Thomas Ford (composer)

Thomas Ford (* 1580, † November 17, 1648 ) was an English composer, lutenist, viol player and poet. He was appointed by Henry Frederick Stuart, son of James I, to the royal court. As a musician, he worked for the Prince Henry from 1610 to 1612, for Prince Charles and 1617-25, following revelations of King Charles I, continued until the outbreak of the English Civil War, 1642. Besides John Dowland he was the chief representative of the generation of composers ago Henry Lawes. Ford is buried in Westminster in St. Margaret's.

Ford composed three - to six-part hymns, four canons on ecclesiastical texts, 35 Partsongs ( polyphonic homophonic songs), six five-part fantasies and viol music. When his important collection applies the two-part Musicke of Sundrie Child ( London 1607). The first part of Aries for 4 voices to the Lute, Orphorion, or Basse- viol, with a Dialogue for two Voices includes airs for the lute, the second part of the viol consort includes dance movements as Pavens, Galiards, Alma Inez, toies, Jigges, Thumpes, and such like, where the term " Thump " pizzicato left hand says. Many of the airs were printed in two versions, each for one to several voices with lute accompaniment or in four -part harmony. Some of his sacred works, which appeared in 1614 and 1620 in print, included the then unusual for the English music basso, who was in the continental European Baroque music indeed already in use in England but should not appear until much later.