![Anonymous](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/0d/Anonymous._Luteplayer%2C_17thC.webp/1000px-Anonymous._Luteplayer%2C_17thC.webp.png)
Thomas Campion (sometimes spelled Campian; 12 February 1567 – 1 March 1620) was an English composer, poet, and physician. He was born in
London
London is the capital and largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary down to the North Sea, and has been a majo ...
, educated at
Cambridge
Cambridge ( ) is a university city and the county town in Cambridgeshire, England. It is located on the River Cam approximately north of London. As of the 2021 United Kingdom census, the population of Cambridge was 145,700. Cambridge bec ...
, studied
law
Law is a set of rules that are created and are enforceable by social or governmental institutions to regulate behavior,Robertson, ''Crimes against humanity'', 90. with its precise definition a matter of longstanding debate. It has been vario ...
in Gray's inn. He wrote over a hundred
lute song
The term lute song is given to a music style from the late 16th century to early 17th century, late Renaissance to early Baroque, that was predominantly in England and France. Lute songs were generally in strophic form or verse repeating with a h ...
s,
masque
The masque was a form of festive courtly entertainment that flourished in 16th- and early 17th-century Europe, though it was developed earlier in Italy, in forms including the intermedio (a public version of the masque was the pageant). A masque ...
s for dancing, and an authoritative technical treatise on music.
Life
Campion was born in London, the son of John Campion, a clerk of the
Court of Chancery
The Court of Chancery was a court of equity in England and Wales that followed a set of loose rules to avoid a slow pace of change and possible harshness (or "inequity") of the Common law#History, common law. The Chancery had jurisdiction over ...
, and Lucy (née Searle – daughter of Laurence Searle, one of the Queen's
serjeants-at-arms). Upon the death of Campion's father in 1576, his mother married Augustine Steward, dying soon afterwards. His stepfather assumed charge of the boy and sent him, in 1581, to study at
Peterhouse, Cambridge
Peterhouse is the oldest constituent college of the University of Cambridge in England, founded in 1284 by Hugh de Balsham, Bishop of Ely. Today, Peterhouse has 254 undergraduates, 116 full-time graduate students and 54 fellows. It is quite ...
as a "gentleman pensioner"; he left the university after four years without taking a degree.
[.] He later entered
Gray's Inn
The Honourable Society of Gray's Inn, commonly known as Gray's Inn, is one of the four Inns of Court (professional associations for barristers and judges) in London. To be called to the bar in order to practise as a barrister in England and Wale ...
to study law in 1586. However, he left in 1595 without having been
called to the bar
The call to the bar is a legal term of art in most common law jurisdictions where persons must be qualified to be allowed to argue in court on behalf of another party and are then said to have been "called to the bar" or to have received "call to ...
.
On 10 February 1605, he received his medical degree from the
University of Caen
The University of Caen Normandy (French: ''Université de Caen Normandie''), also known as Unicaen, is a public university in Caen, France.
History
The institution was founded in 1432 by John of Lancaster, 1st Duke of Bedford, the first rector ...
.
[Christopher R. Wilson. "Thomas Campion", '' Grove Music Online'', ed. L. Macy (accessed 4 March 2006)]
grovemusic.com
(subscription access).
Campion is thought to have lived in London, practising as a physician, until his death in March 1620 – possibly of the
plague
Plague or The Plague may refer to:
Agriculture, fauna, and medicine
*Plague (disease), a disease caused by ''Yersinia pestis''
* An epidemic of infectious disease (medical or agricultural)
* A pandemic caused by such a disease
* A swarm of pe ...
. He was apparently unmarried and had no children. He was buried the same day at
St Dunstan-in-the-West in
Fleet Street
Fleet Street is a major street mostly in the City of London. It runs west to east from Temple Bar at the boundary with the City of Westminster to Ludgate Circus at the site of the London Wall and the River Fleet from which the street was na ...
.
He was implicated in the murder of Sir
Thomas Overbury
Sir Thomas Overbury (baptized 1581 – 14 September 1613) was an English poet and essayist, also known for being the victim of a murder which led to a scandalous trial. His poem ''A Wife'' (also referred to as ''The Wife''), which depicted the ...
, but was eventually exonerated, as it was found that he had ''unwittingly'' delivered the bribe that had procured Overbury's death.
Poetry and songs
![Houghton STC 21332 - Book of Ayres](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/ee/Houghton_STC_21332_-_Book_of_Ayres.jpg)
The body of his works is considerable, the earliest known being a group of five anonymous poems included in the "Songs of Divers Noblemen and Gentlemen," appended to
Newman's edition of Sir
Philip Sidney
Philip, also Phillip, is a male given name, derived from the Greek language, Greek (''Philippos'', lit. "horse-loving" or "fond of horses"), from a compound of (''philos'', "dear", "loved", "loving") and (''hippos'', "horse"). Prominent Philip ...
's ''
Astrophel and Stella'', which appeared in 1591. In 1595, ''Poemata, a collection of Latin panegyrics, elegies and epigrams'' was published, winning him a considerable reputation. This was followed, in 1601, by a songbook, ''A Booke of Ayres,'' with words by himself and music composed by himself and
Philip Rosseter
Philip Rosseter (1568 – 5 May 1623) was an English composer and musician, as well as a theatrical manager. His family seems to have been from Somerset or Lincolnshire, he may have been employed with the Countess of Sussex by 1596, and he was l ...
. The following year he published his ''Observations in the Art of English Poesie,'' "against the vulgar and unartificial custom of riming," in favour of rhymeless verse on the model of classical
quantitative verse
In poetry, metre ( Commonwealth spelling) or meter (American spelling; see spelling differences) is the basic rhythmic structure of a verse or lines in verse. Many traditional verse forms prescribe a specific verse metre, or a certain set of ...
. Campion's theories on poetry were criticized by
Samuel Daniel
Samuel Daniel (1562–1619) was an English poet, playwright and historian in the late- Elizabethan and early- Jacobean eras. He was an innovator in a wide range of literary genres. His best-known works are the sonnet cycle ''Delia'', the epi ...
in "Defence of Rhyme" (1603).
In 1607, he wrote and published a
masque
The masque was a form of festive courtly entertainment that flourished in 16th- and early 17th-century Europe, though it was developed earlier in Italy, in forms including the intermedio (a public version of the masque was the pageant). A masque ...
for the occasion of the marriage of
Lord Hayes, and, in 1613, issued a volume of ''Songs of Mourning: Bewailing the Untimely Death of
Prince Henry Prince Henry (or Prince Harry) may refer to:
People
*Henry the Young King (1155–1183), son of Henry II of England, who was crowned king but predeceased his father
*Prince Henry the Navigator of Portugal (1394–1460)
*Henry, Duke of Cornwall (Ja ...
,'' set to music by
John Cooper (also known as Coperario). The same year he wrote and arranged three masques: ''
The Lords' Masque'' for the marriage of
Princess Elizabeth; an entertainment for the amusement of
Queen Anne at
Caversham House; and a third for the marriage of the
Earl of Somerset
Earl () is a rank of the nobility in the United Kingdom. The title originates in the Old English word ''eorl'', meaning "a man of noble birth or rank". The word is cognate with the Scandinavian form '' jarl'', and meant "chieftain", particula ...
to the infamous
Frances Howard, Countess of Essex. If, moreover, as appears quite likely, his ''Two Bookes of Ayres'' (both words and music written by himself) belongs also to this year, it was indeed his ''annus mirabilis.''
In 1615, he published a book on
counterpoint
In music, counterpoint is the relationship between two or more musical lines (or voices) which are harmonically interdependent yet independent in rhythm and melodic contour. It has been most commonly identified in the European classical tradi ...
, ''A New Way of Making Fowre Parts in Counterpoint By a Most Familiar and Infallible Rule'', a technical treatise which was for many years the standard textbook on the subject. It was included, with annotations by
Christopher Sympson, in
Playford's ''Brief Introduction to the Skill of Musick,'' and two editions appear to have been published by 1660.
Some time in or after 1617 appeared his ''Third and Fourth Booke of Ayres''. In 1618 appeared the airs that were sung and played at
Brougham Castle
Brougham Castle (pronounced ) is a medieval building about south-east of Penrith, Cumbria, England. The castle was founded by Robert I de Vieuxpont in the early 13th century. The site, near the confluence of the rivers Eamont and Lowther, ha ...
on the occasion of the King's entertainment there, the music by George Mason and John Earsden, while the words were almost certainly by Campion. In 1619, he published his ''Epigrammatum Libri II. Umbra Elegiarum liber unus'', a reprint of his 1595 collection with considerable omissions, additions (in the form of another book of epigrams) and corrections.
Legacy
![Thomas Campion Signature](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/74/Thomas_Campion_Signature.png)
Campion made a
nuncupative will
An oral will (or nuncupative will) is a will that has been delivered orally (that is, in speech) to witnesses, as opposed to the usual form of wills, which is written and according to a proper format.
A minority of U.S. states (approximately 20 ...
on 1 March 1619/20 before 'divers credible witnesses': a memorandum was made that he did 'not longe before his death say that he did give all that he had unto Mr Phillip Rosseter, and wished that his estate had bin farre more', and Rosseter was sworn before Dr Edmund Pope to administer as principal legatee on 3 March 1619/20.
[London Metropolitan Archives and Guildhall Library Manuscripts Section, Ref. MS 9172/31, Will number 150.]
While Campion had attained a considerable reputation in his own day, in the years that followed his death his works sank into complete oblivion. No doubt this was due to the nature of the media in which he mainly worked, the masque and the song-book. The masque was an amusement at any time too costly to be popular, and during the
commonwealth period it was practically extinguished. The vogue of the song-books was even more ephemeral, and, as in the case of the masque, the
Puritan
The Puritans were English Protestants in the 16th and 17th centuries who sought to purify the Church of England of Catholic Church, Roman Catholic practices, maintaining that the Church of England had not been fully reformed and should become m ...
ascendancy, with its distaste for all secular music, effectively put an end to the
madrigal
A madrigal is a form of secular vocal music most typical of the Renaissance music, Renaissance (15th–16th c.) and early Baroque music, Baroque (1600–1750) periods, although revisited by some later European composers. The Polyphony, polyphoni ...
. Its loss involved that of many hundreds of dainty lyrics, including those of Campion, and it was due to the work of
A. H. Bullen
Arthur Henry Bullen, often known as A. H. Bullen, (9 February 1857, London – 29 February 1920, Stratford-on-Avon) was an English editor in chief, editor and publisher, a specialist in 16th and 17th century literature, and founder of the Shakespe ...
(see bibliography), who first published a collection of the poet's works in 1889, that his genius was recognised and his place among the foremost rank of
Elizabethan lyric poets restored.
Early dictionary writers, such as
Fétis, saw Campion as a theorist.
[François-Joseph Fétis, 'Campion' in: ]
Biographie universelle des musiciens et bibliographie générale de la musique, vol. 3
' (2nd edition, Paris, 1867) p. 169. It was much later on that people began to see him as a composer. He was the writer of a poem, ''Cherry Ripe'', which is not the
later famous poem of that title but has several similarities.
In popular culture
Repeated reference was made to Campion (1567-1620) in an October 2010 episode of the
BBC TV
BBC Television is a service of the BBC. The corporation has operated a public broadcast television service in the United Kingdom, under the terms of a royal charter, since 1927. It produced television programmes from its own studios from 19 ...
series, ''
James May's Man Lab
''James May's Man Lab'' is a British television series presented by former Top Gear presenter James May. The first, three-part series was aired on BBC Two between 31 October and 14 November 2010. The second, five-part series was aired between 2 ...
'' (
BBC2), where his works are used as the inspiration for a young man trying to serenade a female colleague. This segment was referenced in the second and third series of the programme as well.
Occasional mention is made of Campion ("Campian") in the comic strip
9 Chickweed Lane
''9 Chickweed Lane'' is an American comic strip written and drawn by Brooke McEldowney for over 25 years, which follows the fortunes of the women of three generations of the Burber family: Edna, Juliette, and Edda. 9 Chickweed Lane is the address ...
(i.e., 5 April 2004), referencing historical context for playing the lute.
See also
*
Canons of Elizabethan poetry
References
Bibliography
In His Lifetime
*A Booke of Ayres (1601)
*Observations in the Art of English Poesie (1602)
*A Discription of a Maske etc. to the Lord Hayes (1607)
*The Lords' Masque (1613)
*A New Way of Making Fowre Parts in Counterpoint (1613)
*The Art of Descant, 1671 edition.
*The Art of Descant, 1674 edition
*Two Bookes of Ayres (1613?)
*A Discription of a Maske on S. Stephen's night (1614)
*The Third and Fourth Booke of Ayres (1617)
Twentieth Century Editions of Works and Criticism
*Bullen, A H (ED.).
Songs and masques, with Observations in the art of English poesy(London: A H Bullen, 1903).
*Campion, Thomas.
A book of airs, as written to be sung to the lute and viol' (Peter Pauper Press, 1944).
*
*Davis, Walter R. ''Thomas Campion'' (Twayne Publishers, 1987).
*Davis, Walter R. and J. Mas Patrick, eds. ''The Works of Thomas Campion.'' W.W. Norton & Co., 1970.
*Eldridge, Muriel T. ''Thomas Campion: his poetry and music'' (Vantage Press, 1971).
*Lindley, David .
Thomas Campion' (Leiden, 1986).
*Lowbury, Edward, et al. ''Thomas Campion: Poet, Composer, Physician.'' Chatto & Windus, 1970.
*MacDonagh, Thomas.
Thomas Campion and the art of English poetry' (Dublin: Talbot Press, 1913).
*Vivian, Percival (Ed.).
Campion's works(Oxford : Clarendon Press, 1909).
*Watson, George & Willison, Ian Roy. ''The new Cambridge bibliography of English literature, Volume 1'' (Cambridge University Press, 1971) pp. 1905–6.
External links
Text:
Biography(Poetry Foundation)
(Luminarium: Anthology of English literature)
*
*
*Husoy, Lance.
Thomas Campion and the Web of Patronage'
Music:
*
*
(Tony Catalano's Classical Guitar MIDI Page)
Music Collectionin
Cambridge Digital Library
The Cambridge Digital Library is a project operated by the Cambridge University Library designed to make items from the unique and distinctive collections of Cambridge University Library available online. The project was initially funded by a donat ...
which contains early copies/examples of Campion's compositions
{{DEFAULTSORT:Campion, Thomas
1567 births
1620 deaths
English classical composers
English Baroque composers
Composers for lute
16th-century English poets
Alumni of Peterhouse, Cambridge
Renaissance composers
16th-century English medical doctors
17th-century English medical doctors
17th-century English writers
17th-century English male writers
16th-century English musicians
17th-century English musicians
English music theorists
English madrigal composers
16th-century English composers
17th-century English composers
17th-century classical composers
English male poets
English male classical composers
16th-century Latin-language writers
17th-century Latin-language writers
New Latin-language poets