Synopsis
In December of 2020, during the first, bleak winter of the worldwide Covid pandemic, The New York Times ran a story about the English Renaissance composer John Sheppard, who, as a member of the Chapel Royal, the household choir of the English monarchs, was buried in London on today’s date in 1558.
Shepard lived during the turbulent English Reformation, and as a church musician composed liturgical works in both English and Latin, probably reflecting whether the Protestant king Edward VI or the Catholic Queen Mary I was seated on the throne.
We know little about Sheppard’s life and nothing about his own religious inclinations. His most famous work, an elaborately polyphonic compline setting of a Latin text, “Media vita in morte sumus” (In the midst of life we are in death), might have been written for the funeral for a fellow composer who died from what was called the “new ague,” a pandemic that swept England in 1557, and returned the following year in a devasting second wave, killing one in ten Londoners.
One of them was John Sheppard. He died just after the strain claimed Reginald Pole, the archbishop of Canterbury, and probably Queen Mary as well.
Music Played in Today's Program
John Sheppard (1515-1558): Media Vita; Tallis Scholars; Peter Phillips, conductor; Gimell 16
On This Day
Births
1837 - Russian composer Mily Balakirev (Gregorian date: Jan. 2)
1850 - Bohemian composer Zdenek Fibich, in Vseborice
1940 - American composer and guitarist Frank Zappa, in Baltimore, Maryland
Deaths
1864 - American composer and journalist William Henry Fry, 51, in Santa Cruz, West Indies
1890 - Danish composer Niels W. Gade, in Copenhagen, 73
1957 - British light-music composer Eric Coates, 71, in Chichester
Premieres
1890 - Bruckner: Symphony No. 3 (final version), in Vienna, Hans Richter conducting
1900 - Frederick Converse: The Festival of Pan for orchestra, by the Boston Symphony, Wilhelm Gericke conducting
1903 - Glazunov: Symphony No. 7, in St. Petersburg (Gregorian date: Jan. 3)
1908 - Schoenberg: Quartet No. 2 for strings and soprano, in Vienna, by the Rosé Quartet with soprano Marie Gutheil-Schoder
1934 - Prokofiev: Lieutenant Kijé Suite (from the film), on a Moscow radio broadcast
1934 - Toch: Big Ben (Variation Fantasy on the Westminster Chimes) for orchestra, by the Boston Symphony, Serge Koussevitzky conducting
1939 - Prokofiev: cantata Zdravitza (A Toast), in Moscow, to celebrate the 60th birthday of the Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin
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About Composers Datebook®
Host John Birge presents a daily snapshot of composers past and present, with timely information, intriguing musical events and appropriate, accessible music related to each.
He has been hosting, producing and performing classical music for more than 25 years. Since 1997, he has been hosting on Minnesota Public Radio's Classical Music Service. He played French horn for the Cincinnati Symphony and Pops Orchestra and performed with them on their centennial tour of Europe in 1995. He was trained at the Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music, Eastman School of Music and Interlochen Arts Academy.
