Matthew Locke

We're not quite sure when Matthew Locke was born: the portrait of him shown to the left, when it was cleaned, was discovered to have the words 'aetat (i.e. 'age') 40, anno 1662', which would make his birth year somewhere around 1622, but we can get no more exact than that… and for a long time, it was thought he was born in 1630. As to where he was born, that is much better known: Exeter, where he was a chorister at the Cathedral. He studied music under Edward Gibbons (brother to Orlando), William Wake and John Lugge. He was obviously well-versed in organ-playing by his mid-teens, as carved graffiti in the Exeter Cathedral organ loft from both 1638 and 1641 is clearly his handiwork.

Exeter was Charles I's main south-west base during the English Civil War: all men in Devon were conscripted into the Royalist forces around that time, so Locke may have entered into military service around then. He certainly seems to have accompanied the flight of Charles' queen, Henrietta, to the Netherlands in 1646. There is some evidence that he may have converted to Roman Catholicism at this time. He remained in the Netherlands for at least a couple of years and possibly longer: he had, however, returned to England by 1651.

Once back in England, he rapidly took up dramatic music: he and Christopher Gibbons co-wrote music for a masque to be presented to the Portuguese ambassador in 1653, for example. He was part of a quintet of composers who, in 1656, wrote what is claimed to be the first English opera, The Siege of Rhodes, though all its music is now lost.

The Restoration of 1660 saw Locke appointed private composer-in-ordinary to the king, as well as court composer of wind music and court composer for violins. He also was appointed organist to the queen. He composed music for Charles II's coronation, though most of it has now been lost.

Locke was not, apparently, a particularly likeable fellow: New Groves describes him as vain, contentious and vindictive. Evidence of this is provided by his own published writings: “For such as either fear or scorn to see or hear with content any by their own Thick-skull'd or Fantastical conceits, they are desired to forbear Censuring…” and so on. His ire may in part have been provoked by the fact that though living by now in Oxford, and routinely producing music for Oxford University events (degree ceremonies and so on), he was not accorded an honorary doctorate. Additionally, whilst fancying himself the greatest living English composer, he cannot have been pleased to see the court of Charles II 'taken over' to some extent by a taste for light French music and the promotion of mediocre French composers such as Cambert, Draghi and Grabu. Though he may have fallen from court favour, he was nevertheless regarded by contemporaries as an important figure: upon his death in 1677, one Henry Purcell composed an ode in his honour to the text What hope for us remains now he is gone?

Locke is a fairly obscure composer these days, largely because a lot of his music no longer exists. Nevertheless, an extensive collection of chamber music exists thanks to his own publishing efforts in the late 1660s. His instrumental style seems to have revolved around suites of dances preceded by slow dissonant introductions and rounded off by codas. He was also keen to exploit major/minor key clashes by ambiguously inflecting the 3rd, 4th, 6th and 7th degrees of the scale, giving rise to dissonant melodic and harmonic clashes. New Groves sums him up as demonstrating …robust and daring melody, harmony and form and a conscious preoccupation with contrasting rhythms, tempos and dynamics. Much is the work of a notably gifted and inspired craftsman.