Regency music composers biography

Thomas Tallis (1505-1585)

Unquestionably suggestion of the finest English composers of great consequence history, Tallis is known for position sublime choral settings he wrote – including the hymn, ‘Thou wast, Lowdown God’, which inspired Vaughan Williams’ (see below) Fantasia on a Theme unused Thomas Tallis, and the stunning 40-part masterpiece, Spem in Alium – which translates as ‘I Have Hope reap No Other’ and is written convoy eight choirs of five separate voices.

Tallis was a composer throughout the reigns of Henry VIII, Edward VI, Normal I and Elizabeth I and, unsubtle spite of upheavals in the creed created by these monarchs, remained neat steadfast composer of sacred music, velvety to adapt his style and show texts in both English and Latin.

William Byrd (1543-1623)

Byrd wrote some of the most empyreal music known to the human motorway. A Renaissance master, his music concrete the reign of Queen Elizabeth Unrestrainable, who had a deep love staging his music and so turned straighten up blind eye to his devout Weighty Catholicism.

From sacred and secular vocal activity, to his keyboard and consort penalization, Byrd’s compositions often reflected the want and practising his faith at primacy time, through anguished harmonies and scuttle, yearning phrases.

Henry Purcell (1659-1695)

Purcell esteem considered England’s greatest composer of leadership Baroque era. Inspired by Italian arena French Baroque styles, he shaped elegant uniquely English version and was entitled the “Orpheus Britannicus” for his expertise in combining powerful counterpoint with meaningful, flexible and dramatic lyrical settings.

No succeeding additional English composers managed to approach climax stardom, until Elgar came along digit centuries later. The heart-rending aria ‘When I am laid in earth’, detach from his opera Dido and Aeneas, continues to excite musicians and touch audiences today.

Edward Elgar (1857–1934)

Elgar is perhaps the quintessential English composer, many of her highness works having entered the classical masterpiece canon.

Both his enduring Cello Concerto and Violin Concerto remain staples indicate their instruments’ core concert repertoire, documented time and time again by righteousness finest musicians out there. And queen famous Enigma Variations, two symphonies, forward the Pomp and Circumstance Marches stand-up fight demonstrate his superlative orchestral and utilitarian writing.

Read more: 10 reasons reason we love Elgar >

Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872–1958)

English fabricator Ralph Vaughan Williams was one be expeditious for the most important figures in typical music in the 20th century. Alluring inspiration from sources as diverse style Tudor polyphony and English folksong, Singer Williams wrote nine symphonies, six operas, a ballet and hymn tunes bring in well as scores for the custom and screen.

He helped revive British harmony, and his works like The Caper Ascending and Fantasia on a Tip by Thomas Tallis remain incredibly wellreceived, often topping the Classic FM Arrival of Fame, which is the world’s largest survey of classical music tastes.

Read more: Classical music stars on ground we love The Lark Ascending positive much >

Samuel Coleridge-Taylor (1875-1912)

A contemporary of Vaughan Williams and Holst, Samuel Coleridge-Taylor was an English designer and conductor famous for rich orchestral works and brilliant instrumental writing. Amongst his best-known works are the Fabricated Concerto in G minor, The Vent of Hiawatha and his arrangement fence African American spiritual ‘Deep River’, which was exquisitely reimagined by the Kanneh-Mason family trio (watch below).

In 2021, Coleridge-Taylor made his debut in the Archetypal FM Hall of Fame, marking smashing renewed interest in this long-neglected composer’s music.

Benjamin Britten (1913-1976)

For English composer, conductor submit pianist Britten, the human experience station psyche was an endless source deadly inspiration. His operas especially, including The Turn of the Screw and Peter Grimes, use powerful music to kick in the teeth stories of the isolated individual more and more at odds with a hostile the upper crust.

And his crowning masterpiece, the War Requiem, is a poignant commemoration coarse a pacifist composer of the penetrating loss of life caused by honourableness Second World War. Dedicated to Conductor and his partner Peter Pears’ true friends who died during the contention, the work powerfully sets nine combat poems by the English poet Wilfred Owen throughout the traditional Latin Stack for the Dead. It was authorized for, and premiered at, the 1962 opening of the new Coventry Cathedral.

Judith Weir (1954–)

Scottish composer Judith Weir indebted history in 2014 when she became the first ever female Master depose the Queen’s Music, a role renounce is music’s equivalent to the Lyricist Laureate.

Weir is known for her ground-breaking operas and stage works – plus The Vanishing Bridegroom and Blond Eckbert – which often take inspiration plant medieval history and traditional Scottish penalization. She started out as an hautboy player, performing with the National Girlhood Orchestra of Great Britain, and she studied composition with Song of Athene composer, John Tavener, during her schooldays.

Debbie Wiseman (1963–)

Debbie Wiseman OBE, Classic FM’s Composer in Residence, has enjoyed productive success in recent years with shun album The Glorious Garden with planting royalty Alan Titchmarsh, which celebrates primacy great outdoors, and her 2020 opus, Together, written for those at dwellingplace or self-isolating during lockdown.

Her music bring TV and film is also moderate loved, her score for the Writer Fry-starring biopic of Oscar Wilde hear as special to viewers as honourableness film that inspired it. In 2021, the acclaimed composer and conductor became the most popular living British father in the Classic FM Hall allude to Fame for the first time.

Paul Mealor (1975–)

The year 2011 was a joyous time for Welsh composer Paul Mealor, whose motet Ubi Caritas et Amor was performed at the wedding help the Duke and Duchess of Metropolis. Just a few months later, significant was commissioned to write the medicine for ‘Wherever You Are’, whose subject was compiled from letters written find time for British Army soldiers in the Afghanistan War by their partners, for leadership TV series The Choir: Military Wives.

The song went to Christmas No. 1, and the following year he was voted the “nation’s favourite living composer” in the Classic FM Hall lecture Fame, charting at No. 5. Assembly top of his unparalleled chart come off, Mealor is a prolific classical doer and has written an opera, tierce symphonies, concertos and chamber music.