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Though highly regarded as a composer by his contemporaries, Ravenscroft was mediocre at best displaying diverse talents but lacking any range, depth or substance. As a student and in service Ravenscroft sang at St. Paul's Cathedral until 1600 when he entered College receiving the Bachelors in Music from Cambridge around 1605. Little is known about his life from this time until 1618 when he taught at Christ's Hospital until 1622. Ravenscroft's important contributions to the world of music are contained in his "Pammelia" which is the first collection of rounds and catches from England including "Three Blind Mice." This was printed around 1609 followed by a collection of one hundred and five psalm settings (1621) fifty five of which were scored by Ravenscroft himself. Though he wrote the thesis "Briefe Discourse" in 1614 not much can be made of his discussion on the misuse of mensuration. ~ Keith Johnson

A composer central to the musical life of turbulent mid-seventeenth century England, Matthew Locke learned music as a choirboy at Exeter. A 1648 manuscript that Locke subtitled When I was in the Low Countreys has been cited as evidence he was employed by the court of Prince Charles, who was then living in exile as a refugee from the English Civil War. By the time Locke is known to have returned to England in 1651, he had probably adopted the Catholic faith favored by Charles himself.

By 1653, Locke had begun to establish himself as a force on the English stage. That year he may have collaborated with Christopher Gibbons on the music for John Shirley's masque Cupid and Death. In 1656, Locke joined forces with playwright William Davenant and several others in compiling what might be regarded as the first English opera, The Siege of Rhodes. Locke also contributed music for revivals of Shakespeare's plays, including The Tempest, Henry VIII, and Macbeth. During this time, Locke began to cultivate a reputation for composing instrumental music; he was a close associate of composer John Playford, contributing to the latter's publications Courtly Masquing Ayres and The Dancing Master.

In 1660, Charles II was restored to the English throne after eleven years of Commonwealth. Locke was then named private composer-in-ordinary to the King. Among his tasks was to supervise a consort of eight string players which, in emulation of French court practice, was expanded into a mini-orchestra of 24 violins in 1662. That year Charles II married Catherine of Braganza, and Locke was appointed her private organist. Locke played both in the chapels where Catherine worshipped and in her apartment, sometimes with a small band of chamber players. During the 1660s Locke continued to write music for the London stage, although he moved, along with the entire court, to Oxford in 1665 in order to escape the Black Death, then raging in the city. Thus began an association with Oxford and its university music school that produced the best of Locke's sacred vocal music, most of which survives in manuscripts copied by Edward Lowe, then head of Oxford's music department. Locke's work at Oxford continued happily until 1672, when he became embroiled in an ugly and very public dispute with composer and Trinity College graduate Thomas Salmon, most of which was played out in the press.

In 1673, Locke published Melothesia, a volume of keyboard music which contains a detailed method of figured-bass continuo playing, the first such treatise written in English. Locke died at the age of about 56 in the summer of 1677; his tasks with the court band of Four and Twenty were taken over by the teenaged Henry Purcell. Purcell composed a fine ode in Locke's memory, and was made the gift of a large manuscript volume containing the chamber music that Locke had seen fit to preserve.

Much of Locke's music is highly chromatic and dissonant; he was stubbornly committed to his conception of what constituted English style, and once commented that "I never yet saw any Forain Instrumental Composition worthy an English mans Transcribing." He favored long phrases of irregular length, and there are many harmonically unstable and wandering passages in which Locke seems openly to defy stylistic preconceptions of the early Baroque. Locke's instrumental music, in particular that for broken consort, is some of the most important orchestral music written in the seventeenth century. His vocal and theater music is less known, but all of Locke's work is significant, and his topsy-turvy music provides a splendid counterpoint to the constant upheavals of the England of his day.

As England's greatest composer of the Baroque, Henry Purcell was dubbed the "Orpheus Britannicus" for his ability to combine pungent English counterpoint with expressive, flexible, and dramatic word settings. While he did write instrumental music, including the important viol fantasias, the vast majority of his output was in the vocal/choral realm. His only opera, Dido and Aeneas, divulged his sheer mastery in the handling of the work's vast expressive canvas, which included lively dance numbers, passionate arias and rollicking choruses. Purcell also wrote much incidental music for stage productions, including that for Dryden's King Arthur. His church music includes many anthems, devotional songs, and other sacred works, but few items for Anglican services.

Purcell was born in 1659 to Henry Purcell, master of choristers at Westminster Abbey, and his wife Elizabeth. When he was five, his father died, forcing his mother to resettle the family of six children into a more modest house and lifestyle. In about 1668, Purcell became a chorister in the Chapel Royal, studying under chorus master Henry Cooke. He also took keyboard lessons from Christopher Gibbons, son of the composer Orlando Gibbons, and it is likely that he studied with John Blow and Matthew Locke. In 1673, Purcell was appointed assistant to John Hingeston, the royal instrument keeper.

On September 10, 1677, Purcell was given the Court position of composer-in-ordinary for the violins. It is believed that many of his church works date from this time. Purcell, a great keyboard virtuoso by his late teens, received a second important post in 1679, this one succeeding Blow as organist at Westminster Abbey, a position he would retain all his life. That same year saw the publication of five of the young composer's songs in John Playford's Choice Ayres and Songs to Sing to the Theorbo-lute or Bass-viol. Around the same time, he began writing anthems with string accompaniment, completing over a dozen before 1685, and welcome songs. Purcell was appointed one of three organists at the Chapel Royal in the summer of 1682, his most prestigious post yet.

Purcell composed his first ode for St. Cecilia's Day in 1683. The following month, upon Hingeston's death, he was named royal instrument keeper while retaining his other posts. The composer remained quite prolific in the middle part of the decade, primarily producing music for royal occasions. In 1685 the new King, James II, introduced many changes at Court, one of which was to make Purcell the Court harpsichordist and Blow the Court composer. Near the end of 1687, Queen Mary's pregnancy was announced and Purcell was commissioned to compose an anthem with the text of Psalm 128, Blessed are they that fear the Lord. Many other of his anthems appeared in 1688, as did one of his more famous ones for church use, O sing unto the Lord.

With the ascension of William and Mary to the throne on April 11, 1689, Purcell retained his post as royal instrument keeper, and he, along with Blow and Alexander Damazene, shared the duties of Court composers. With his royal duties reduced, he was able to pursue other opportunities, including teaching and writing for other organizations. One of Purcell's greatest successes came in 1689 with the production of Dido and Aeneas. He then collaborated with John Dryden on King Arthur in 1691, and also composed the music for The Fairy-Queen (1692), based on Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream both productions also scoring triumphs. In the final year of his life Purcell remained exceedingly busy, writing much for the stage, including The Indian Queen, left incomplete at his death on November 21, 1695. ~ Robert Cummings

John Bennet was a Renaissance-era English composer, known for his madrigals, his most famous being Weepe, O mine eyes. Little is known about Bennet's life, his birth date, place of birth, and other vital details being matters of conjecture. It seems likely he was born in the Northwest part of England, possibly in Lancashire, as the composer dedicated his 1599 first volume of madrigals to one Ralph Assheton, a civil servant who lived in Lancashire and Cheshire.

Bennet was probably born into a prosperous family and received his first exposure to music as a choirboy. No doubt he had advanced instruction in music and by his early twenties had produced the aforementioned volume of 17 madrigals for four voices. At around that same time Bennet fashioned four psalm settings and a prayer for the 1599 Barley's psalter. Though Bennet's style showed the influence of Wilbye, Weelkes, and Dowland (Weepe, O mine eyes was almost certainly inspired by Dowland's Flowe my tears), his greatest debt was to Thomas Morley.

It is likely that Bennet had strong connections in high places in English society: many of his madrigals were written for festive occasions held at Court or in private residences of wealthy patrons in London. His madrigal Eliza, her name gives honour was one of several madrigals written for the feted guest at a celebration, in this case Queen Elizabeth. At such events, choirboys from the Chapel Royal were typically the featured performers.

Bennet probably wrote a fairly substantial number of madrigals and other vocal works, but few reached publication or survived in manuscript. Besides his 1599 efforts, he contributed a madrigal to the 1601 collection The Triumphes of Oriana, and composed six secular songs and an anthem for Ravenscroft's 1614 anthology A Briefe Discourse. It is likely that Bennet died in 1614 or shortly afterward.

Cuthbert Hely was an English lutenist who lived in the first half of the seventeenth century. Although officially "nothing is known about him," Hely copied seven of his own compositions -- four fantasias, two preludes, and a sarabande -- into the lute book owned by Edward, Lord Herbert of Cherbury. At one time, it was believed that Hely may have been Lord Herbert's lute teacher and that he was the compiler of the lute book. Both these points seem unlikely, as it is recorded that Lord Herbert learned the lute around 1603 "with very little or no teaching," and Hely's contributions to Lord Herbert's lute book are only found in the hand of "Scribe C," whose entries are the latest in the manuscript, datable to 1639-1640. Only one other work has been found of Cuthbert Hely, an air in four parts found in GB-Lbl Add.18940, a manuscript source dated to about 1650.

Though the survival of his work is scant, Cuthbert Hely's music is very highly regarded as a prime example of seventeenth century English lute music at its summit. It appears that Hely was almost alone among English lutenists in attempting to bring Elizabethan "Golden Age" practices into the first phase of the Baroque era, and his melancholy, sometimes torturously emotional style is clearly carried over from the work of earlier composers such as John Dowland. It is assumed that Hely must have been old enough to learn such style -- old hat by 1640 -- first hand, and that he may have been related to composer Benjamin Hely, who published The Compleat Violist in 1699. If they were brothers, then Cuthbert Hely may have been born around 1670. The only other thing known about him is record of a Cuthbert Hely who lived in Ludlow, England, during this era who may or may not have been the composer. No evidence exists for his death, which may have occurred before his air was entered into GB-Lbl Add.18940.

William Croft (sometimes called "Crofts") was a solid English composer and organist and one of the first of his country to pick up the developing Continental style of the late Baroque sonata. He is primarily known for his anthems and other church works and generally creates a rather dry impression of sturdiness rather than brilliance, charm, or leaps of imagination. He is credited with the great hymn tune of "O God Our Help in Ages Past."

He was a boy singer in the Chapel Royal and received music lessons from the choirmaster John Blow. As a favored student, Croft was promoted by Blow, whose help apparently got him the position of organist at the Church of St. Anne's in Soho; a good one, because a new organ had just been brought in. Later in the year, Croft and another young organist, Jeremiah Clarke, obtained the rights to the reversion of the position of organist and Gentleman Extraordinary of the Chapel Royal. In May 1704, the occupant of that position, Francis Pigott, died and the two organist/composers took over the job. Clarke, who evidently had a depressive personality, shot himself in 1707, leaving Croft as the sole occupant of the position. Croft had already gained attention owing to some of his anthems, including a couple celebrating the battles of Blenheim and Ramillies, showing that he was helping his aging teacher, Blow. When Blow died in 1708, Croft also inherited Blos's positions as Master of the Children of the Chapel Royal and organist of Westminster Abbey. Croft resigned from St. Anne's in 1712.

In 1713, he submitted two odes for solo voices, chorus, and orchestra to Oxford to earn a doctor of music degree. At a time when the German newcomer George Frideric Handel was gaining popularity, Croft kept in the good favor of Queen Anne. He wrote the standard Anglican burial service and in 1724 published a large number of anthems in a two-volume edition. This was revolutionary in the way it was arranged on the page; rather than the individual parts being printed on separate sheets, he had them all printed in score. These verse anthems marked a change in the style of such works; they are organized into longer subsections and generally juxtapose solos, duets, trios, and choruses, and include organ introductions. His instrumental pieces and secular vocal works, less solemn and formal, were all written in earlier parts of his career; he evidently devoted himself entirely to sacred music after about 1715.

William Lawes, son of a lay vicar at Salisbury Cathedral, showed (like his older brother Henry Lawes) musical promise at any early age. He found an early patron in Edward Seymour, Earl of Hertford, who brought the young chorister to his Wiltshire estates to study music with his private music master, the renowned John Coprario. William likely met the future King Charles I (r. 1625-1649) through Coprario. William and his brother were both named musicians "in ordinary for the lutes and voices" for Charles' court; the honor came to William in 1635, though it appears he was composing personally for the King at least as early as 1633. While in Charles' service, Lawes contributed vocal and instrumental music to the life of the court, as well as music for the Masques popular in Caroline England. William Lawes went with the King to Oxford in 1642 and enlisted in the royalist army (a portrait in Oxford depicts him in Cavalier garb). Though for his safety Lawes was made a commissary in the King's personal guard, he suffered a fatal gunshot wound while relieving the siege of Chester in 1645. King Charles reputedly mourned for Lawes as the "Father of Musick."

Though none of William Lawes' music appeared in print during his lifetime, his brother released certain of his psalm settings and sacred canons in the Choice Psalms of 1648, and the influential published collections of John Playford beginning around 1650 furthered both the dissemination and popularity of his music. He wrote prolifically and idiomatically for the consort of viols. His suites and fantasias meld the fluidity of late Renaissance counterpoint with the more "mannered" chromatic colors of the late madrigal; he did in fact know some of the works of Marenzio and Monteverdi. His other chamber music (especially involving violins), on the other hand, displays an early Baroque idiom of paired strings and basso continuo. Some scholars of his music speculate that this Italian style reached him though Coprario's tutelage.

Despite his large instrumental output, and an even greater number of secular songs and Anglican anthems surviving from his pen, William's greatest legacy may have been his dramatic music. Between the years 1633 and 1641, he contributed music to at least 25 courtly Masques and other dramatic productions. The English courtly Masque at this time comprised a composite art form with music, dance, drama, and scenery, comparable to the Lullian Ballet de cour in France. Early in the century, Ben Jonson and Inigo Jones were leading collaborators in the Masque. The genre climaxed in the spectacular Triumph of Peace (1634) by James Shirley, to which William Lawes contributed music. His achievement in stage music made possible the later work of Matthew Locke, John Blow, and eventually Henry Purcell himself.