Wilbye, John

born March 7, 1574, Diss, Norfolk, Eng.

died September 1638, Colchester, Essex

British composer.

He spent his entire life in the employ of the Kytson family, as a domestic musician at Hengrave Hall, and then in Colchester (from 1628). One of the finest of the English madrigalists, he published only two collections (1598, 1609). His madrigals are less chromatic than those of his contemporary Thomas Weelkes, but he made subtle use of varying textures for expression.

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▪ English composer

baptized March 7, 1574, Diss, Norfolk, England

died September 1638, Colchester, Essex

      English composer, one of the finest madrigalists (madrigal) of his time.

      Wilbye was the son of a successful farmer and landowner. His musical abilities early attracted the notice of the local gentry. Sir Thomas Kytson of nearby Hengrave Hall, Bury St. Edmunds, was especially interested, and he invited Wilbye to become resident musician there about 1595. The Kytsons treated him handsomely, leasing him a prosperous sheep farm in 1613; in time he came to own lands in Diss, Bury, and elsewhere. The Kytson household dissolved upon the death of Sir Thomas's widow in 1628, after which Wilbye found employment with one of Kytson's daughters in Colchester.

      Wilbye's fame rests on a mere 66 madrigals (madrigal), all but 2 of them published in his volumes of 1598 and 1609 (republished in volumes 6 and 7 of The English Madrigal School, edited by E.H. Fellowes, 1913–24, and revised by Thurston Dart, 1965–68). Wilbye's achievement lies in the grave music of his “serious” madrigals, a style then largely unpracticed in England. The “new poetry” of the Italianizing poets Sir Philip Sidney (Sidney, Sir Philip) and Edmund Spenser (Spenser, Edmund), which flourished from 1580 to 1600, found in Wilbye's settings its perfect musical equivalent. He was far more appreciative of literary excellence in choosing texts for his music than most of his fellow madrigalists, and he also set to music many translations of Italian verse.

      Wilbye spread the general emotional purport of his text (usually amorous) over the whole composition; abrupt contrasts and changes of mood were abandoned in favour of a prevailing tone, and this gave his madrigals an artistic unity rarely attained by his English contemporaries. He was a master of rhythm, and his alert ear for prosody fills his music with passages in which the verbal accent is counterpointed against the musical metre. He also experimented with sequence, recurring refrains, and thematic development in such works as "Adieu, Sweet Amaryllis" and the more complex "Draw On, Sweet Night." The latter and the well-known "Flora Gave Me Fairest Flowers" and "Sweet Honey-sucking Bees" display Wilbye's skill in vocal orchestration: the full number of voices is not kept in constant play, but for much of the time the composer writes for ever-changing smaller groups within the ensemble.

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