Thomas Morley

English composer and musician

• Born: 1557 or 1558
• Birthplace: Norwich, England
• Died: October 1, 1602
• Place of death: London, England

Morley is often credited with the invention of the English madrigal, adapted from Italian musical forms and translated into English idioms. He also was a pioneer in music publishing in England, and his treatise on musical practice and composition A Plaine and Easie Introduction to Practicall Musicke remains perhaps the most influential musical treatise in English.

Early Life

The early years of Thomas Morley are exceedingly vague, although it is known that he was the son of a brewer, Francis Morley. The town in which he was born, Norwich, became something of a haven for European Protestant refugees in the 1560’s, and the town’s establishment was itself associated with a strongly Protestant, puritanical culture.

This fact may have prompted Morley’s departure from his hometown, since Morley appears to have had Roman Catholic leanings. His dedication to a tradition of elaborate, polyphonic church music would not have been well received in a Protestant culture that was often inimical to such music.

Morley served as an organist and choral master for the cathedral at Norwich at some point between 1574 and 1583, although it is extremely likely that during this time he also studied with William Byrd, at that time the preeminent composer in England. It was from Byrd that Morley learned much about the tradition of Anglican church music, particularly the composition of motets (the most important form of polyphonic music in the Renaissance).

Morley earned a bachelor of music degree from Oxford University in 1588. Although it is not precisely clear when Morley left Norwich for good, he was certainly established in London by 1591, the same time that he was employed as church organist in St. Paul’s Cathedral.

Life’s Work

Morley’s contribution to the English musical tradition is generally considered to be his adaptation of the Italian madrigal within an English context. His early sacred music was very much in the tradition of English works, however, most notably the tradition developed by the sixteenth century English composers Byrd and Thomas Tallis . These works include motets, psalm settings, anthems, and services, and Morley’s handling of these forms, which are notable for their weightiness and complex harmonic texture, very much betrays the influence of Byrd and Tallis’s earlier examples.

Morley published several collections of music in the early 1590’s that demonstrate his fascination with Italian forms and styles, most notably the madrigal, a type of musical piece in which a poetic text is set to an elaborate, polyphonic score of four to six parts. The form that Morley was most directly imitating had as its greatest proponents the Italian composers Andrea Gabrieli, Orlando di Lasso, and Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina. Morley’s Madrigalls to Foure Voyces (1594) demonstrates a remarkable combination of the Italian madrigal form with the type of English polyphonic writing he had learned from Byrd. Morley’s development, or “Englishing,” of Italian forms is found in his Canzonets to Three Voyces (1593), his Canzonets to Five and Sixe Voices (1597), and The Triumphes of Oriana (1601).

In addition to his copious compositional output, Morley was active in the burgeoning field of music publication, a relatively new phenomenon in sixteenth century England. Publication of music at that time was strictly controlled by a court-appointed monopoly, and it was not until 1598 that Morley was granted a patent to publish (as a result of the expiration in 1596 of a monopoly that had originally been granted to Byrd). In addition to the publication of metrical psalms, Morley’s patent allowed him to print part books (ensemble, or polyphonic, music in which each part appears in a separate book) and ruled paper.

Morley’s A Plaine and Easie Introduction to Practicall Musicke (1597) was the most popular text devoted to the instruction of singing and composing music in Renaissance England. Although Morley’s book was not the first of its kind (a shorter book on practical music had been published a few years earlier), it was more widely distributed, going through a second edition in a relatively short time, and was regularly read in England throughout the seventeenth century. It remains a famous musical treatise into the twenty-first century.

The first part of the work, “Teaching to Sing,” outlines a method for learning to sight-sing (i.e., to sing directly from a printed musical score), while the second and third parts, “Treating of Descant” and “Treating of Composing or Setting of Songs,” outline rules of musical composition.

In addition to his contributions to the madrigal tradition and music publication, Morley enjoyed an immensely successful professional career. In 1592, he was appointed to the position of gentleman of the Chapel Royal, a select group of paid musicians that normally consisted of male choristers (gentlemen) and boy singers. His First Booke of Songs or Ayres (1600) shows his experience with the lute-song tradition, a form that was being popularized by figures such as English composer John Dowland and that would overtake the madrigal in popularity in the early seventeenth century.

Morley seems to have suffered from ongoing illness as early as 1597, as he mentions in A Plaine and Easie Introduction to Practicall Musicke, and he died in October of 1602.

Significance

The importance of the publication of Morley’s A Plaine and Easie Introduction to Practicall Musicke in 1597 cannot be overestimated. Music publication in England was still fairly new, and the idea that one could learn how to perform and compose music (or at least learn aspects of performance), such as sight-singing, directly from a text must have been strikingly original; musical instruction was almost always a one-on-one personal affair in sixteenth century England. Morley’s text thus helped to usher in the dissemination of practical music (i.e., the study of musical performance and composition) to a wider audience, as well as helping to formalize and regularize the system of musical notation.

Although modern scholars have tended to downplay the traditional notion that England did not have a substantial musical tradition in the Renaissance independent of Italian influences, there is little doubt that Morley’s adaptation of Italian madrigals and his publication of English madrigals were indispensable in introducing the most prominent European musical innovations to a wide, English-speaking public. Before Morley, most innovations had been introduced through the much more limited sphere of the royal court.

Bibliography

Jacobson, David Christopher. “Thomas Morley and the Italian Madrigal Tradition: A New Perspective.” Journal of Musicology 14 (1996): 80-91. Discusses Morley’s classification of his own compositions in relation to the Italian forms he was adapting, paying special attention to the discussion of music in Morley’s Plaine and Easie Introduction to Practicall Musicke.

Kerman, Joseph. The Elizabethan Madrigal. New York: American Musicological Society, 1962. A book-length study of the madrigal tradition in Renaissance England, focusing on the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. Morley’s contributions to the genre are treated at length. Includes several musical examples.

Morley, Thomas. A Plain and Easy Introduction to Practical Music. Edited by R. Alec Harmon. Introduced by Thurston Dart. New York: Norton, 1973. Dart’s introduction is one of the very few articles that address comprehensively the historical and biographical context for the publication to Morley’s treatise, although it must be noted that the introduction’s historical accuracy is occasionally sloppy. The treatise itself is presented with copious annotations and helpful editorial notes, and all of the original musical examples are retained (in a much more readable type).

Perkins, Leeman L. Music in the Age of the Renaissance. New York: Norton, 1999. Discusses the Italian madrigal tradition in England and English madrigals. Examines Morley’s composition and publication of madrigals and canzonets. Bibliography, illustrations, and musical examples (including a lengthy excerpt from Morley’s “April Is In My Mistress’ Face,” from the first book of Madrigalls to Foure Voyces of 1594).