Life
Giles Farnaby was born about 1563, perhaps in Truro, Cornwall, England or near London. His father, Thomas, was a Cittizen and Joyner of London, and Giles may have been related to Thomas Farnaby (c. 1575–1647), the famous schoolmaster of Kent, whose father was a carpenter. But it was his cousin Nicholas Farnaby (c. 1560–1630), who may have turned him to music. Nicholas was a virginal maker, at this time a generic word that included the entire family of plucked keyboard instruments: the harpsichord, virginal, muselar and doubtless the clavichord, and it is for these instruments that Farnaby's compositions are best known. Like his father however, Giles trained as a joiner or cabinet-maker, starting his apprenticeship in about 1583, and gave this trade as his occupation for most of his life.
He married Katherine Roane on 28 May 1587, and first lived in the parish of St. Helen's Bishopsgate, in London. The couple had a daughter, Philadelphia, baptised on 8 August 1591, when the Farnabys moved to the neighbouring parish of St. Peter's, Westcheap, and later a son, Richard Farnaby (1594–1623). After Philadelphia's premature death, prior to 1602, the Farnabys had three more children: a son Joy (1599), a daughter, also baptised Philadelphia (1602), and a last son, Edward (1604).
In spite of his social background, hardly suited at this time to a university education, he graduated from Christ Church, Oxford on 7 July 1592, receiving a Bachelor’s degree in music. This was the very same day that John Bull, his eminent fellow composer to be, obtained his degree: Bull evidently knew Farnaby, and influenced his musical style considerably.
In 1602 the family moved to Aisthorpe in Lincolnshire, where they remained until at least 1610. Farnaby obtained a position in the household of Sir Nicholas Saunderson of Fillingham, as music teacher to his children. By 1614 the Farnabys had returned to London, registered at Grub Street, Cripplegate in 1634, where Giles died in 1640 and was buried on 25 November.
Read more about this topic: Giles Farnaby
Famous quotes containing the word life:
“A little credulity helps one on through life very smoothly.”
—Elizabeth Gaskell (1810–1865)
“I feel the desire to be with you all the time. Oh, an occasional absence of a week or two is a good thing to give one the happiness of meeting again, but this living apart is in all ways bad. We have had our share of separate life during the four years of war. There is nothing in the small ambition of Congressional life, or in the gratified vanity which it sometimes affords, to compensate for separation from you. We must manage to live together hereafter. I can’t stand this, and will not.”
—Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822–1893)
“The Spirit of Place [does not] exert its full influence upon a newcomer until the old inhabitant is dead or absorbed. So America.... The moment the last nuclei of Red [Indian] life break up in America, then the white men will have to reckon with the full force of the demon of the continent.”
—D.H. (David Herbert)