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): What Is Our Life? 1583-1603

What Is Our Life? 1583-1603

Orlando Gibbons (1583-1625)

BBC Radio 3 - Composer of the Week, Orlando Gibbons (1583-1625), What Is Our Life? 1583-1603

Gibbons’s early life in Cambridge and Oxford, amidst Britain’s political turbulence.

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 early life in Cambridge and Oxford, where he grew up amongst a highly musical family. But it was Orlando who blazed the trail, making the jump from provincial music-making to the royal court in London.


The Silver Swan						
Cambridge Singers
John Rutter, conductor

O clap your hands					
Out of the Deep
Oxford Camerata 
Jeremy Summerly, director

A Fancy (for Double Organ)				
Jonathan Hardy, organ

Behold, thou hast made my days					
We praise thee, O Father
Magdalena Consort 
Fretwork 
Peter Harvey, director

What Is Our life?
Rudolfus Choir 
Ralph Allwood, conductor

I am the resurrection 						
Hosanna to the Son of David					
Stile Antico

How art thou thralled						
Farewell all joys						
Now each flowery bank of May				
Consort of Musicke 


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)

What Is Our Life? 1583-1603

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