John Wilbye

John Wilbye (baptized 7 March 1574 – September 1638) was an English madrigal composer. Early life and education The son of a tanner, he was born at Brome, Suffolk, England. (Brome is near Diss, Norfolk.) Career Wilbye received the patronage of the Cornwallis family of Brome Hall. Wilbye was employed for decades at Hengrave Hall, near Bury St Edmunds, where he seems to have been recruited in the 1590s by Elizabeth Kitson who was married to the property’s owner, Sir Thomas Kitson (or Kytson). The Kitsons also had a long association with the composer Edward Johnson, who was more than twenty years older than Wilbye, and began working at Hengrave in the 1570s. As well as working in Suffolk, Wilbye was involved with the music scene in London, where the Kitsons kept a town house (first in Austin Friars and from about 1601 in Clerkenwell). His first book of madrigals was published in London in 1598. The 30 madrigals are described as “newly composed”. The publication was dedicated to Sir Charles Cavendish, whose first wife had been a Kitson. Wilbye remained in contact with his printer Thomas East. In 1600 Wilbye and Edward Johnson took on a proofreading job for East, the first edition of Dowla