♪ Music Notes ♪

ORLANDO GIBBONS (1583-1625) was an English composer, virginalist and organist who was one of the last masters of the English Madrigal School. By the 1610s he was the leading composer and organist in England, although his career was unfortunately cut short by his sudden death in 1625. As a result, Gibbons’ oeuvre was not as large as that of his contemporaries, but his compositional versatility led to him to write significant works in virtually every form of his day. He is often seen as a transitional figure from the Renaissance to the Baroque periods. Throughout his professional career, Gibbons had increasingly good relations and supportive patrons with many influential people of the English court – most notably, King James I and Prince Charles. The most important position achieved by Gibbons was his appointment in 1623 as the organist at Westminster Abbey – a post he held for two years until his death.

MACK WILBERG (b. 1955) has been the music director of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir since 2008. He is a former Professor of Music at Brigham Young University and is active as a composer, arranger, guest conductor and clinician throughout the United States and abroad. His compositions and arrangements are performed and recorded by choral organizations throughout the world. In addition to the many compositions he has written for the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, his works have also been performed by such artists as Renée Fleming, Frederica von Stade, Bryn Terfel, and the King’s Singers. Dr. Wilberg received his bachelor’s degree from Brigham Young University and his master’s and doctoral degrees from the University of Southern California.

CHARLES WESLEY (1707-1788) was an English leader of the Methodist movement, most widely known for writing about 6,500 hymn texts. 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, and he became the father of musician Samuel Wesley, and the grandfather of musician Samuel Sebastian Wesley.

RALPH VAUGHAN WILLIAMS (1872-1958) was an English composer and some-time organist and choir director. His works include operas, ballets, chamber music, secular and religious vocal pieces and orchestral compositions including nine symphonies, written over sixty years. Strongly influenced by Tudor music and English folk-song, his output marked a decisive break in British music from its German-dominated style of the 19th century. Vaughan Williams was born to a well-to-do family with strong moral views and a progressive social outlook. Throughout his life he sought to be of service to his fellow citizens, and believing in making music as available as possible to everybody, he wrote many works for amateur and student performance. Vaughan Williams is among the best-known British symphonists, noted for his very wide range of moods, from stormy and impassioned to tranquil, from mysterious to exuberant. Among the most familiar of his other concert works are Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis (1910) and The Lark Ascending (1914). His vocal works include hymns, folk-song arrangements and both small and large-scale choral pieces. Two episodes made notably deep impressions in Vaughan Williams’ personal life. The First World War, in which he served in the army, had a lasting emotional effect. Twenty years later, though in his sixties and devotedly married, he was reinvigorated by a love affair with a much younger woman (Ursula Wood), who, by all accounts, seems to have been adopted by his wife Adeline in the most amicable way, to be her successor, and who did indeed become his second wife when Adeline passed away at the age of eighty. Vaughan Williams composed his last symphony just months before his death at the age of eighty-five.

GEORGE HERBERT (1593-1633) was a Welsh-born poet, orator, and priest of the Church of England. His poetry is associated with the writings of the metaphysical poets, and he is recognized as “one of the foremost British devotional lyricists.” He was born into an artistic and wealthy family, and largely raised in England. He received a good education that led to his admission to Trinity College, Cambridge in 1609. He went there with the intention of becoming a priest, but he became the University’s Public Orator and attracted the attention of King James I. He served in the Parliament of England in 1624 and briefly in 1625. After the death of King James, Herbert renewed his interest in ordination. He gave up his secular ambitions in his mid-thirties and took holy orders in the Church of England, spending the rest of his life as the rector of the little parish of St Andrew’s Church in Salisbury. He was noted for unfailing care for his parishioners, bringing the sacraments to them when they were ill and providing food and clothing for those in need. Henry Vaughan called him “a most glorious saint and seer.” Herbert was never a healthy man and died of consumption at age 39.

JOHN RUTTER (b. 1945) is an English composer, conductor, editor, arranger, and record producer, mainly of choral music. He studied music at Clare College, England, and later became the College’s first full-time Director of Music in 1975, leading the choir to international prominence. In 1981 he founded his own professional choir, the Cambridge Singers, with which he has made many recordings of the sacred choral repertoire. Rutter’s music is very well known and much beloved in choral circles, and is performed worldwide. His larger-scale works – particularly his Gloria (1974), Requiem (1985), and Magnificat (1990) are also well established in the choral repertoire, and the late Sir David Willcocks considered him to be the most gifted composer of his generation.

CHARLES VILLIERS STANFORD (1852-1924) was an Irish composer, music teacher, and conductor. Born to a highly musical family in Dublin, he studied at Trinity College, Dublin, and Queen’s College, Cambridge. Between 1874 and 1877 he also studied in Leipzig and Berlin. While still an undergraduate, Stanford was appointed organist of Trinity College, Cambridge. In 1882, aged 29, he was one of the founding professors of the Royal College of Music, where he taught composition for the rest of his life, and from 1887 on, he was also Professor of Music at Cambridge. As a teacher, Stanford was skeptical about modernism, and based his instruction chiefly on classical principles as exemplified in the music of Brahms. Among his pupils were rising composers whose fame went on to surpass his own, such as Gustav Holst and Ralph Vaughan Williams.