2025 marks the 400th anniversary of the death of one of England’s best-known composers of the Elizabethan and early Jacobean age, Orlando Gibbons. Born in 1583, he passed away in Canterbury on 5 June 1625 at the age of 41, while he was in attendance with King Charles I and his fellow members of the Chapel Royal awaiting the arrival of the King’s bride, Queen Henrietta Maria, from France. It was Gibbons’s prowess as a keyboard player that had earned him his exalted positions at church and court, yet he is known to us today as an outstanding composer of sacred and secular vocal and instrumental music.
