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{{short description|English composer, organist and editor (1557–1602)}}
'''Thomas Morley''' ([[1557]] or [[1558]]–October [[1602]]) was an [[English]] [[composer]], [[music theory|theorist]], editor and [[organ (music)|organist]] of the [[Renaissance music|Renaissance]], and the foremost member of the [[English Madrigal School]]. He was the most famous composer of secular music in [[Elizabethan]] England, and the only composer of the time, whose works have survived, to set verse by [[Shakespeare]].
{{Other people|Thomas Morley}}
{{EngvarB|date=September 2014}}
{{Use dmy dates|date=September 2014}}
{{More footnotes needed|date=January 2010}}
{{Infobox person
| name = Thomas Morley
| image = File:Thomas Morley's Plaine and Easie Introduction to Practicall Musicke 1597.jpg
| image_size =
| caption = Title page of Morley's ''Plaine and Easie Introduction to Practicall Musicke'' (1597)
| birth_name =
| birth_date = c. 1557
| birth_place = [[Norwich, England]]
| death_date = early October 1602 (aged 45)
| death_place = [[London, England]]
| occupation = composer, organist and madrigalist
}}


'''Thomas Morley''' (1557 – early October 1602) was an English composer, [[music theory|theorist]], singer and organist of the [[Renaissance music|Renaissance]]. He was one of the foremost members of the [[English Madrigal School]]. Referring to the strong Italian influence on the English [[madrigal]], ''[[The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians]]'' states that Morley was "chiefly responsible for grafting the Italian shoot on to the native stock and initiating the curiously brief but brilliant flowering of the madrigal that constitutes one of the most colourful episodes in the history of English music."<ref name="Brett">{{Cite web|url = http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/subscriber/article/grove/music/19147?q=thomas+morley&search=quick&pos=1&_start=1|title = Thomas Morley|date = 11 February 2013|access-date = 5 February 2016|website = Oxford Music Online|publisher = Oxford University Press|last1 = Brett|first1 = Philip|last2 = Murray|first2 = Tessa}}</ref>
Morley was born in [[Norwich]], in [[East Anglia]]; he was the son of a brewer. Most likely he was a singer in the local cathedral from his boyhood, and he became master of [[chorister]]s there in [[1583]]. However, Morley evidently spent some time away from East Anglia, for he later referred to the great Elizabethan composer of sacred music, [[William Byrd]], as his teacher; while the dates he studied with Byrd are not known, they were most likely in the early [[1570s]]. In [[1588]] he received his bachelor's degree from [[Oxford]], and shortly thereafter was employed as organist at [[St. Paul's]] in [[London]]. His young son died the following year.


Living in London at the same time as [[Shakespeare]], Morley was the most famous composer of secular music in [[Elizabethan era|Elizabethan]] England. He and [[Robert Johnson (English composer)|Robert Johnson]] are the composers of the only surviving contemporary settings of verse by Shakespeare.
In [[1588]] [[Nicholas Yonge]] published his ''Musica transalpina'', the collection of Italian [[madrigal (music)|madrigal]]s fitted with English texts, which touched off the explosive and colorful vogue for madrigal composition in England. Morley evidently found his compositional direction at this time, and shortly afterwards began publishing his own collections of madrigals (11 in all).


Morley was active in church music as a singer, composer and organist at [[St Paul's Cathedral#Organists and directors of music|St Paul's Cathedral]]. He was also involved in music publishing. From 1598 up to his death he held a [[printing patent]] (a type of monopoly).<ref name="odnb" /> He used the monopoly in partnership with professional music printers such as [[Thomas East]].
While Morley attempted to imitate the spirit of Byrd in some of his early sacred works, it was in the form of the madrigal that he made his principal contribution to music history. His work in the genre has remained in the repertory to the present day, and shows a wider variety of emotional color and technique than anything by other composers of the period.


==Life==
In addition to his madrigals, Morley wrote instrumental music, including keyboard music (some of which is published in the ''[[Fitwilliam Virginal Book]]''), and music for the uniquely English consort of two [[viol]]s, [[flute]], [[lute]], [[cittern]] and [[pandora]].
Morley was born in [[Norwich]], the son of a brewer. Most likely he was a singer in [[Norwich Cathedral|the local cathedral]] from his boyhood,<ref name="Brett"/><ref>{{Cite book|title = Thomas Morley: Elizabethan Music Publisher|last = Murray|first = Tessa|publisher = Boydell Press|year = 2014|isbn = 978-1-84383-960-6|location = Woodbridge|page = 8}}</ref> and he became master of [[choir|choristers]] there in 1583.<ref>{{Cite book|title = Thomas Morley: Elizabethan Publisher|last = Murray|first = Tessa|publisher = Boydell Press|year = 2014|isbn = 978-1-84383-960-6|location = Woodbridge|pages = 20–21}}</ref> He may have been a Roman Catholic, but he was able to avoid prosecution as a [[recusant]], and there is evidence that he may have been an informer on the activities of Roman Catholics.<ref name="odnb" />

It is believed that Morley moved from Norwich to [[London]] sometime before 1574 to be a chorister at [[St. Paul's Cathedral]].<ref name="Brett"/> Around this time,<ref name="odnb">Foster, Michael W.. "Morley, Thomas (b. 1556/7, d. in or after 1602)." Michael W. Foster in [[Oxford Dictionary of National Biography]], online ed., edited by [[Lawrence Goldman]]. Oxford: OUP. http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/19292 (accessed 18 November 2014) Subscription or UK public library membership required.</ref> he studied with [[William Byrd]], whom he named as his mentor in his 1597 publication ''A Plain and Easie Introduction to Practicall Musicke''. Byrd also taught Morley's contemporary, [[Peter Philips]].<ref name="Brett"/> In 1588 he received his bachelor's degree from the [[University of Oxford]], and shortly thereafter was employed as organist at St. Paul's in London. His young son died the following year in 1589. He and his wife Susan had three more children between 1596 and 1600.

In 1588 [[Nicholas Yonge]] published his ''[[Musica Transalpina|Musica transalpina]]'', the collection of Italian [[madrigal (music)|madrigal]]s fitted with English texts, which touched off the explosive and colourful vogue for madrigal composition in England. Morley found his compositional direction at this time, and shortly afterwards began publishing his own collections of madrigals (11 in all).

Morley lived for a time in the same parish as Shakespeare, and a connection between the two has been long speculated, but never proven. His famous setting of "It was a lover and his lass" from ''[[As You Like It]]'' has never been established as having been used in a performance of Shakespeare's play during the playwright's lifetime.{{citation needed|date=October 2018}} However, given that the song was published in 1600, there is evidently a possibility that it was used in stage performances.

[[File:Morley-Christes crosse.png|thumb|From a song by Morley from ''A Plaine and easie Introduction to Practical Musicke'']]

While Morley attempted to imitate the spirit of Byrd in some of his early sacred works, it was in the form of the madrigal that he made his principal contribution to music history. His work in the genre has remained in the repertory to the present day, and shows a wider variety of emotional colour, form and technique than anything by other composers of the period. Usually his madrigals are light, quick-moving and easily singable, like his well-known "[[Now Is the Month of Maying]]" (which is actually a ballett); he took the aspects of Italian style that suited his personality and anglicised them. Other composers of the English Madrigal School, for instance [[Thomas Weelkes]] and [[John Wilbye]], were to write madrigals in a more serious or sombre vein.

In addition to his madrigals, Morley wrote instrumental music, including keyboard music (some of which has been preserved in the ''[[Fitzwilliam Virginal Book]]''), and music for the [[broken consort]], a uniquely English ensemble of two [[viol]]s, flute, [[lute]], [[cittern]] and [[bandora (instrument)|bandora]], notably as published by [[William Barley]] in 1599 in ''The First Booke of Consort Lessons, made by diuers exquisite Authors, for six Instruments to play together, the Treble Lute, the Bandora, the Cittern, the Base-Violl, the Flute & Treble-Violl''.

Morley's ''Plaine and Easie Introduction to Practicall Musicke'' (published 1597) remained popular for almost two hundred years after its author's death, and is still an important reference for information about sixteenth century composition and performance.

Thomas Morley was buried in the graveyard of the church of [[St Botolph Billingsgate]], which was destroyed in the [[Great Fire of London]] of 1666, and not rebuilt. Thus his grave is lost.

[[File:Morley It was a lover and his lass performed by D W Solomons.ogg|thumb|Recorded performance of "It was a lover and his lass"]]

==Compositions==
Thomas Morley's compositions include (in alphabetical order):
{{clear right}}{{colbegin|colwidth=18em}}
* April is in my mistress' face
* Arise, get up my deere
* Cease mine eyes
* Come, lovers, follow me
* Come, Sorrow, come
* Crewell you pull away to soone
* Christes crosse
* Do you not know?
* Fair in a morn
* Fantasia for keyboard, [[Fitzwilliam Virginal Book]] CXXIV
* Fantasie: Il Doloroso
* Fantasie: Il Grillo
* Fantasie: Il Lamento
* Fantasie: La Caccia
* Fantasie: La Rondinella
* Fantasie: La Sampogna
* Fantasie: La Sirena
* Fantasie: La Tortorella
* Fire Fire My Heart
* Flora wilt thou torment mee
* Fyre and Lightning
* Goe yee my canzonets
* Good morrow, Fayre Ladies of the May
* Harke Alleluia!
* Hould out my hart
* I goe before my darling
* I saw my Lady weeping
* I should for griefe and anguish
* In nets of golden wyers
* It was a lover and his lass
* Joy, joy doth so arise
* Joyne hands
* La Caccia "The Chase"
* La Girandola
* Ladie, those eies
* Lady if I through griefe
* Leave now mine eyes
*Lirum, Lirum
* Lo hear another love
* Love learns by laughing
* Miraculous loves wounding
* Mistress mine
* [[My bonny lass she smileth]]
* Nolo mortem peccatoris
* [[Now is the month of maying]]
* O Mistresse mine
* O thou that art so cruell
* A painted tale
* Say deere, will you not have me?
* See, see, my own sweet jewel
* Shepard's Rejoice
* Sing we and chant it<ref>{{cite web | url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ciIvhB-zTfc&t=1s | title=Sing we and chant it – Morley | publisher=Youtube | access-date=18 June 2022 }}</ref>
* Sleep, slumb'ring eyes
* Sweet nymph
* Thirsis and Milla
* Those dainty daffadillies
* Though Philomela lost her love [[Oxford Book of English Madrigals]]
* 'Tis the time of Yuletide Glee
* Well Hall
* What is it that this dark night
* What ayles my darling?
* When loe by break of morning
* Where art thou wanton?
* Will you buy a fine dog?<ref>{{cite web | url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=326dAst_Lj8 | title=Will you buy a fine dog? | publisher=Youtube | access-date=22 July 2020 }}</ref>
* With my love my life was nestled
{{colend}}

=== Sacred music ===
* The Burial Service
* De profundis clamavi
* Domine, dominus noster
* Domine, non est exultarem cor meum
* Eheu sustulerunt domine
* The First Service
* How long wilt thou forget me?
* O amica mea

==See also==
* [[The Triumphs of Oriana]] edited by Morley, published in 1601

==References==
{{Reflist}}

===Further reading===
* [[Gustave Reese]], ''Music in the Renaissance''. New York, W.W. Norton & Co., 1954. {{ISBN|0-393-09530-4}}
* Article "Thomas Morley" in ''The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians'', ed. Stanley Sadie. 20 vol. London, Macmillan Publishers Ltd., 1980. {{ISBN|1-56159-174-2}}
* The University of Reading Library featuring: Thomas Morley, ''A Plaine and Easie Introduction to Practicall Musicke''. London, 1597 [https://web.archive.org/web/20060726062008/http://www.library.rdg.ac.uk/colls/special/featureditem/morley/]
* Philip Ledger (ed) [[The Oxford Book of English Madrigals]] OUP 1978
* ''The Madrigal'', Jerome Roche, 1972. {{ISBN|0-09-113260-6}}
* {{cite journal |last1=Shaw |first1=Watkins |title=Thomas Morley of Norwich |journal=The Musical Times |date=1965 |volume=106 |issue=1471 |pages=669{{ndash}}673 |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/954169 |ref=none |series= |publisher=Musical Times Publications Ltd.|doi=10.2307/954169 |jstor=954169 }}

== External links ==
{{Commons}}
* {{Internet Archive author |sname=Thomas Morley}}
* {{Librivox author |id=2941}}
* {{ChoralWiki}}
* {{IMSLP|id=Morley%2C_Thomas|cname=Thomas Morley}}
* More information, including full text, of Morley's [https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc86/ Plaine and Easie Introduction to Practicall Musicke] at the University of North Texas Music Library's Virtual Rare Book Room
* HTML transcription, with numbered page divisions, of ''Plaine and Easie Introduction to Practicall Musicke'': pp. [http://www.chmtl.indiana.edu/tme/16th/MOR1597A_TEXT.html 1–68], [http://www.chmtl.indiana.edu/tme/16th/MOR1597B_TEXT.html 69–115], and [http://www.chmtl.indiana.edu/tme/16th/MOR1597C_TEXT.html 116–183] and [http://www.chmtl.indiana.edu/tme/16th/MOR1597D_TEXT.html end matter] (at the [[Jacobs School of Music|Jacobs (Indiana University) School of Music]] Center for the History of Music Theory and Literature)

{{English Virginalist School}}
{{Renaissance music}}
{{Authority control}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:Morley, Thomas}}
[[Category:English classical composers of church music]]
[[Category:Composers from Norwich]]
[[Category:Musicians from Norwich]]
[[Category:English madrigal composers]]
[[Category:English Renaissance composers]]
[[Category:English music theorists]]
[[Category:English organists]]
[[Category:Cathedral organists]]
[[Category:16th-century English composers]]
[[Category:1550s births]]
[[Category:1602 deaths]]
[[Category:English male classical composers]]
[[Category:English Roman Catholics]]
[[Category:English male classical organists]]

Latest revision as of 11:26, 18 December 2024

For other people named Thomas Morley, see Thomas Morley (disambiguation).

Thomas Morley
Title page of Morley's Plaine and Easie Introduction to Practicall Musicke (1597)
Bornc. 1557
Norwich, England
Diedearly October 1602 (aged 45)
London, England
Occupation(s)composer, organist and madrigalist

Thomas Morley (1557 – early October 1602) was an English composer, theorist, singer and organist of the Renaissance. He was one of the foremost members of the English Madrigal School. Referring to the strong Italian influence on the English madrigal, The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians states that Morley was "chiefly responsible for grafting the Italian shoot on to the native stock and initiating the curiously brief but brilliant flowering of the madrigal that constitutes one of the most colourful episodes in the history of English music."[1]

Living in London at the same time as Shakespeare, Morley was the most famous composer of secular music in Elizabethan England. He and Robert Johnson are the composers of the only surviving contemporary settings of verse by Shakespeare.

Morley was active in church music as a singer, composer and organist at St Paul's Cathedral. He was also involved in music publishing. From 1598 up to his death he held a printing patent (a type of monopoly).[2] He used the monopoly in partnership with professional music printers such as Thomas East.

Life

[edit]

Morley was born in Norwich, the son of a brewer. Most likely he was a singer in the local cathedral from his boyhood,[1][3] and he became master of choristers there in 1583.[4] He may have been a Roman Catholic, but he was able to avoid prosecution as a recusant, and there is evidence that he may have been an informer on the activities of Roman Catholics.[2]

It is believed that Morley moved from Norwich to London sometime before 1574 to be a chorister at St. Paul's Cathedral.[1] Around this time,[2] he studied with William Byrd, whom he named as his mentor in his 1597 publication A Plain and Easie Introduction to Practicall Musicke. Byrd also taught Morley's contemporary, Peter Philips.[1] In 1588 he received his bachelor's degree from the University of Oxford, and shortly thereafter was employed as organist at St. Paul's in London. His young son died the following year in 1589. He and his wife Susan had three more children between 1596 and 1600.

In 1588 Nicholas Yonge published his Musica transalpina, the collection of Italian madrigals fitted with English texts, which touched off the explosive and colourful vogue for madrigal composition in England. Morley found his compositional direction at this time, and shortly afterwards began publishing his own collections of madrigals (11 in all).

Morley lived for a time in the same parish as Shakespeare, and a connection between the two has been long speculated, but never proven. His famous setting of "It was a lover and his lass" from As You Like It has never been established as having been used in a performance of Shakespeare's play during the playwright's lifetime.[citation needed] However, given that the song was published in 1600, there is evidently a possibility that it was used in stage performances.

From a song by Morley from A Plaine and easie Introduction to Practical Musicke

While Morley attempted to imitate the spirit of Byrd in some of his early sacred works, it was in the form of the madrigal that he made his principal contribution to music history. His work in the genre has remained in the repertory to the present day, and shows a wider variety of emotional colour, form and technique than anything by other composers of the period. Usually his madrigals are light, quick-moving and easily singable, like his well-known "Now Is the Month of Maying" (which is actually a ballett); he took the aspects of Italian style that suited his personality and anglicised them. Other composers of the English Madrigal School, for instance Thomas Weelkes and John Wilbye, were to write madrigals in a more serious or sombre vein.

In addition to his madrigals, Morley wrote instrumental music, including keyboard music (some of which has been preserved in the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book), and music for the broken consort, a uniquely English ensemble of two viols, flute, lute, cittern and bandora, notably as published by William Barley in 1599 in The First Booke of Consort Lessons, made by diuers exquisite Authors, for six Instruments to play together, the Treble Lute, the Bandora, the Cittern, the Base-Violl, the Flute & Treble-Violl.

Morley's Plaine and Easie Introduction to Practicall Musicke (published 1597) remained popular for almost two hundred years after its author's death, and is still an important reference for information about sixteenth century composition and performance.

Thomas Morley was buried in the graveyard of the church of St Botolph Billingsgate, which was destroyed in the Great Fire of London of 1666, and not rebuilt. Thus his grave is lost.

Recorded performance of "It was a lover and his lass"

Compositions

[edit]

Thomas Morley's compositions include (in alphabetical order):

  • April is in my mistress' face
  • Arise, get up my deere
  • Cease mine eyes
  • Come, lovers, follow me
  • Come, Sorrow, come
  • Crewell you pull away to soone
  • Christes crosse
  • Do you not know?
  • Fair in a morn
  • Fantasia for keyboard, Fitzwilliam Virginal Book CXXIV
  • Fantasie: Il Doloroso
  • Fantasie: Il Grillo
  • Fantasie: Il Lamento
  • Fantasie: La Caccia
  • Fantasie: La Rondinella
  • Fantasie: La Sampogna
  • Fantasie: La Sirena
  • Fantasie: La Tortorella
  • Fire Fire My Heart
  • Flora wilt thou torment mee
  • Fyre and Lightning
  • Goe yee my canzonets
  • Good morrow, Fayre Ladies of the May
  • Harke Alleluia!
  • Hould out my hart
  • I goe before my darling
  • I saw my Lady weeping
  • I should for griefe and anguish
  • In nets of golden wyers
  • It was a lover and his lass
  • Joy, joy doth so arise
  • Joyne hands
  • La Caccia "The Chase"
  • La Girandola
  • Ladie, those eies
  • Lady if I through griefe
  • Leave now mine eyes
  • Lirum, Lirum
  • Lo hear another love
  • Love learns by laughing
  • Miraculous loves wounding
  • Mistress mine
  • My bonny lass she smileth
  • Nolo mortem peccatoris
  • Now is the month of maying
  • O Mistresse mine
  • O thou that art so cruell
  • A painted tale
  • Say deere, will you not have me?
  • See, see, my own sweet jewel
  • Shepard's Rejoice
  • Sing we and chant it[5]
  • Sleep, slumb'ring eyes
  • Sweet nymph
  • Thirsis and Milla
  • Those dainty daffadillies
  • Though Philomela lost her love Oxford Book of English Madrigals
  • 'Tis the time of Yuletide Glee
  • Well Hall
  • What is it that this dark night
  • What ayles my darling?
  • When loe by break of morning
  • Where art thou wanton?
  • Will you buy a fine dog?[6]
  • With my love my life was nestled

Sacred music

[edit]
  • The Burial Service
  • De profundis clamavi
  • Domine, dominus noster
  • Domine, non est exultarem cor meum
  • Eheu sustulerunt domine
  • The First Service
  • How long wilt thou forget me?
  • O amica mea

See also

[edit]

References

[edit]
  1. ^ a b c d Brett, Philip; Murray, Tessa (11 February 2013). "Thomas Morley". Oxford Music Online. Oxford University Press. Retrieved 5 February 2016.
  2. ^ a b c Foster, Michael W.. "Morley, Thomas (b. 1556/7, d. in or after 1602)." Michael W. Foster in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, online ed., edited by Lawrence Goldman. Oxford: OUP. http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/19292 (accessed 18 November 2014) Subscription or UK public library membership required.
  3. ^ Murray, Tessa (2014). Thomas Morley: Elizabethan Music Publisher. Woodbridge: Boydell Press. p. 8. ISBN 978-1-84383-960-6.
  4. ^ Murray, Tessa (2014). Thomas Morley: Elizabethan Publisher. Woodbridge: Boydell Press. pp. 20–21. ISBN 978-1-84383-960-6.
  5. ^ "Sing we and chant it – Morley". Youtube. Retrieved 18 June 2022.
  6. ^ "Will you buy a fine dog?". Youtube. Retrieved 22 July 2020.

Further reading

[edit]
[edit]
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