ABSTRACT
The popularity of verse anthems in Gibbons’s lifetime can be put down to a number of factors. Those listed by le Huray include their colourfulness, compared with full anthems, and the practical consideration of placing the main burden of performance on the ablest singers. 1 It might be added that the congregation of the Chapel Royal, for which most, if not all, of Gibbons’s verse anthems must have been written, would probably have recognized in the genre something of the spirit which pervaded courtly entertainments. Through a mental association with the drama of the masque, the verse anthem added an extra dimension to the drama of the Anglican ritual. The opposition of solo voice or voices and chorus is often intensely theatrical. 2 So is the way in which the verse anthem lends itself to dramatic narrative, as in This is the record of John and See, see, the word is incarnate.
