Music
Thomas Weelkes is best known for his vocal music, especially his madrigals and church music. Weelkes wrote more Anglican services than any other major composer of the time, mostly for evensong. Many of his anthems are verse anthems, which would have suited the small forces he was writing for at Chichester Cathedral.
Weelkes was friends with the madrigalist Thomas Morley who died in 1602, when Weelkes was in his mid-twenties (Weelkes commemorated his death in a madrigal-form anthem titled A Remembrance of my Friend Thomas Morley, also known as "Death hath Deprived Me"). His own madrigals are very chromatic and use varied organic counterpoint and unconventional rhythm in their construction.
Only a small amount of instrumental music was written by Weelkes, and it is not much performed. His consort music is all sombre in tone, contrasting with the often gleeful madrigals.
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