Download Parsons, Robert - St. Martin`s Chamber Choir

Robert
Parsons
(b.
ca.
1535,
place
unknown;
d.
1572?,
Newark‐Upon‐Trent)
Little
is
known
about
the
sixteenth‐century
English
composer
Robert
Parsons,
although
he
has
a
fairly
substantial
collection
of
surviving
works.
Parsons
was
associated
with
the
Chapel
Royal
in
England.
He
was
appointed
a
Gentleman
of
the
Chapel
Royal
in
1563,
and
was
involved
with
the
choirboy
plays
at
the
Chapel
before
that
date.
It
is
believed
he
wrote
several
songs
for
those
plays.
Parson’s
surviving
compositional
output
includes
many
sacred
vocal
works,
secular
vocal
works
and
a
number
of
instrumental
works.
He
made
a
substantial
contribution
to
the
early
Elizabethan
instrumental
repertoire,
with
some
of
his
instrumental
pieces
performed
by
Court
musicians.
Characteristic
of
Parsons’s
music
are
rich
harmonic
textures
with
extensive
use
of
dissonance,
both
passing
and
suspended.
Parsons
chose
to
set
much
of
his
sacred
writing
to
Latin
texts,
despite
the
fact
that
Elizabeth
I
and
the
Church
of
England
favored
English
texts.
These
Latin
settings
and
motets
display
Parsons’s
technical
virtuosity
and
compositional
maturity.
Records
suggest
that
Parsons
drowned
in
the
River
Trent
in
January
1572.
His
immediate
successor
as
Gentleman
of
the
Chapel
Royal
was
William
Byrd,
who
became
one
of
the
best‐
known
English
Renaissance
composers.
In
his
eulogy
to
Parsons,
Robert
Dow
stated,
“Parsons,
you
who
were
so
great
in
the
springtime
of
life,
How
great
you
would
have
been
in
the
autumn,
had
not
death
intervened."
This
composer's
works
in
St.
Martin's
Chamber
Choir's
repertoire:
Ave
Maria