Full Anthems

Gibbons’s full anthems have been much admired by later ages. In the latter part of the eighteenth century Burney wrote: ‘though the purists, on account of the confusion arising from all the parts singing different words at the same time, pronounce the style, in which the full anthems are composed, to be vicious; yet the lovers of fugue, ingenious contrivance, and rich, simple, and pleasing harmony, must regard them as admirable productions, alla Palestrina, a style in which Tallis and Bird acquired so much renown’. ¹ This opinion was maintained at the expense of Gibbons’s verse anthems, which for long were ignored or regarded as inferior works. ² Gibbons’s skill in using the methods of older composers, on whose works he was nurtured, was what Burney admired. Gibbons began by writing in their manner, and he never wholly abandoned it. Gibbons’s choral writing, whether in full anthems or verse anthems, shows him adapting the style of his predecessors to meet his current needs. As far as Byrd is concerned, it seems often to have been his later anthems and motets which influenced Gibbons. Confusion arising from his ability to approach Byrd’s style is apparent in the still common attribution to Gibbons of a six-part setting of Out of the deep, which is much more probably by Byrd. ³