Thomas Morley (1557 – early October 1602) was an English composer, theorist, singer and organist of late Renaissance music. 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."

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). 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.

  • 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
  • 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?
  • With my love my life was nestled

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

Citations

Sources

Further reading

  • Article "Thomas Morley" in The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, ed. Stanley Sadie. 20 vol. London, Macmillan Publishers Ltd., 1980.
  • 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/]
  • The Madrigal, Jerome Roche, 1972.
  • More information, including full text, of Morley's 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. 1–68, 69–115, and 116–183 and end matter (at the Jacobs (Indiana University) School of Music Center for the History of Music Theory and Literature)