Orlando Gibbons

Orlando Gibbons packed a full career into barely four decades. Born in Oxford in 1583, he sang as a boy at King's College, Cambridge, and by his early twenties was an organist of the Chapel Royal, the English monarch's own choir, a post he held for the rest of his life; toward the end he added the organist's job at Westminster Abbey. Contemporaries rated him the finest keyboard player in England.

He wrote in the English styles of his day: anthems, which are short sacred choral pieces in English, along with music for viols, the bowed string instruments of the period, keyboard pieces, and a book of madrigals, songs for a few unaccompanied voices. He died suddenly in Canterbury in 1625, among the party awaiting the arrival of King Charles's French bride.

The choral music is the heart of it. A recording of his anthems and other church music by a good English choir is the natural first listen.