William Young (died 23 April 1662) was an English

viol The viol (), viola da gamba (), or informally gamba, is any one of a family of bowed, fretted, and stringed instruments with hollow wooden bodies and pegboxes where the tension on the strings can be increased or decreased to adjust the pitc ...

player and composer of the

Baroque The Baroque (, ; ) is a style of architecture, music, dance, painting, sculpture, poetry, and other arts that flourished in Europe from the early 17th century until the 1750s. In the territories of the Spanish and Portuguese empires including t ...

era, who worked at the court of Ferdinand Charles, Archduke of Austria in

Innsbruck Innsbruck (; bar, Innschbruck, label=Bavarian language, Austro-Bavarian ) is the capital of Tyrol (state), Tyrol and the List of cities and towns in Austria, fifth-largest city in Austria. On the Inn (river), River Inn, at its junction with the ...

. The

sonata Sonata (; Italian: , pl. ''sonate''; from Latin and Italian: ''sonare'' rchaic Italian; replaced in the modern language by ''suonare'' "to sound"), in music, literally means a piece ''played'' as opposed to a cantata (Latin and Italian ''cant ...

s which he published in 1653 were some of the earliest sonatas produced by an English composer.

Biography

The details of Young's origins are unknown. By 1652 he was a chamber musician at the Innsbruck court, where "the Englishman", as he was called, was a highly regarded viol player and composer. The design of his English-made viol influenced that of some of the viols built by Jakob Stainer, the Austrian

luthier A luthier ( ; AmE also ) is a craftsperson who builds or repairs string instruments that have a neck and a sound box. The word "luthier" is originally French and comes from the French word for lute. The term was originally used for makers o ...

. In 1660 Ferdinand Charles granted permission for Young to visit England, but there are no traces of his reappearance there. He is not to be confused with William Young (died 1671), another musician, who played

violin The violin, sometimes known as a ''fiddle'', is a wooden chordophone (string instrument) in the violin family. Most violins have a hollow wooden body. It is the smallest and thus highest-pitched instrument (soprano) in the family in regular ...

and

flute The flute is a family of classical music instrument in the woodwind group. Like all woodwinds, flutes are aerophones, meaning they make sound by vibrating a column of air. However, unlike woodwind instruments with reeds, a flute is a reedless ...

at the court of

Charles II of England Charles II (29 May 1630 – 6 February 1685) was King of Scotland from 1649 until 1651, and King of England, Scotland and Ireland from the 1660 Restoration of the monarchy until his death in 1685. Charles II was the eldest surviving child of ...

from 1661. Young died on 23 April 1662 and was buried at Innsbruck's parish church, St Jakob, which has since become

Innsbruck Cathedral Innsbruck Cathedral, also known as the Cathedral of St. James (german: Dom zu St. Jakob), is an eighteenth-century Baroque cathedral of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Innsbruck in the city of Innsbruck, Austria, dedicated to the apostle Saint Jam ...

Works

Young and

Henry Butler Henry Butler (September 21, 1948 – July 2, 2018) was an American jazz and blues pianist. He learned piano, drums, and saxophone in school. He received a college degree and graduate degree and taught at the New Orleans Center for Creative ...

, an English viol player working at the Spanish court, were the first English composers to call their works sonatas. However, Butler died in 1652 with his three sonatas unpublished. Young's 11 sonatas for two, three, and four parts and continuo, published in Innsbruck in 1653, are known to have reached England. In modern times, the 11 sonatas were rediscovered by

William Gillies Whittaker William Gillies Whittaker (Newcastle upon Tyne, July 23, 1876 – Orkney Islands, July 5, 1944) was an English composer, pedagogue, conductor, musicologist, Bach scholar, publisher and writer. He spent his life promoting music. The University ...

. He found them in manuscript in

Uppsala University Library The Uppsala University Library ( sv, Uppsala universitetsbibliotek) at Uppsala University in Uppsala, Sweden, consists of 11 subject libraries, one of which is housed in the old main library building, Carolina Rediviva. The library holds books an ...

in Sweden, and published them in 1930.Schaffer(1977), p. 511

Notes

References

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External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Young, William Year of birth uncertain 1662 deaths English classical composers English Baroque composers English viol players 17th-century English composers 17th-century classical composers Composers from Innsbruck English male classical composers Musicians from Innsbruck 17th-century male musicians