Alfonso Ferrabosco the younger

Alfonso Ferrabosco the younger (c. 1575 – March 1628) was an English composer and viol player of Italian descent. He straddles the line between the Renaissance and Baroque eras. Biography Ferrabosco was born at Greenwich, the illegitimate son of the Italian composer Alfonso Ferrabosco the elder. His mother might have been Susanna Symons, whom Alfonso the elder later married. Ferrabosco the younger was left under the guardianship of Gomer van Awsterwyke, a member of Queen Elizabeth I’s court. Although Alfonso the elder asked for Alfonso the younger to be sent to him in Italy, where he had moved with his wife, the Queen insisted that he stay in England. Ferrabosco remained in Gomer van Awsterwyke’s care until Awsterwyke’s death in 1592. At this time he started a long career as a court musician. After the Union of the Crowns he became the private music tutor of Prince Henry and a groom of privy chamber, with a salary of £50. Ferrabosco was paid for “making the songs” for Anne of Denmark’s masque, The Vision of the Twelve Goddesses, performed in January 1604. Ferrabosco collaborated with Ben Jonson on several projects, including The Masque of Blackness (1605), and wrote music for sever