Robert White (composer)

Robert White (also Whyte; c. 1538 – 1574) probably born in Holborn, a district of London, was an English composer of High Renaissance music. His surviving works include a setting of verses from Lamentations, and instrumental music for viols. Life Robert White was the son of an organ builder. He was a chorister, then a singing man, in the choir of Trinity College, Cambridge from 1554 to 1562. During that time, in 1560, he received a Bachelorship of Music from Cambridge University, and in 1562 he moved the few miles to Ely, where he succeeded his father-in-law Christopher Tye as Master of the Choristers and married Christopher Tye’s daughter in 1565. He accepted a similar post at Chester Cathedral in 1566, where he succeeded Richard Saywell and took part in the Chester Whitsuntide pageants during the years 1567 to 1569. Such was his reputation as a choir trainer that in 1570 he was appointed organist and master of the choristers of Westminster Abbey. White and his family died in an outbreak of plague in the Westminster, 1574. Although White seems to have spent much of his life working to the north of the capital, his will (dated 7 November 1574) stated that he left property of some s