Thomas Morley contributions to music “Thomas Morley was an English composer, theorist, singer and organist of the Renaissance. He was one of the foremost members of the English Madrigal School”(Thomas Morley). He was also involved in music publishing, and from 1598 up to his death he held a printing patent . He used the monopoly in partnership with professional music printers such as Thomas East. “Living in London at the same time as Shakespeare, he became organist at St Paul's Cathedral. He was the most famous composer of secular music in Elizabethan England”(thomas morley). He and Robert Johnson are the composers of the only surviving contemporary settings of verse by Shakespeare. “Morley was born in Norwich, in East England, the son of a brewer. Most likely he was a singer in the local cathedral from his boyhood, and he became master of choristers there in 1583. However, Morley spent some time away from East England”(thomas morley). He was working as a singer in London in the 1570s and appears to have studied with William Byrd at that time, he later referred to him as his teacher; while the dates he studied with Byrd are not known, they were most likely in the early 1570s. …show more content…
His first Canzonets for three voices of 1593, dedicated to the Countess of Pembroke, were direct imitations of the light-hearted type of brief Italian madrigal”(morley,HOASM).In 1588 Nicholas Yonge published his Musica transalpina, the collection of Italian madrigals fitted with English texts, which touched off the explosive and colourful vogue for madrigal composition in England. Morley obviously found his compositional direction at this time, and shortly afterwards began publishing his own collections of madrigals