Robert Fayrfax

Eventually, somebody at the Court of Henry VII recognised a great musician when he encountered one.  Robert Fayrfax was almost 30 years old when he entered the Chapel Royal in 1496.  At the Queen’s funeral service in 1503 he was 9th on the list of singers, and by 1509 at Henry VII’s funeral he was 1st on the Royal Chapel lists.  He maintained that position through Henry VIII’s Field of the Cloth of Gold in 1520 but died a year later in October of 1521.  His tomb can still be seen on the North side of the presbytery at St Alban’s Abbey.

For an English composer of the period his surviving legacy is quite extensive including 6 settings of the Ordinary of the Mass, 13 motets, 9 secular songs.  The Magnificat heard here is one of two . . . it demonstrates the striking melodic and harmonic expression of his vocal style . . . certainly the equal in imagination and skill of any of his contemporaries on either side of the Channel.