Gibbons, Christopher

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Gibbons, Christopher

Gibbons, Christopher, English organist and composer, son of Orlando Gibbons; b. London (baptized), Aug. 22, 1615; d. there, Oct. 20, 1676. He was a pupil at the Chapel Royal. From 1638 to 1642 he was organist at Winchester Cathedral, and in 1660 he was appointed organist of the Chapel Royal, private organist to Charles II, and organist at Westminster Abbey. He received the degree of Mus.D. from Oxford in 1664, at the special request of the King. He wrote verse anthems, motets, and many string fantasies. He also collaborated with M. Locke in the music for Shirley’s masque Cupid and Death. C. Rayner prepared the modern ed. Christopher Gibbons: Keyboard Compositions, in Corpus of Early Keyboard Music, XVIII (1967).

Bibliography

C. Rayner, A Little-known 17th-century Composer, C. G. (diss., Ind. Univ., 1963); J. Harley, Orlando Gibbons and the Gibbons Family of Musicians (Brookfield, Vt., 1999).

—Nicolas Slonimsky/Laura Kuhn/Dennis McIntire