Composer or Arranger

[Jeffrey]

Member of Banister family

(bur. London, Sept 2, 1684). English violinist, music copyist, and composer. He was sworn in as an extraordinary member of the 24 Violins on 27 October 1662, and received a salaried place from Michaelmas 1663. The text of Thomas Duffett's masque Beauty's Triumph (London, 1676) shows that he and James Hart were running a ‘New Boarding-School for Young Ladies and Gentlewomen’ in Chelsea. He apparently left royal service in February 1684, when he was given a passport to travel abroad, but died that summer, probably before he could undertake the trip. He seems to have been the copyist of two violin books ( GB-En 5777, and Scottish Record Office, Edinburgh, GD 45/26/104) that originate respectively from Newbattle Abbey, Midlothian, and Panmure House, Angus, suggesting that he had worked for the Ker and Maule families in Scotland or London. The latter contains a suite signed ‘Jafery Bannester’....

[Franz, Franciscus]

Member of Flori family

(b ?Maastricht; d Munich, 1588). Dutch music copyist and composer. He entered the Munich court chapel in 1556 and in April 1557 received a lifelong appointment there as a singer. From about 1565 he worked as a scribe alongside the court copyist Johannes Pollet, and he took over from him in ...

[Frater Jordanus PasetusFra Jordan]

(b Venice, c1484; d Padua, 8 Nov 1557). Italian composer. He was a Dominican friar at the church of SS Giovanni e Paolo in Venice at a time when the maestro di cappella was Petrus Castellanus, Petrucci’s editor. A Credo of his was sent to Ercole d’Este by the Ferrarese ambassador in Venice in 1504, with the remark that he was ‘very gifted in these things’; the mass followed shortly thereafter. An organist, he was given permission to play at the nunnery of Santo Spirito in Venice in 1505, and in 1509 he became organist in SS Giovanni e Paolo. He was elected maestro di cappella at the Cathedral of Padua in 1520, and held this position until shortly before his death. He is chiefly remembered as the composer of a set of madrigals a voce pare printed in 1541 (dedicated to a cathedral canon, Benedetto Contarini): this is the only 16th-century print of secular works known to contain exclusively pieces for equal voices (in this case low, or men’s, voices). Passetto’s vesper psalms are all for double choir, with the second choir consisting of voices of low range....

[LudevicusLudovicus]

(b ?Basle or Zurich, 1489, 1490, or 1491; d Munich, between Jan and March 1543). Swiss composer, singer, and copyist; he was one of the most significant representatives of motet and lied composition in German-speaking regions at the time of the Reformation.

Owing to differing contemporary statements, the discussion on Senfl’s birthplace is far from being settled. He was either born in Basle (K. Peutinger in Liber selectarum cantionum, Augsburg, 1520; S. Minervius in Varia carminum genera, Nuremberg, 1534) or in Zurich (F. Sicher in CH-SGs 530; H. Glarean, Dodekachordon, Basle, 1547). However, he might have been born in Basle and raised in Zurich (Geering, 1956), which makes it unlikely that a certain Bernhart Senfly who lived in Zurich from 1488 was his father. The earliest document that probably refers to Senfl is a payment notification by the later Emperor Maximilian I, dating from July 23, 1498...

Member of Withy family

(b c1645; bur. Oxford, Dec 14, 1727). English cathedral singer, string player, music copyist, teacher, and composer, son of John Withy. From 1670 until his death he was a singing-man at Christ Church, Oxford. He played the violin in Edward Lowe’s act song ...