Thomas Morley

Thomas Morley (1557 or 1558 – October 1602) was an English composer, theorist, editor and organist of the Renaissance. One of the foremost members of the English Madrigal School, he was also involved in music publishing, and held a printing patent (a type of monopoly) from 1598 up to his death.

Based in London, where he was organist at St Paul's Cathedral, he 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 byShakespeare.

In 1588 Nicholas Yonge published his Musica transalpina, the collection of Italian madrigals fitted with English texts, which touched off the explosive and colourful vogue for madrigal composition in England. Morley obviously found his compositional direction at this time, and shortly afterwards began publishing his own collections of madrigals (11 in all).

Morley lived for a time in the same parish as Shakespeare, and a connection between the two has been long speculated, but never proven. His famous setting of "It was a lover and his lass" from As You Like It has never been established as having been used in a performance of Shakespeare's play, though the possibility that it was is obvious. Morley was highly placed by the mid-1590s and would have had easy access to the theatrical community; certainly there was then, as there is now, a close connection between prominent actors and musicians.

While Morley attempted to imitate the spirit of Byrd in some of his early sacred works, it was in the form of the madrigal that he made his principal contribution to music history. His work in the genre has remained in the repertory to the present day, and shows a wider variety of emotional color, form and technique than anything by other composers of the period. Usually his madrigals are light, quick-moving and easily singable, like his well-known "Now is the Month of Maying" (which is actually a ballett); he took the aspects of Italian style that suited his personality and anglicised them. Other composers of the English Madrigal School, for instance Thomas Weelkes and John Wilbye, were to write madrigals in a more serious or sombre vein.

In addition to his madrigals, Morley wrote instrumental music, including keyboard music (some of which has been preserved in the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book), and music for the broken consort, a uniquely English ensemble of two viols, flute, lute, cittern and bandora, notably as published by William Barley in 1599 in The First Booke of Consort Lessons, made by diuers exquisite Authors, for six Instruments to play together, the Treble Lute, the Bandora, the Cittern, the Base-Violl, the Flute & Treble-Violl.

Morley's Plaine and Easie Introduction to Practicall Musicke (published 1597) remained popular for almost two hundred years after its author's death, and remains an important reference for information about sixteenth century composition and performance.

April is in my mistress' face written by Thomas Morley is one of the best-known and shortest of English madrigals; it was published in 1594, and appears to be based on an Italian text by Livio Celiano, set by Orazio Vecchi in 1587.

April is in my mistress' face,
And July in her eyes hath place;
Within her bosom is September,
But in her heart a cold December.

My bonny lass she smileth is a famous English madrigal, written by Thomas Morley and published in 1595. It is based on an Italian madrigal, published by Gastoldi in 1591 (see ref 1 and supporting recording). The ChoralWiki gives the following words for the two opening verses.

My bonny lass she smileth,

when she my heart beguileth.

Fa la la la...

Smile less, dear love, therefore,

and you shall love me more.

Fa la la la...

Now is the month of maying is one of the most famous of the English balletts, by Thomas Morley published in 1595. It is based on the canzonet So ben mi ch'a bon tempo used by Orazio Vecchi in his 1590 Selva di varia ricreatione.

The song delights in bawdy double-entendre. It is apparently about spring dancing, but this is a metaphor for sex. For example, a "barley-break" would have suggested outdoor sexual activity (rather like we might say a "roll in the hay"). The use of such imagery and puns increased during the Renaissance.

The madrigal forms a key part of Oxford's May Morning celebrations, where the choir of Magdalen College sing the verses from the roof of the college's Great Tower.

Now is the month of maying,
When merry lads are playing,
Fa la la la la la la la la,
Fa la la la la la lah.
Each with his bonny lass
Upon the greeny grass.
Fa la la, etc...

The Spring, clad all in gladness,
Doth laugh at Winter's sadness,
Fa la la, etc...
And to the bagpipe's sound
The nymphs tread out their ground.
Fa la la, etc...

Fie then! why sit we musing,
Youth's sweet delight refusing?
Fa la la, etc...
Say, dainty nymphs, and speak,
Shall we play barley-break?
Fa la la etc...

en.wikipedia.org 

also:

http://imslp.org/wiki/Category:Morley,_Thomas

http://www2.cpdl.org/wiki/index.php/Thomas_Morley