motet notes - Gibbons

Orlando Gibbons (1583 – 1625) is a British contemporary of Heinrich Schütz. He is one of the great composers of his nation between Byrd and Purcell, excelling in many idioms, keyboard fantasy, verse anthem, and especially pieces for viol consort. Because of the independent development of British music, his anthem "Almighty and Everlasting God" sounds less intensely word-painted, less harmonically varied than German pieces of the early 1600s. Instead, Gibbons concentrates on giving each line of text its own subtly distinctive motivic shape.

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