An article about Orlando Gibbons by Richard Turbet, a honorary staff of music, was published in the Oxford Bibliographies Online Series.
In the autumn of 2014 Richard Turbet, honorary music staff, was greatly honoured to be invited by Oxford University Press to write the article about Orlando Gibbons for their online series Oxford Bibliographies, which was published late in February this year, 2016.
Mr Turbet was first smitten by Tudor music over fifty years ago while at school. The first composer to enchant him was Byrd, and Gibbons rapidly followed. He has played (quite atrociously) all Byrd's keyboard music, have heard all of his consort music for viols, and have enjoyed singing his church music while a cathedral layclerk, and his madrigals.
There has been only one full-size book about Gibbons, published in 1999, and Mr Turbet gave the author considerable assistance with it, which Glbbons gladly took, along with considerable advice, which he gladly ignored. Mr Turbet spent a good proportion of his working life in Aberdeen University Library, from which he took a most harmonious early retirement in 2009, and for the last decade of that he was, amongst a variety of other things, the subject specialist for Music.
Mr Turbet is now an honorary research fellow in the Music Department. Over the decades he produced over a hundred articles and a few books, including two that were awarded national prizes. A substantial number of his publications have focused on Byrd; Oxford Bibliographies limit authors to citing three of our own articles, but he was able to contribute that number of writings about Gibbons. (Incidentally, Oxford Bibliographies include a fine article about Byrd compiled by Kerry McCarthy, author of the prizewinning book about Byrd in the Master Musicians series which is published by Oxford University Press.) Mr Turbet wants his article to achieve two main things: first, to help everyone who has an interest in Gibbons, from someone discovering him for the first time, to someone writing a thesis or hopefully another book about him; and secondly, to widen awareness of the full range of Gibbons’s wonderful music.