1576–1623 · United Kingdom · Baroque
Thomas Weelkes was an English composer and organist who lived from 1576 to 1623. He wrote madrigals and music for Anglican services, and served as organist at Winchester College and Chichester Cathedral. He is best known for his madrigals and verse anthems. The site offers a piece of his at intermediate level for choirs.
Very little has survived about Weelkes's childhood or about who taught him music. His birth is placed in 1576, and he came from Sussex. The biographer David Brown thinks it possible that his father was John Weeke, the parish priest of Elsted in Sussex; if so, the boy had at least five brothers and sisters.
The preface to Weelkes's first madrigal book (1597) describes its composer as very youthful. Brown takes this as support for a birth around the mid-1570s or a little later. In the preface to the collection Ballets and Madrigals (1598) he calls Edward Darcy, who held a post in the queen's privy chamber, his master. By 1597 Weelkes already had the favour of George Phillpot of Compton, close to Winchester.
The first book of Weelkes's madrigals came out in London in 1597. At the close of 1598 Weelkes took up the post of organist at Winchester College, a boys' school, on a wage of thirteen shillings and fourpence per quarter plus board and lodging.
At the college he kept composing, and two further books of madrigals appeared in 1598 and 1600. Brown believes that Weelkes wrote his finest madrigals in these years. The second of the two books, for five and six voices, is described by Brown as one of the most important publications in the history of the English madrigal.
In the early 1600s Weelkes moved to the choir of Chichester Cathedral. There he became organist and instructor of the choirboys (in Latin, informator choristarum), and also received a well-paid place as an adult singer. He remained connected with this cathedral until the end of his life.
In 1602 Weelkes gained a Bachelor of Music degree from Oxford's New College. In 1603 he took as his wife Elizabeth Sandham, whose father was a rich Chichester merchant; the couple had no fewer than three children.
On the cover of his fourth and last book of madrigals (1608), Weelkes is styled a "gentleman" of the Chapel Royal. His name does not appear in the chapel's records, and scholars think he was only an unofficial member of its staff and a candidate for the rank of "gentleman". The musicologist Walter Collins observed that hardly anyone would have dared to print such a claim had it not been true.
Singers at Chichester Cathedral were often in trouble with the authorities. Weelkes was not the only unruly member of the establishment, but in time he became the best known. In 1609 he was charged with leaving Chichester without permission (his absences were frequent, often to London). Drunkenness is mentioned in the records from 1613 onwards, and the scholar John Shepherd advises caution in assuming that his decline began any earlier.
A report to the bishop in 1616 labelled Weelkes a notorious drunk and blasphemer. The dean and chapter let him go, citing drunkenness at the organ and foul language during worship. He was later taken back and held the post until his death, though his behaviour did not improve: in 1619 the bishop was again informed that Weelkes would often come into the choir straight from a tavern in such a state that he cursed and swore during the service itself.
Elizabeth, Weelkes's wife, died in 1622. By then he had been taken back into service at Chichester Cathedral, but he evidently passed much of his time in London. He died in that city on 30 November 1623, lodging with a friend, and was laid to rest the following day at St Bride's in Fleet Street.
His will was drawn up on the eve of his death, under the roof of Henry Drinkwater, a friend from the parish of St Bride's. The property was to be shared among his three children, and Drinkwater received a bequest of 50 shillings to cover the meals, drink and bed he had provided.
Weelkes composed above all for voices, in both secular and sacred styles. He left some 90 madrigals, usually for five or six singers, set mostly to English words and now and then to Italian ones. For Anglican worship he produced more music than anyone else of his generation; around 50 anthems have come down to us, a few incomplete. Many are verse anthems, which a small choir such as Chichester's could manage.
Weelkes's madrigals are interesting for their experiments. They contain chromatic harmony, word painting (as in "The nightingale, the organ of delight" and "Tan ta ra ran tan tant, cryes Mars") and unusual rhythm: in the humorous song "Strike it up tabor" triple measure gives way to duple and back again. Weelkes's madrigals are often compared with those of John Wilbye, and it has been suggested that the difference in the two men's characters shows in their music.
Weelkes was a friend of Thomas Morley. When Morley died in 1602 he wrote the piece "Death hath deprived me", also known as "A Remembrance of my Friend Thomas Morley"; its bass part descends unusually low, to the D of the great octave. He showed himself a master of polyphony (the anthem "O Lord, arise", the motet "Laboravi in gemitu meo", the madrigal "Three virgin nimphes") and also at home in the newer homophonic style, as in the ballett "Harke all ye lovely saints above", perhaps his most popular work today.
Instrumental works, consort pieces among them, form a small part of Weelkes's output and are seldom heard now. The consort music has a dark colouring, in contrast to the madrigals, which are frequently merry. Certain madrigals found their way into popular anthologies in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, whereas no verse anthem reached print before 1966. Since that year Weelkes has ranked among the leading church composers of his day.
Charles III and Camilla heard his anthem "O Lord, grant the King a long life" at their coronation in 2023.
The site has Weelkes's choral piece "O How Amiable Are Thy Dwellings" for mixed choir (SATB), at intermediate level. It is a convenient place to begin getting to know his music.