A Dictionary of Music and Musicians/Batten, Adrian
BATTEN, Adrian, the date of whose birth is not known, was brought up in the Cathedral Choir of Winchester, under John Holmes the organist, and in 1614 appointed vicar-choral of Westminster Abbey. In 1624 he removed to St. Paul's Cathedral, where he held the same office in addition to that of organist. Batten's name is well known in our cathedral choirs from his short full anthem 'Deliver us, O Lord.' Burney says of him: 'He was a good harmonist of the old school, without adding anything to the common stock of ideas in melody or modulation with which the art was furnished long before he was born. Nor did he correct any of the errors in accent with which former times abounded.' This criticism is hardly just. Batten's anthem, 'Hear my prayer,' is, in point of construction and effect, equal to any composition of his time. He composed a Morning, Communion, and Evening Service in the Dorian Mode, and a large number of anthems; the words of thirty-four may be found in Clifford. Six are printed in Barnard, two more in Boyce, and 18 others are comprised in Barnard's MS. collection in the library of the Sacred Harmonic Society.
The date of Batten's death is uncertain. He was living in 1635, when he made a transcript of some anthem music, to which the following note is appended:—'All these songs of Mr. John Holmes was prickt from his own pricking in the year 1635, by Adrian Batten, one of the vickers of St. Paul's in London, who sometime was his scholar.' He is supposed to have died in 1640. (Burney, Hist.; MS. Accounts of Westminster and St. Paul's.) [App. p.532 "He probably died in 1637, as on July 22 in that year letters of administration of the estate of Adrian Batten, late of St. Sepulchre's, London, deceased, were granted by the Prerogative Court of Canterbury to John Gilbert, of the city of Salisbury, Clothier, with consent of Edward, John, and William Batten, brothers of the deceased."]