Thomas Morley

Thomas Morley c.1557-1603, English composer; pupil of William Byrd. He was gentleman of the Chapel Royal to Queen Elizabeth I and organist of St. Paul's Cathedral. He set to music some of Shakespeare's songs. Morley's works include motets, music for Anglican services, madrigals that are among the most charming examples of this form. He wrote a unique guide to 16th-century English musical practice, A Plaine and Easie Introduction to Practicall Musicke (1597, new ed. 1952).

Morley, Thomas (1557/8–1602), English composer, organist, and writer. His treatise A Plaine and Easie Introduction to Practicall Musicke (1597) is the first work of its kind in the English language.

His historical importance as a composer stemmed from his championship of the Italian madrigal, and his development of its English counterpart. His first two publications, the Canzonets, Or Little Short Songs to Three Voyces (1594) and the first book of Madrigalls to Foure Voyces (1594), contain the best of his own work in this form. The two volumes of Balletts and Canzonets (1595) were largely free transcriptions of contemporary Italian pieces. As publisher he was the moving spirit behind The Triumphes of Oriana (1601), a collection of madrigals by 21 English composers in honour of Queen Elizabeth I. His book Ayres…to the Lute (1600) contains a setting of ‘It was a lover and his lass’, which is apparently the earliest Shakespeare setting to survive.