Thomas Campion
born Feb. 12, 1567, London
died March 1, 1620
English poet, composer, musical and literary
theorist, physician, and one of the outstanding
songwriters of the brilliant English lutenist
school of the late 16th and early 17th
centuries. His lyric poetry reflects his musical
abilities in its subtle mastery of rhythmic and
melodic structure.
After attending the University of Cambridge
(1581–84), Campion studied law in London, but he
was never called to the bar. Little is known of
him until 1606, by which time he had received a
degree in medicine from the University of Caen,
France. He practiced medicine from 1606 until
his death.
Campion’s first publication was five sets of
verses appearing anonymously in the pirated 1591
edition of Philip Sidney’s Astrophel and Stella.
In 1595 his Poemata (Latin epigrams) appeared,
followed in 1601 by A Booke of Ayres (written
with Philip Rosseter), of which much of the
musical accompaniment and verses were Campion’s.
He wrote a masque in 1607 and three more in
1613, in which year his Two Bookes of Ayres
probably appeared. The Third and Fourth Booke of
Ayres came out in 1617, probably followed by a
treatise (undated) on counterpoint.
Campion’s lyric poetry and songs for lute
accompaniment are undoubtedly his works of most
lasting interest. Though his theories on music
are slight, he thought naturally in the modern
key system, with major and minor modes, rather
than in the old modal system. Campion stated his
theories on rhyme in Observations in the Art of
English Poesie (1602). In this work he attacked
the use of rhymed, accentual metres, insisting
instead that timing and sound duration are the
fundamental element in verse structure. Campion
asserted that in English verse the larger units
of line and stanza provide the temporal
stability within which feet and syllables may be
varied.
With the exception of his classic lyric Rose-cheekt
Lawra, Come, Campion usually did not put his
advocacy of quantitative, unrhymed verse into
practice. His originality as a lyric poet lies
rather in his treatment of the conventional
Elizabethan subject matter. Rather than using
visual imagery to describe static pictures, he
expresses the delights of the natural world in
terms of sound, music, movement, or change. This
approach and Campion’s flowing but irregular
verbal rhythms give freshness to hackneyed
subjects and seem also to suggest an immediate
personal experience of even the commonest
feelings. The Selected Songs, edited by W.H.
Auden, was published in 1972.
