Scan 103
Groves Dictionary Of Music And Musicians,vol.5 L-m, 1900
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11596; d. London, 21 Oct. 1662), composer, singer and player, son of the preceding. He received his musical education from Coperrario in London. On 1 Jan. 1626 he was sworn in as epistler of the Chapel Royal, and on 3 Nov. following one of the gentlemen, and afterwards became clerk of the cheque. In 1633 he furnished music for Thomas Carew's masque 'Coelum Britannicum', performed at court on 18 Feb. 1634. In this masque the Earl of Bridgewater's two sons took part, and this very probably led to his being employed as music teacher in the family, and so to the production of Milton's masque 'Comus'1, written at his request and produced at Ludlow Castle on Michaelmas night, 29 Sept. 1634, Lawes performing the part of the Attendant Spirit. Both Hawkins and Burney printed "Sweet Echo", one of the songs in 'Comus'.2 In 1637 appeared:
3A Paraphrase vpon the Psalmes of David. By G[orge] S[andys]. Set to new Tunes for private Devotion. And a thorow Base, for Voice or Instrument. By Henry Lawes;
5and in 1648:
7Choice Psalmes put into Musick for Three Voices. . . . Composed by Henry and William Lawes, Brothers and Servants to His Majestie. With divers Elegies set in Musick by several friends, upon the death of William Lawes. And at the end of the Thorough Base3 are added nine4 Canons of Three and Four Voices made by William Lawes.
9A copper-plate portrait of Charles I, believed to be the last published in his lifetime, accompanies each part, and among the commendatory verses prefixed to the work is the sonnet, addressed by Milton to Henry Lawes in Feb. 16465, beginning "Harry, whose tuneful and well-measured song". Lawes composed the Christmas songs in Herrick's 'Hesperides' and the songs in the plays and poems of William Cartwright:
11Comedies, and tragi-Comedies, with other poems by Mr. William Cartwright. . . . The Ayres and Songs set by Mr. Henry Lawes . . . London, 1651.
13It contains no music, however. In 1652 some of his songs appeared in Playford's 'Select Musical Ayres', and in 1653 Lawes published 'Ayres and Dialogues for One, Two and Three Voyces', with his portrait6 finely engraved by Faithorne on the title. This was received with such favour as to induce him to issue two other books with the same title in 1655 and 1658. In 1656 he was engaged with Capt. Henry Cooke, Dr. Charles Colman, Matthew Locke and George Hudson in providing the music for Davenant's 'First Day's Entertainment of Musick at Rutland House' ('The Siege of Rhodes').
15On the Restoration in 1660 Lawes was reinstated in his court appointments. He composed the anthem 'Zadok the Priest' for the coronation of Charles II. He was buried on 25 Oct. 1662 in the cloisters of Westminster Abbey.
17Many of Henry Lawes's songs are to be found in 'Select Musical Ayres and Dialogues', 1652, 1653 and 1659, and 'The Treasury of Musick', 1669. He was highly esteemed by his contemporaries, both as composer and performer. Milton praises him in both capacities and Herrick in an epigram places him on a level with some of the most renowned singers and players of his time; but later writers formed a lower estimate of his abilities as a composer. Burney, judging from his "modern" 18th-century point of view, declares his productions to be "languid and insipid, and equally devoid of learning and genius"; and Hawkins speaks of his music as deficient in melody and "neither recitative nor air, but in so precise a medium between both that a name is wanting for it". But it was not Lawes's object to produce melody in the popular sense of the word; he set "words with just note and accent" and made the prosody of his text his principal care; and it was doubtless that quality which induced all the best poetical writers of his day, from Milton and Waller downwards, to desire that their verses should be set by him. To effect his object he employed a kind of aria parlante, a style of composition which, if expressively sung, would cause as much gratification to the cultivated hearer as the most ear-catching melody would to the untrained listener. His work of this kind is historically important apart from its intrinsic merits, since it marks a stage in the setting of the English language to music in a way which reached its consummation in Purcell.7 Lawes was careful in the choice of words, and the words of his songs would form a pleasing volume of lyric poetry. Hawkins says that although Lawes "was a servant of the church, he contributed nothing to the increase of its stores"; but, besides the coronation anthem before mentioned, there are (or were) in an old choir book of the Chapel Royal fragments of eight or ten anthems by him, and the words of several of his anthems are given in Clifford's 'Divine Services and Anthems' (1664). In 1901 Dr. Cooper Smith, Rector of Basingstoke, owned a manuscript volume (formerly belonging to Gostling, R. Smith and Hayes), dated in the binding 1634, containing many compositions by H. Lawes. These include 'Dispairs Banquet, sung in The Pasions written by Mr. Wm. Strood, presented by ye scollers of Ch.
191 See Peck's 'New Memoirs . . .', p. 12.
202 The whole of the songs are in the B.M., Add. MSS 11,518, and the music was published entire by the Mermaid Society in 1904.
213 The work is in separate parts.
224 Really ten.
235 As to the difficulties connected with this date, and the original title, see 'Notes and Queries', 2nd ser., vi, 337, 395, 492.
246 Reproduced in the 1st and 2nd editions of this Dictionary.
257 See PURCELL: CHARACTERISTICS.
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