Orlando Gibbons and the Gibbons Family of Musicians (review)

Orlando Gibbons and the Gibbons Family of Musicians. By John Harley. Aldershot, Hants: Ashgate, 1999. [x, 341 p. ISBN 1-84014-209-X. $78.95.]

Orlando Gibbons has not been the subject of a full-length study since Edmund H. Fellowes's Orlando Gibbons: A Short Account of His Life and Work was published in 1925 ([Oxford: Clarendon Press]; 2d ed. published as Orlando Gibbons and His Family: The Last of the Tudor School of Musicians [London: Oxford University Press, 1951]), so the appearance of John Harley's Orlando Gibbons and the Gibbons Family of Musicians is most welcome. Harley's contribution resembles his recent William Byrd: Gentleman of the Chapel Royal (Aldershot, Hants: Ashgate, 1997) in its thorough presentation of documents and other data. Harley also provides the most complete examination currently available of the lives of Gibbons family members, from Orlando's grandfather Richard to his son Christopher. Especially noteworthy is Harley's untangling of references to Ellis and Edward Gibbons, Orlando's brothers. Both names are mentioned in seventeenth-century documents but have often been confused, and here Harley's careful consideration of the available data is most helpful. He discusses Christopher Gibbons as well, but little new information is available on the life of this influential Restoration organist, and Harley offers few new thoughts on his music.

Like William Byrd: Gentleman of the Chapel Royal, the present volume comprises two main sections covering Orlando Gibbons's life and music respectively. Other Gibbons family members, such as Christopher, are dealt with separately, but in much less detail and with life and music addressed in one rather than two parts. In his biographical section on Orlando, the author occasionally gets sidetracked, devoting considerable discussion to information only marginally related to the topic at hand. An example is the discussion of the keyboard collection Parthenia; the engraver, William Hole, and his possible relation, Robert Hole (connected with the publication of Parthenia In-Violata) are the subject of several pages containing data that might better have been left in footnotes. By contrast, an important issue in the Parthenia discussion is addressed in a single sentence on pages 48-49, where Harley mentions Thurston Dart's suggestion that Gibbons himself may have edited the volume. Perhaps Harley devotes little space to this possibility because it cannot be verified, but the entire Parthenia discussion, with much information on the Holes and little on this intriguing hypothesis, seems unbalanced.

On the other hand, comments and data in footnotes might sometimes have been better placed in the text itself, such as data indicating that Gibbons probably composed O All True Faithful Hearts in April 1619 (pp. 55-56). Harley mentions in the text that the anthem "is very likely" connected with a service of thanksgiving held at that time for the king's recovery from illness, but he relegates to a footnote the remark in Christ Church MS Mus. 21 calling the work "A thanks Giving for the kings happie recoverie from a great dangerous sicknes." Similarly, on page 57, Harley suggests in the text that the anthem This Is the Record of John was composed for William Laud, "apparently" during his term as President of St. John's College, Oxford, beginning in 1611; another note in Christ Church MS Mus. 21 confirms that "This anthem was made for Dr Laud presedent of Sant Johns," and again this key information is left in a footnote. Here and elsewhere, the reader who wonders why the author connects certain pieces with specific events must delve into the footnotes to find the answers. It would have been helpful to have such pertinent information in the text instead.

As the first comprehensive discussion of Gibbons's music in many years, the book at first raises the reader's expectations. Indeed, the dust jacket promises that it will bring about a major shift in our view of Gibbons's place among his contemporaries, and Harley maintains that, whereas in the past...