleven to be a cabinet maker. However, Webbe was determined to study other disciplines, and taught himself Latin, Greek, Hebrew, French, German, and Italian, while working on his apprenticeship. He wrote about three hundred glees, canons and part-songs – and upon which his fame mainly rests. His hymn tune Melcombe, heard today in the opening hymn, appears in many hymn books, of many denominations.

JOHN KEBLE (1792-1866) was a British Anglican priest, theologian and poet who originated and helped lead the Oxford Movement, which sought to revive in Anglicanism the High Church ideals of the later 17th-century. Home schooled by his father, he later enrolled at Oxford, where he performed exceptionally well in Latin, Mathematics and English. After his mother’s untimely death in 1823 he returned to his childhood home in Fairford, Gloucestershire, and although he was offered a teaching position at Oxford on three occasions over the next ten years, he chose not to accept, in order to stay with his family. Keble wrote throughout his life, and published several books, of which “The Christian Year” (1825) is the most widely known. It is a compilation of poems dedicated to every religious day in the Christian calendar. In 1846, he wrote a volume of poems called “Lyra Innocentium” which related the teachings of the Church with raising children (although he didn’t have any of his own.) His other gift to English literature and the Church was his collection of hymns, many of which remain popular to this day, including “New Every Morning is the Love.”

EUGÈNE BOZZA (1905-1991) was a French composer and violinist. He remains one of the most prolific composers of chamber music for wind instruments. Bozza’s large ensemble work includes five symphonies, operas, ballets, large choral work, wind band music, concertos, and much work for large brass or woodwind ensembles. His larger works are rarely performed outside his native France.

CHARLES H. H. PARRY (1848-1918) was an English composer, teacher, and historian of music. As a composer, he is best known for the choral song Jerusalem, and his 1902 setting for the coronation anthem I Was Glad. He also composed the music for Ode to Newfoundland, the provincial anthem for Newfoundland and Labrador. Among those who studied under Parry at the Royal College of Music were Ralph Vaughan Williams, Gustav Holst, and John Ireland. Some of his contemporaries rated him as the finest English composer since Purcell, and his influence on later composers is widely recognized.

CHARLES WESLEY (1707-1788) was an English leader of the Methodist movement, most widely known for writing about 6,500 hymn texts, including this morning’s closing hymn “Ye Servants of God”. He was educated at Westminster School and Christ Church, Oxford, and after graduating with a master’s degree in classical languages and literature, Charles followed his father and brother into Anglican orders in 1735. He was a younger brother of Methodist founder John Wesley, and Anglican cleric Samuel Wesley the Younger, the father of musician Samuel Wesley, and the grandfather of musician Samuel Sebastian Wesley.

GEORGE FREDERIC HANDEL (1685-1759) was born in Halle, Germany. One of the most prolific, successful and revered composers and musicians of the Baroque period, he is to this day considered to be one of the greatest composers of that era, enjoying both public favour and royal patronage during his lifetime. Despite his eagerness to become a musician, he was disallowed by his father, and so had to conduct his musical training in secret. After spending a brief spell in Italy studying law to appease his father, but at the same time expanding his musical pursuits while out of his father’s control and knowledge, he was appointed as Kapellmeister for Prince George of the German Hanoverian family in 1710. He moved with Prince George to London, England, where the prince was crowned King George I of Great Britain and Ireland, and in 1712 Handel decided to settle in England permanently, receiving an annual income of £200 from the royal family. His compositional output was immense: 42 operas, 29 oratorios (including Messiah, which has taken its rightful place as one of the most frequently performed and most beloved choral works of all time), more than 120 cantatas, duets, trios, arias, anthems, chamber music, organ works, sonatas and concertos. Three days before his death in 1759 Handel signed a codicil to his will saying he hoped he might be buried in Westminster Abbey, and desired that his executor erect a monument for him. The funeral was attended by about 3,000 people and the choirs of Westminster Abbey, St Paul’s Cathedral and the Chapel Royal sang the service. His black marble gravestone in the south transept reads: GEORGE FREDERIC HANDEL BORN YE 23 FEBRUARY 1685 DIED YE 14 OF APRIL 1759.