Gibbons, Galliard a6

We are several years into this series, and there are still some important composers that we have not gotten around to. Orlando Gibbons (1583-1625) is one of them.

Gibbons grew up singing in the choir at King’s College, Cambridge, where his older brother was Master of the Choristers. He would eventually earn his doctorate at Oxford and accumulate an impressive list of appointments, including organist of the Chapel Royal and organist at Westminster Abbey.

Although primarily a keyboardist, Gibbons’ principal contributions to the repertoire lie in choral music. His vocal works include some secular madrigals and songs, but he produced numerous anthems for Anglican church services. One of his better known anthems is This Is the Record of John, which we sang each year at one of my former parishes.

Gibbons wrote relatively few works for instrumental ensemble. We had some posts a few years back discussing the galliard and the pairing of pavan and galliard. One of those posts, Friday Performance Pick 87, featured a pavan and galliard by Gibbons’ elder contemporary, William Byrd, with the same performers as in this week’s post. The Gibbons Galliard a6 was also paired with a pavan that is not included in this video.

The work is scored for six viols. Viols came in various sizes. They differed in certain respects from later violins and cellos. They were bowed and held between the legs (hence the name “viol da gamba”). They were fretted and had a somewhat different shape, and their gut strings with lower tension gave them a somewhat more mellow sound.