Thomas Morley

BIOGRAPHY

• was an English composer, theorist, singer and organist of the Renaissance.

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• He was also involved in music publishing, and from 1598 up to his death he held a printing patent (a type of monopoly). He used the monopoly in partnership with professional music printers such as Thomas East.

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• Living in London at the same time as Shakespeare, he became 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 by Shakespeare.

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• 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.

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• He used the instruments the Treble Lute, the Bandora, the Cittern, etc.

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