Cuthbert Hely was an English

lutenist A lute ( or ) is any plucked string instrument with a neck and a deep round back enclosing a hollow cavity, usually with a sound hole or opening in the body. It may be either fretted or unfretted. More specifically, the term "lute" can refe ...

and

composer A composer is a person who writes music. The term is especially used to indicate composers of Western classical music, or those who are composers by occupation. Many composers are, or were, also skilled performers of music. Etymology and Defi ...

who was active during the first half of the 17th century.

Life

Nothing so far is known about his life. It may be assumed, though, that Hely was taught to play the lute by musicians of John Dowland's generation. If so, Cuthbert Hely may have been born around 1570. It was believed that Hely may have been Lord Herbert's lute teacher and that he was the compiler of Lord Herbert's lute book. Both these points seem unlikely, though, as Lord Herbert, by his own account, 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. It is uncertain if the composer is identical with a certain Cuthbert Hely who lived in Ludlow, England, during this era.

Works

Eight compositions by Cuthbert Hely - four fantasias, three preludes, and a sarabande - are to be found in the lute book owned by Edward, Lord Herbert of Cherbury. Only one other work of Cuthbert Hely has been known so far, an air in four parts found in GB-Lbl Add.18940, a manuscript source dated to about 1650. Although only a few works have survived, Cuthbert Hely's music is an example of 17th-century English lute music at its summit, attempting to bring

Elizabethan The Elizabethan era is the epoch in the Tudor period of the history of England during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I (1558–1603). Historians often depict it as the golden age in English history. The symbol of Britannia (a female personifi ...

"Golden Age" practices into the first phase of the Baroque era. His intensive and sometimes strongly melancholy style is carried over from the work of earlier composers such as John Dowland.

Edition

Literature

* R.T. Dart: ‘Lord Herbert of Cherbury’s Lute Book’, ML, xxxviii (1957), 136-48 * C.A. Price: ‘An Organisational Peculiarity of Lord Herbert of Cherbury’s Lutebook’, LSJ, xi (1969), 5-27 * J. Craig-McFeely: ‘A Can of Worms: Lord Herbert of Cherbury’s Lute Book’, ‘Inventory of Lord Herbert of Cherbury’s Lute Book’, LSJ, xxxi (1991), 20-35, 36-48 * M.G. Spring: ‘Solo Music for Tablature Instruments’, The Blackwell History of Music in Britain, iii: The Seventeenth Century, ed. I. Spink (Oxford, 1992), 381-4

Notes

{{DEFAULTSORT:Hely, Cuthbert Composers for lute English Baroque composers English male songwriters English Renaissance composers English lutenists English singers 16th-century English writers 16th-century English male writers 17th-century English musicians Year of birth unknown Year of death unknown