William Young (died 23 April 1662) was an English
viol player and composer of the
Baroque era, who worked at the court of
Ferdinand Charles, Archduke of Austria in
Innsbruck. The
sonatas which he published in 1653 were some of the earliest sonatas produced by an English composer.
Biography
The details of Young's origins are unknown. By 1652 he was a chamber musician at the Innsbruck court, where "the Englishman", as he was called, was a highly regarded viol player and composer.[1] The design of his English-made viol influenced that of some of the viols built by
Jakob Stainer, the Austrian
luthier.[2] In 1660 Ferdinand Charles granted permission for Young to visit England, but there are no traces of his reappearance there.[3] He is not to be confused with William Young (died 1671), another musician, who played
violin and
flute at the court of
Charles II of England from 1661.[4]
Young died on 23 April 1662 and was buried at Innsbruck's parish church, St Jakob,[5] which has since become
Innsbruck Cathedral.[6]
Works
Young and
Henry Butler, an English viol player working at the Spanish court, were the first English composers to call their works sonatas.[7] However, Butler died in 1652 with his three sonatas unpublished.[8] Young's 11 sonatas for two, three, and four parts and
continuo, published in Innsbruck in 1653,[9] are known to have reached England.[10] In modern times, the 11 sonatas were rediscovered by
William Gillies Whittaker. He found them in manuscript in
Uppsala University Library in Sweden, and published them in 1930.[11]
Cheney, Stuart; Coeyman, Barbara (2012). "The Viola da Gamba Family". In Carter, Stewart; Kite-Powell, Jeffrey T. (eds.). A Performer's Guide to Seventeenth-Century Music. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press. pp. 210–31.
ISBN978-0-253-35706-9.
Highfill, Philip H.; Burnim, Kalman A.; Langhans, Edward A., eds. (1993). "Young, William d. 1671". A Biographical Dictionary of Actors, Actresses, Musicians, Dancers, Managers & Other Stage Personnel in London, 1660–1800. Vol. 16. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press.
Keates, Jonathan (1996). Purcell: A Biography. London: Random House.
ISBN1-55553-287-X.
Morris, Stephen (2007).
"William Young,'Englishman'"(PDF). The Viola da Gamba Society Journal. 1. The Viola da Gamba Society of Great Britain: 51–65. Retrieved 17 January 2013.
Phillips, Elizabeth V., ed. (1991). Henry Butler: Collected Works, with basso continuo realizations and commentary by Jack Ashworth. Madison, WI: A-R Editions.
ISBN0-89579-263-X.
Schaffer, R. Murray (1977). Ezra Pound and Music: The Complete Criticism. New York: New Direction Books.
ISBN978-0-8112-1784-2.