Campion (Campian), Thomas

Campion (Campian), Thomas, English physician, poet, composer, and dramatist; b. London, Feb. 12, 1567; d. there, March 1, 1620. He studied at Cambridge from 1581 to 1584, residing at Peterhouse; entered Gray’s Inn on April 27, 1586. He received his M.D. degree from the Univ. of Caen in France on Feb. 10, 1605. He was first called a “Doctor of Physick” in an English publication in Barnabe Barnes’s Four Books of Offices in 1606. Earlier evidence of his having studied medical science is an oblique reference of Philip Ros-seter in 1601, speaking of Campion’s poetry and music as “the superfluous blossoms of his deeper studies.” Campion was primarily a lyric poet, and his music was to enhance the beauty of the poetry by supplying unobtrusive and simple harmonies. In this he differed from such contemporaries as John Dowland, who contrived elaborate lute accompaniments.

Works

3 songs (1596); A Booke of Ay res, Set Foorth to Be Sung to the Lute Orpherian, and Base Violi (1601; consists of 2 separate books, one by Campion and one by Rosseter; Campion wrote both the words and the music for his half of the work); First and Second Books of Airs (1613?); Third and Fourth Books of Airs (1617?); songs for masques at the marriages of Sir James Hay (1607), Princess Elizabeth (1613), and Robert, Earl of Somerset (1613); songs for a masque at Caversham House (1613); Songs of Mourning (for Prince Henry; 1613; words by Campion, music by John Coperario); A New Way for Making Foure Parts in Counterpoint (1618; also in Playford’s Introduction to the Skill of Musick, with additions by Christopher Simpson, 1655 and following years). Campion also publ. Poemata, a vol. of Latin epigrams and elegiacs (1595; reprinted 1619), Observations on the Art of English Poesie (1602; condemns “the vulgar and unartificial custom of riming”), etc. The 4 books of airs and the songs from Rosseter’s Booke of Ayres are reprinted in E.H. Fellowes, English School of Lutenist Song-Writers.

Bibliography

M. Kastendieck, England’s Musical Poet, T. C..(Oxford, 1938); W.R. Davis, ed., The Works of T. C. Complete Songs, Masques, and Treatises (Garden City, N.Y., 1967); E. Lowbury, T. Salter, and A. Young, T. C. Poet, Composer, Physician (N.Y., 1970); W. Davis, T. C. (Boston, 1987); M. Pilkington, C, Dowland and the Lutenist Songwriters (London, 1989).

—Nicolas Slonimsky/Laura Kuhn/Dennis McIntire