Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 21.djvu/269

 Besides his published madrigals no secular or vocal compositions exist in manuscript except a kind of burlesque madrigal entitled ‘The Cries of London,’ for six voices, preserved in Addit. MSS. 29372–7, in the library of the Royal College of Music and elsewhere. Other compositions of the kind, as the ‘Country Cry,’ &c., are found, but without composer's names, in Addit. MSS. 17792–17796 and 29427. These may or may not be by Gibbons. The more important manuscript collections are rich in copies of his church compositions, which consist of two sets of ‘preces,’ two full services in F and D minor respectively, and some twenty-one anthems preserved entire. Another, ‘I am the Resurrection and the Life,’ is in the incomplete set of part-books (Add. MSS. 29366–8). The complete sacred compositions were edited with great care and skill by the late Sir F. A. Gore Ouseley (London, 1873). In a copy of some of the anthems (Addit. MS. 31821) sundry pieces of information, apparently given on the authority of Dr. Philip Hayes, are noted in pencil, concerning the circumstances under which the anthems were written. Thus ‘Blessed are all they’ is ‘a wedding anthem made for my Lord of Somerset;’ ‘Great King of Gods’ was ‘made for the King's being in Scotland, 1617;’ and ‘This is the record of John’ was ‘made for Laud, the president of John's, Oxford, for John Baptist's Day.’ The second of these entries may explain one of the titles given in Grove's ‘Dictionary,’ ‘Fancies and Songs made at K. James I's being in Scotland,’ of which no trace is to be found. Another title there given, ‘A Song for Prince Charles for 5 voices with wind instruments,’ is also not forthcoming. As Laud was president of St. John's College from 1611 to 1621, we have a limit of time for the composition of one of the most interesting of Gibbons's works, which shows to what an extent the new methods of music which came into vogue at the beginning of the century had been assimilated by one who excelled most of his contemporaries in the older polyphonic style. One other anthem is dated by a manuscript copy in the library of St. George's Chapel, Windsor. It is there recorded that the anthem ‘Behold, Thou hast made my days,’ was composed at the request of Anthony Maxey, dean of Windsor, and was performed at his funeral. In an autograph copy of the same work in the library of Christ Church, Oxford, it is stated to have been ‘Composed at the entreaty of Dr. Maxey, Dean of Windsor, the same day se'nnight before his death.’ Dean Maxey was succeeded on 11 May 1618 by De Dominis [q. v.], archbishop of Spalatro. Besides the anthems the sacred works comprise two hymns for four and five voices respectively, contributed to Sir William Leighton's ‘Teares and Lamentacions,’ published 1614. Only four of the sixteen hymn tunes contained in George Wither's ‘Hymns and Songs of the Church’ (1623, reprinted by J. Russell Smith in 1856) are contained in Ouseley's edition. The tunes are in two parts, and are studiedly simple in style; in his dedication to the king Wither says of Gibbons, ‘He hath chosen to make his music agreeable to the matter, and what the common apprehension can best admit, rather than to the curious fancies of the time; which path both of us could more easily have trodden.’ Two slight references to Gibbons before this date may be mentioned. On 17 July 1615 two bonds of the value of 150l., forfeited by one Lawrence Brewster of Gloucester and his sureties for his non-appearance before the high commission court at Lambeth, were granted to Gibbons (State Papers; Coll. Sign-Manuals, James I, vol. v. No. 38). On St. Peter's day 1620 he had a dispute with one Eveseed, a gentleman of the Chapel Royal, when the latter ‘did violently and sodenly without cause runne uppon Mr. Gibbons, took him up and threw him doune uppon a standard wherby he receaved such hurt that he is not yett recovered of the same, and withall he tare the band from his neck to his prejudice and disgrace’ (Old Cheque Book, ed. Rimbault, p. 102). It is proved beyond any doubt that Gibbons accumulated the degrees of bachelor and doctor of music at Oxford, on 17 or 18 May 1622, on the occasion of the foundation of the history professorship by Camden, who requested the university to confer the musical degrees upon his friend Heather, the first professor, and Gibbons. Wood failed to find the official record of the degree in Gibbons's case, but a letter from Dr. Piers to Camden, quoted in Hawkins's ‘History’ (ed. 1853, p. 572 n.), establishes the matter. It is also certain that Gibbons's anthem ‘O clap your hands’ served as Heather's exercise for the degree. A copy bearing the unequivocal inscription ‘Dr. Heather's Commencement song, compos'd by Dr. Orlando Gibbons,’ was sold at Gostling's sale, and is now in the possession of Mr. W. H. Cummings. In 1623 the composer was rated as residing in the Woolstaple, Westminster (where Bridge Street now stands) (Books of St. Margaret's, Westminster, quoted in Notes and Queries, 3rd ser. x. 182). In 1625, on the occasion of the reception of Henrietta Maria by Charles I, Gibbons was commissioned to compose the music for the ceremony, and was commanded to be present at Canterbury. Here, on 5 June, Whitsunday, he died of a kind of apoplectic