1648), music-master in the royal household and in the Chapel from 1625, was both a secular composer (from 1607) and a writer of anthems (in MS.).
Thomas Ravenscroft (d. 1635?), born about 1582 and a choirboy at St. Paul's, though not greater than several of the foregoing, exerted a wider influence through his madrigals (from 1609), motets and canons, his collection of tunes (1621) and his treatise (1611) on Measured Music.
Orlando Gibbons (d. 1625), born in 1583 and a choirboy at King's College, Cambridge, organist at the Chapel Royal from 1604 and at Westminster Abbey from 1623, is by far the greatest name in the series after Byrd. His abundant works (from 1611) range from services, anthems and hymn-tunes to remarkable madrigals and instrumental pieces (see also sec. 99).
While musicians were thus discovering the latent capacities
of the madrigal as a branch of counterpoint, what are more
properly called 'part-songs' were not neglected and, especially
in Germany, were often still more cultivated. The part-song
differs from the madrigal in derivation and character, being
primarily an attempt to arrange a folk-song or similar melody
for three or more voices with little more than note-for-note
part-writing. The madrigal was the secular counterpart of the
motet, the part-song the companion of the chorale. In the latter
there was usually a continuous dominating melody in either
the tenor or the treble, a division into lines or strophes with
cadences, and a tendency to use the form over and over for
successive stanzas, while the harmonic basis was not confined
to the ecclesiastical modes. Yet in practice everywhere the
madrigal and the part-song lay so close together that they
influenced each other and often coalesced.
Thus in Italy the 'villanella' or 'villota' was explicitly a part-song
based upon a popular air, and even the 'frottola' was not strictly a
contrapuntal form, though developed thus for a time. In Germany true
part-songs were the rule and reached a notable prominence with both
secular and sacred words. In France and the Low Countries the 'chanson'
often veered toward the part-song, probably reverting thus to its primitive
type. In England the line between the madrigal and the part-song was
always fluctuating, and finally disappeared in what was called the 'glee.'
The part-song, then, illustrates a process of evolution common in 16th-century music—a form that originated almost within the circle of unconscious folk-music, was adopted into artistic use without a full sense of its significance, and then proved so consonant with the trend of technical progress as to become typical. In most countries the pursuit of the strict madrigal died out in the 17th century, but the part-song, both in its normal form and with contrapuntal elaboration, has survived with unlessened vigor to the present day.
