page_title: Orlando Gibbons
section_title: Final years and death
hierarchical_section_title: Orlando Gibbons / Life and career / Final years and death
caption_attribution_description: The famous composer and organist 1583-1625.
context_page_description: Orlando Gibbons was an English composer, virginalist and organist who was one of the last masters of the English Madrigal School. By the 1610s he was the leading composer and organist in England yet would have has career cut short by his sudden death in 1625. As a result, Gibbons' oeuvre was not as large as that of his contemporaries, like the elder William Byrd, but his compositional versatility led to him having written significant works in virtually every form of his day. He is often seen as a transitional figure from the Renaissance to the Baroque periods.
  Born in Oxford, Gibbons was born into a musical family where his father, William Gibbons, was a wait, his brothers, Edward, Ellis and Ferdinand musicians and Orlando being expected to follow the musical tradition. It is not known under whom he studied, although it may have been with his father, an older brother or Byrd as he was the most famous composer of the time. Irrespective of his education, he was musically proficient enough to be appointed an unsalaried member of the Chapel Royal in May of 1603 and a full fledged gentleman of the Chapel Royal as junior organist by 1605.
context_section_description: Some time in 1623, George Wither published Hymnes and Songs of the Church in which Gibbons provided the tunes for most of the songs. The same year he succeeded John Parsons as the organist at Westminster Abbey, with Thomas Day as junior organist. This was probably the most important position Gibbons had taken in his career thus far and on 7 May 1625 he officiated at the funeral of King James I.
  During late May 1625, the English court was preparing to receive Queen Henrietta Maria, whom the now King Charles I of England had married through proxy in France on 1 May. Gibbons and other Chapel Royal members had begun travelling to Canterbury on 31 May when Gibbons suddenly succumbed to an illness, probably a cerebral aneurysm. He died at age 41 in Canterbury and was buried in Canterbury Cathedral. His death was a shock to his peers and brought about a post-mortem, although the cause of death aroused less comment than the haste of his burial and his body not being returned to London. His wife, Elizabeth, died a little over a year later, in her mid-30s, leaving Orlando's eldest brother, Edward, to care for the orphaned children.
caption: Gibbons' memorial in Canterbury Cathedral designed by Nicholas Stone.
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