We can probably all agree that this term is massively anachronistic. However, justified, I think, in order to establish his music on the same elevated niveau as Purcell or Beethoven or Schubert. While it is difficult to make such analogies when his music is still relatively rarely performed by comparison with these more illustrious names, but Gibbons’ fecundity of imagination, his masterly handling of his material, his emotional depth and maturity, the exquisite turns of phrase, his harmonic assurance, his contrapuntal ease and mastery—all this puts him in the first rank of composers.

And nowhere is this genius more evident than in his string chamber music, which is a surprisingly large body of work: several duos for two treble viols; numerous works involving ‘the great dooble bass’ (a larger-than usual viol); nine 3-part Fantazias (one of only a handful of publications of consort music; and engraved to boot), a single four part In nomine; three exceptional 5-part In nomines and, the jewel in this elaborate crown, six six-part Fantazias. Throw in a masterly Pavan & Galliard in six parts, and the boisterous and genial set of variations on the folk song, ‘Go from my window’, and you have a body of work that can hold its head up amongst the most accomplished of companies.

The six 6-part Fantasias, each exceptional works, last no more than four minutes; yet each is a profound musical, intellectual and emotional journey. Gibbons’ themes are generally simple in construction; but this gives him room to twist and transform his material in a way that draws the listener with him, and in ways that are not immediately obvious. For example, in the first fantazia, the first four entries are regular, coming exactly four beats after the last; but the next entry misses a beat and comes in five beats after the last, thus throwing our sense of expectation and balance. He develops material in an extraordinarily organic way through changes to harmony and rhythm that again is subtle and expressive. There are madrigalian episodes, contrasts of texture and mood, but so expertly handled that the whole work hangs together in the most natural way.

Gibbons is among a small group of composers whose works have been continuously performed since their death. His verse anthems have been a staple of anglican cathedrals and Oxbridge choirs since he was a choirboy at Kings College in the 1590s. And it is these works that are his most well-known works, some calling for a consort of viols to accompany the choir and soloists. But during his lifetime, it was as an organist that he was principally known; and he was marked out as successor to the leading English keyboardists—Byrd & Bull—by being included in the publication Parthenia Inviolata of 1613, by which time Byrd had retired and Bull fled, leaving Gibbons the undisputed leading exponent in the country.

He had been born in Oxford in 1583, but grew up in Cambridge, where his brother Edward was master of choristers. The young Orlando was a chorister at King’s from the age of 13 for three years under his brother’s direction; and then studied at the University. Aged 20, he started working as a musician at the Chapel Royal, where he was to remain until his death. He became organist there in 1615, and when he died, a young Thomas Tomkins was his junior assistant.

He had been close to the young Prince Henry, eldest son of James, and who had a significant musical establishment, including Coprario, Lupo & Alfonso Ferrabosco II, all viol players and composers for the instrument. While we can’t know when his consort music was written, nor indeed for whom or why, we can guess that these other musicians at the court would have been the perfect players and the court itself the perfect place for such finely wrought works to have been brought to life. We play this music on viols in this recording, but there is strong evidence to suggest that some of the music was sometimes played on the violin family.

On 6 November 1612, Prince Henry died of typhoid fever, and the artistic and musical establishments were shaken—over 30 poets wrote verse mourning the loss, and Gibbons included three powerfully emotional madrigals (or motets) in a collection that must have been nearing publication.

But, in fact, Charles proved to be every bit as supportive of the musical group as his brother, and Orlando was evidently close to the viol-playing Prince: his publication of his Fantasies of Three Parts, Cut in Copper, the like not heretofore extant. of 1620 was dedicated to 'Mr Edward Wray, one of the Groomes of his Majesties bed Chamber'. Wray was a protégé of George Villiers, a favourite and lover of both King James and Prince Charles.

In 1623, Gibbons became organist and master of the choristers at Westminster Abbey, in addition to his duties at the Chapel Royal. He was observed by the French ambassador in 1624:

At their entrance, the organ was touched by the best finger of that age, Mr. Orlando Gibbons … and while a verse was played, The Lord Keeper presented the ambassadors and the rest of the noblest quality of their nation with [the] liturgy as it spoke to them in their own language. The Lords ambassadors and their great train took up all the stalls, where they continued half an hour while the choirmen, vested in their rich copes, with their choristers, sang three several anthems, with most exquisite voices before them.

The King died in March 2025, and Gibbons played the organ at his funeral; and a few months later he accompanied the new King Charles to Canterbury to greet the new queen, Henrietta Maria. Gibbons suffered a sudden seizure and died on 5 June. Such was the nervousness about the plague at the time, he was given an autopsy:

We whose names are here underwritten: having been called to give our counsels to Mr Orlando Gibbons; in the time of his late and sudden sickness, which we found in the beginning lethargical, or a profound sleep; out of which, we could never recover him, neither by inward nor outward medicines, & then instantly he fell in most strong, & sharp convulsions; which did wring his mouth up to his ears, & his eyes were distorted, as though they would have been thrust out of his head & then suddenly he lost both speech, sight and hearing, & so grew apoplectical & lost the whole motion of every part of his body, & so died.

Then here upon (his death being so sudden) rumours were cast out that he did die of the plague, whereupon we … caused his body to be searched by certain women that were sworn to deliver the truth, who did affirm that they never saw a fairer corpse. Yet notwithstanding we to give full satisfaction to all did cause the skull to be opened in our presence & we carefully viewed the body, which we found also to be very clean without any show or spot of any contagious matter. In the brain we found the whole & sole cause of his sickness namely a great admirable blackness & syderation in the outside of the brain. Within the brain (being opened) there did issue out abundance of water intermixed with blood & this we affirm to be the only cause of his sudden death.

Glenn Gould, the famously eccentric pianist, so well-known for his two recordings of Bach’s Goldberg Variations, counted Gibbons as his favourite composer, stating ‘ever since my teenage years his music has moved me more deeply than any other sounds experience I can think of’; and it was the verse anthems that started this passion. He claims to have worn out no fewer than three copies of the Deller Consort’s recording of them on Deutsche Gramophon’s Archiv label. This recording also included a few fantazias and In nomines, as well as a pair of madrigals and the Cries of London.

Gould never changed his opinion of Gibbons and later wrote: ‘given a hard day, a late night, and a sequence or two from the Liebestod, [from Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde] the spine tingles and the throat is seized by a catch that no other music, this side of Orlando Gibbons’s anthems, can elicit with equivalent intensity and predicability’.
Richard Boothby

My days is a ritualised memory piece about Orlando Gibbons (1583-1625) written for two ensembles whose recordings informed so much of my musical development. I feel like I spend half of my life trying to trick string players to play like Fretwork, and vocalists to sing like the Hilliard Ensemble, so it was with enormous pleasure that I composed this piece. The text is derived from Psalm 39, which Gibbons himself set, as well as an account of Gibbons’s own autopsy, which is a poignant 17th century semi-anonymous text. One of the most thrilling things about the sound of five violas da gamba playing together is the sense of their phrasing being derived from vocal music, but made, somehow, electric and ecstatic through ornamentation and the friction of the strings. The piece has an idée fixe based on a minor scale with two possible resolutions, and many ornaments. In between iterations, the voices, in rhythmic unison, intone the psalm. It isn’t until the autopsy text arrives that the voices begin to split into more elaborate, Gibbonsy verses and responses. A series of semi-improvised fragments on the text “Take thy plague away from me” introduces the third section of the piece, where plucked strings create a halo around the text, “hear my prayer, O Lord.” The piece ends with the ornaments, wildly exploded, over the voices singing two words, endlessly repeated.
Nico Muhly

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