Maurice Greene (composer)

Maurice Greene (12 August 1696 – 1 December 1755) was an English composer and organist. He was an admirer and friend of George Frideric Handel. Biography and works He was born in London, the son of a cleric, Thomas Green(e) (1648–1720) who was a chaplain of the Chapel Royal, and his wife Mary Shelton (d. 1722). He became a choirboy at St Paul’s Cathedral under Jeremiah Clarke and Charles King. He studied the organ under Richard Brind, and after Brind died, Greene became organist at St Paul’s. With the death of William Croft in 1727, Greene became organist at the Chapel Royal, and in 1730 he became Professor of Music at the University of Cambridge. In 1735 he was appointed Master of the King’s Musick. At his death, Greene was working on the compilation Cathedral Music, which his student and successor as Master of the King’s Musick, William Boyce, was to complete. Many items from that collection are still used in Anglican services today. Greene wrote in the prevailing Georgian England, particularly longer verse anthems, of which Lord, Let Me Know Mine End, is a representative example. In it, Greene sets the text using a polyphonic texture over a continuous instrumental walking bass,