Richard Alison

The first known record of Richard Alison, Gentleman, is his contribution to Thomas East ‘The whole booke of psalmes’ (1592). In 1599 Alison compiled his own ‘Psalmes of David in Meter’; but it is from his 1606 publication, ‘An Howres Recreation in Musicke’, that the two pieces presented here are drawn. They both betray Alison’s allegiance to the Protestant faith (a wise stance in that troubled time), eg.–in “Give peace in these Thy daies” he avoids using the Latin plainchant, “Da pacem Domine”, which any Catholic composer would; and the entire text of “The sacred choir of angels” tells of the “bloody treason” of the “Catholic” Gunpowder Plot of 1605. Likewise, his patron and the dedicatee of the 1606 print, Sir John Scudamore, was a faithful servant of two Protestant monarchs; although some of his family members were Catholic.

There is a surprising lack of information about Alison considering his collaboration with major figures of the day such as Morley, Dowland, Farnaby, et al. These associations do show how highly regarded he was by his more famous contemporaries.