# Orlando Gibbons



## clavichorder

Is there already a thread for him? I am just getting to know his keyboard works and am becoming obsessed. I love his style, its so clean and somewhat austere, but very satisfying. Soon I will have his complete keyboard works, the sheet music!

Gould plays this wonderful piece a little too slow for my liking, but I still love it


----------



## clavichorder

Gibbons also wrote beautiful madrigals, listen for the dissonance at 1:15:


----------



## Guest

This guy has lots of great stuff by Gibbons.


----------



## clavichorder

^^^^^
Oh yay! I love that user!

Another madrigal


----------



## clavichorder

Also one of Gibbons' best keyboard pieces played on the viols.


----------



## Renaissance




----------



## Orpheus

The great Renaissance and late Medieval composers seem particularly underppreciated on this site (and to be honest among "classical" music fans in general) in proportion to their achievements. I suspect that most of this is simply because people haven't encountered their music, or listened to it with much attention if they have, and may on the basis of their very limited listening formed a false conclusion about it being all more or less the same and not really worthy of further attention. I just added Gibbons to the "Greatest Composers" list myself; it seems that the only time he was mentioned was by the OP, in the context of composers who no one would be expected to actually vote for (in order to illustrate how the voting system worked!).

I will admit to not having heard a great deal of Gibbons yet myself, but he is definitely near the top of my list of composers to explore more fully in future. It's ironic that he now appears so little regarded by most people. Whenever I think of Gibbons I remember this beautiful tribute paid by William Byrd after his untimely death, and recall that this is a composer who was held in such high esteem by his contemporaries that one of the greatest of them all had no hesitation in saying that music, itself, had died with him:


----------



## clavichorder

Byrd is probably overall the superior writer for keyboard pieces, though Gibbons has some gems. But Gibbons I think is his equal and possibly superior in consort and vocal music.


----------



## millionrainbows

Here is the *Glenn Gould Jubilee Edition* of his Byrde/Gibbons LP, with the original cover art just as it was released in 1971. I was buying these LPs as they came out, hence my affection for this edition. The CD is 43:03 long, just as the LP was.


----------



## clavichorder

Complete keyboard works of Gibbons for modern piano: 




Lots to enjoy there!


----------



## clavichorder

And a fun arrangement of "What is Our Life" for wind quintet:


----------



## tortkis

Orlando Gibbons: Selected Harpsichord Works - Richard Egarr (Globe)









I think this is very good. The music feels stoic, but there is restrained melancholy. The harpsichord sound is very noble. I like early music played on piano (I've been enjoying the Gould's disc), and the Pienaar's recording on modern piano looks interesting, but I picked this album as I wanted to hear Gibbons on harpsichord.


----------

