Composer of the Week: Orlando Gibbons

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Composer of the Week

Music: Classical

Composer of the Week - Brand

An informative guide to composers' lives and their music.

An informative and accessible guide to composers' lives and their music.

Composer of the Week: Orlando Gibbons (1583-1625): The Court Musician and The British Problem 1603-1612

The Court Musician and The British Problem 1603-1612

Orlando Gibbons (1583-1625)

BBC Radio 3 - Composer of the Week, Orlando Gibbons (1583-1625), The Court Musician and The British Problem 1603-1612

Gibbons joins the royal household of the newly crowned King James.

Gibbons joins the royal household of the newly crowned king, James VI of Scotland and I of England.

Orlando Gibbons’s life throws a light on the political turbulence affecting Britain in the early 17th century. As King James VI and I struggled to establish the concept of British identity, his court was blessed with one of England’s most talented musicians of the time, Orlando Gibbons.

Today, Donald Macleod looks at Gibbons’s life in the royal household of the newly crowned king, James VI of Scotland and I of England. Gibbons’s ascent seems to have been a confident and steady one, from unpaid Gentleman Extraordinary in 1603 to senior organist just before James’s funeral in 1625.

Great King of Gods							
Robert Quinney, organ
Westminster Abbey Choir
James O'Donnell, conductor

Pavan a 6							
The Rose Consort of Viols

Pavan and galliard Lord Salisbury			
Glenn Gould, piano

Fantasies in Three Parts Compos’d for Viols		
No 6, No  8, No 9
London Baroque

This is the Record of John 					
Fantasia No 10 in C Major				
Jeffrey Thomas, tenor 
University of California Chamber Chorus
Berkeley Festival Consort of Viols 
John Butt, director

Ne’er let the Sun				
Yet if that age				
Trust not too much fair youth		
Consort of Musicke

Lift Up Your Heads
Oxford Camerata
Jeremy Summerly, director


Produced by Iain Chambers for BBC Audio Wales & West

Composer of the Week: Orlando Gibbons (1583-1625)

Live music and the arts: broadcasts more live music than any other radio network. Classical music is its core. Genres include world and new music, jazz, speech and drama.

Donald Macleod surveys the life and turbulent times of English composer Orlando Gibbons.

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Orlando Gibbons (1583-1625)

The Court Musician and The British Problem 1603-1612

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