Matthew Locke was an English Baroque

Baroque music

Baroque music describes a style of Western Classical music approximately extending from 1600 to 1760. This era follows the Renaissance and was followed in turn by the Classical era...

 composer and music theorist.

Biography

As a boy, Locke was trained in the choir of Exeter Cathedral

Exeter Cathedral

Exeter Cathedral, the Cathedral Church of Saint Peter at Exeter, is an Anglican cathedral, and the seat of the Bishop of Exeter, in the city of Exeter, Devon in South West England....

, under Edward Gibbons, the brother of Orlando Gibbons

Orlando Gibbons

Orlando Gibbons was an English composer, virginalist and organist of the late Tudor and early Jacobean periods...

. At the age of eighteen Locke travelled in the Netherlands, possibly converting to Roman Catholicism at the time.

Locke, with Christopher Gibbons

Christopher Gibbons

Christopher Gibbons was an English composer and organist. He was the second son, and first surviving child of the composer Orlando Gibbons.As a child, Gibbons sang in the Chapel Royal under the direction of Nathaniel Giles...

 (the son of Orlando), composed the score for Cupid and Death

Cupid and Death

Cupid and Death is a mid-seventeenth-century masque, written by the Caroline era dramatist James Shirley, and performed on 26 March 1653 before the Portuguese ambassador to Great Britain...

, the 1653 masque

Masque

The masque was a form of festive courtly entertainment which flourished in 16th and early 17th century Europe, though it was developed earlier in Italy, in forms including the intermedio...

 by Caroline era playwright James Shirley

James Shirley

James Shirley was an English dramatist.He belonged to the great period of English dramatic literature, but, in Lamb's words, he "claims a place among the worthies of this period, not so much for any transcendent genius in himself, as that he was the last of a great race, all of whom spoke nearly...

. Their score for that work is the sole surviving score for a dramatic work from that era. Locke was one of the quintet of composers who provided music for The Siege of Rhodes

The Siege of Rhodes

The Siege of Rhodes is an opera written to a text by the impresario William Davenant. The score is by five composers, the vocal music by Henry Lawes, Matthew Locke, and Captain Henry Cooke, and instrumental music by Charles Coleman and George Hudson...

(1656), the breakthrough early opera

Opera

Opera is an art form in which singers and musicians perform a dramatic work combining text and musical score, usually in a theatrical setting. Opera incorporates many of the elements of spoken theatre, such as acting, scenery, and costumes and sometimes includes dance...

 by Sir William Davenant

William Davenant

Sir William Davenant , also spelled D'Avenant, was an English poet and playwright. Along with Thomas Killigrew, Davenant was one of the rare figures in English Renaissance theatre whose career spanned both the Caroline and Restoration eras and who was active both before and after the English Civil...

. Locke wrote music for subsequent Davenant operas, The Cruelty of the Spaniards in Peru

The Cruelty of the Spaniards in Peru

The Cruelty of the Spaniards in Peru was an innovative 1658 theatrical presentation, a hybrid entertainment or masque or "operatic show", written and produced by Sir William Davenant...

(1658) and The History of Sir Francis Drake

The History of Sir Francis Drake

The History of Sir Francis Drake was a hybrid theatrical entertainment, a masque or "operatic tableau" with an English libretto written by Sir William Davenant and music by Matthew Locke. The masque was most likely first performed in 1659 and produced by Davenant...

(1659). He wrote the music for the processional march for the coronation of Charles II.

In 1673 Locke's treatise on music theory, Melothesia, was published. The title page describes him as "Composer in Ordinary to His Majesty, and organist of her Majesty's chapel"—those monarchs being Charles II

Charles II of England

Charles II was monarch of the three kingdoms of England, Scotland, and Ireland.Charles II's father, King Charles I, was executed at Whitehall on 30 January 1649, at the climax of the English Civil War...

 and Catherine of Braganza

Catherine of Braganza

Catherine of Braganza was a Portuguese infanta and queen consort of England, Scotland and Ireland as the wife of King Charles II.She married the king in 1662...

. Locke also served King Charles as Composer of the Wind Music ("music for the King's sackbutts and cornets"), and Composer for the Violins. (His successor in the latter office was Henry Purcell

Henry Purcell

Henry Purcell – 21 November 1695), was an English organist and Baroque composer of secular and sacred music. Although Purcell incorporated Italian and French stylistic elements into his compositions, his legacy was a uniquely English form of Baroque music...

; Locke has been described as Purcell's mentor). In 1675 he composed the music for the score of Thomas Shadwell's

Thomas Shadwell

Thomas Shadwell was an English poet and playwright who was appointed poet laureate in 1689.-Life:Shadwell was born at Stanton Hall, Norfolk, and educated at Bury St Edmunds School, and at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, which he entered in 1656. He left the university without a degree, and...

 Psyche

Psyche (Locke)

Psyche is a semi-opera in five acts with music by Matthew Locke to a libretto by Thomas Shadwell with dances by Giovanni Battista Draghi. It was first performed at Dorset Garden Theatre, London on 27 February, 1675 by the Duke's Company with choreography the French dancing-master Saint-André. Stage...

.

Sources

• Baker, Christopher Paul, ed. Absolutism and the Scientific Revolution, 1600–1720: A Biographical Dictionary. London, Greenwood Press, 2002.
• Caldwell, John. The Oxford History of Music: From the Beginnings to C. 1715. Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1999.
• Harding, Rosamund E. M. A Thematic Catalogue of the Works of Matthew Locke with a Calendar of the Main Events of his Life. Oxford, Alden Press, 1971.

External links