Gibbons: Consort and Keyboard Music / Songs and Anthems

Featuring

Timothy Roberts
Tessa Bonner
The Rose Consort of Viols
Red Byrd
Orlando Gibbons

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Composition History

Gibbons' 'The First Set of Madrigals and Mottets' (1612) was his only published book of secular vocal music, and its title page suggested the songs were 'apt for Viols and Voyces'.

Composer Biography

Gibbons' career was centered on his duties as a 'royal' musician, serving as organist of the Chapel Royal and Westminster Abbey, and as a virginalist for the King.

Compositional Technique

The In Nomine, a uniquely English musical form, is a fantasia based on a cantus firmus from John Taverner's mass 'Gloria tibi Trinitas'.

Composer Biography

Orlando Gibbons came from a family of musicians; his father William was a town band musician, and his brothers Edward and Ellis were also involved in music.

Compositional Technique

Gibbons' viol consorts sometimes use the 'Great Double Bass,' an instrument tuned a fourth lower than the conventional bass viol, for an extraordinary low register.

Critical Reception

Gibbons was highly renowned as a keyboard player during his lifetime, with the French ambassador calling him 'the best finger of that age'.

Compositional Technique

The verse anthem, a particularly English genre, developed from the consort song by interjecting short choruses into the texture, breaking up solos into 'verses'.