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CHAPTER II |
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BALLADS OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY
T
HE seventeenth century was fairly rich in song-writers, prominent among whom was Henry Lawes, some of whose songs are still sung to this day. Born at Dinton, in WiltÂshire, in 1595, Henry Lawes was a most gifted musician and a thorough Englishman. "In order to ridicule the growing fashionable taste for Italian vocal music—really not understood by its enthusiastic hearers," says Mr. Frank Kidson in his Minstrelsy of England^ "he set to music the contents table of an Italian song book, and palmed it off as an Italian song !' Among the best known of his songs are " Love's Votary " (a setting of Herrick's "To Anthea"), "The Lark," "Dear, thy face is Heaven to me," "While I listen to thy voice," and his settings of the songs in Milton's Comus.
His elder brother William, though perhaps not so well known, was also a clever composer, and was court musician to Charles I. His setting
of Herrick's "Gather ye Rosebuds" is still
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