John Farmer (c. 1570 – c. 1601) was an important composer of the
English Madrigal School.[1] He was born in
England during the
Elizabethan period, and was also known by his skillful settings for four voices of the old church psalm tunes.[2] His exact date of birth is not known – a 1926 article by
Grattan Flood posits a date around 1564 to 1565 based on matriculation records.[3] Farmer was under the patronage of the
Earl of Oxford and dedicated his collection of canons and his late madrigal volume to his patron.[4]
His Lord's Prayer is performed widely throughout many churches and cathedrals, mostly in
Britain.[7] It is included in Volume 2 of Oxford Choral Classics, published by
Oxford University Press.[8]
Farmer's Divers & Sundry Waies was the source of the fugues in
Michael Maier's book, Atalanta Fugiens.[9] Of the 50 three-part fugues in Atalanta Fugiens, 40 have been shown by Ludwig to be based on Farmer's compositions in Divers & Sundry Waies.
^Flood, W. H. Grattan (1926). "New Light on Late Tudor Composers: XV. John Farmer". The Musical Times. 67 (997): 219–220.
doi:
10.2307/912508.
JSTOR912508.
^Ludwig, Loren. "John Farmer's Sundry Waies: The English Origin of Michael Maier's 'Alchemical Fugues'". Furnace and Fugue: A Digital Edition of Michael Maier's "Atalanta fugiens" (1618) with Scholarly Commentary. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2020.
doi:
10.26300/bdp.ff.ludwig