John Bull (composer)
John Bull was an English composer, organist and organ builder, and George Abbot, the Archbishop of Canterbury, once summed him up in a single sentence. In 1613 Abbot said of him: "the man hath more music than honesty and is as famous for marring of virginity as he is for fingering of organs and virginals." The remark was meant as an accusation, yet it captures a man who was both a celebrated keyboard virtuoso and a magnet for scandal. Bull served a queen who admired him and a king who wanted him punished. He ended his days as a cathedral organist in Antwerp, a long way from the court where he began. Where was he really born? How did a favourite of Queen Elizabeth end up fleeing England in haste? And what happened to the music he left behind?
Thurston Dart, writing in 1952, guessed that Bull's family came from Somerset, where the composer might have been born. The seventeenth-century antiquarian Anthony Wood had earlier linked him to the Bull family of Peglich in that county. By 1959 Dart was leaning another way, suggesting that Bull was probably the son of a London goldsmith. In the second edition of his Calendar of the Life of John Bull, Dart then floated Hereford as a third possibility.
More recent research by Susi Jeans places Bull's birth in the parish of Old Radnor in Radnorshire, which lay within the Diocese of Hereford. No birth record has been found to settle the matter. Support for the Hereford connection comes from 1582, when Hereford Cathedral appointed Bull as its organist. At that time organists customarily returned to their home cathedrals after training in London, a pattern also compared with the career of Thomas Morley.
The paper trail becomes firmer in 1573, when a boy joined the choir at Hereford Cathedral.
John Blitheman and William Hunnis were Bull's teachers at the Children of the Chapel Royal in London, which he joined in 1574. Besides singing, he learned to play the organ there. He was appointed to the Merchant Taylor's Company in 1577-78. In 1582 he returned to Hereford as organist, and he also became Master of the Children at the cathedral.
Oxford awarded Bull a degree in 1586, the same year he became a Gentleman of the Chapel Royal. When Blitheman died in 1591, his former pupil took over as organist of the Chapel Royal. A doctorate from Oxford followed in 1592.
Queen Elizabeth admired Bull, and on her recommendation he became the first professor of music at Gresham College in 1596.
An eighteen-month journey to the continent in 1601-02 remains a puzzle. The stated reason was his health, but there is some evidence that the queen sent him on espionage missions. Apart from a visit to Brussels, then part of the Spanish Netherlands, nobody knows where he went.
After Elizabeth died, Bull entered the service of King James. There he built a reputation as a skilled composer, keyboard performer and improviser. That reputation sat alongside a talent for trouble, which had first shown itself with a wall at Gresham House.
The terms of Bull's 1597 appointment obliged him to obey the committee's ordinances and to live at Gresham House. He also had to give an inaugural lecture during the second week of June. His audience was to include the lord mayor, the aldermen, the Bishop of London, and the master and warden of the Mercers Company.
William Reade, stepson of Thomas Gresham, was still occupying the rooms assigned to Bull. Fearing he might lose his readership, Bull hired a mason to help him break down a wall and force his way in. That led to an action against him in the Star Chamber. The outcome of the case is not known.
On the 20th of December 1607, Bull was forced out of Gresham College. He had fathered a child with Elizabeth Walter before they were married. The dismissal cost him both his best source of income and his lodgings. Two days later he petitioned for a marriage licence, but he never returned to the college. He married Elizabeth Walter in 1607, and the couple had a daughter.
Six years later, a worse scandal would cost him England itself.
Bull left England for good in October 1613, secretly and in great haste. His salary at the Chapel Royal was paid in lieu to Edmund Hooper. He was running from the anger of the archbishop and of King James himself, and the charge this time was adultery.
The archbishop described the case to William Trumbull, the English envoy in the Low Countries. According to his account, Bull slept in a bed beside his wife while two maidservants slept in a truckle bed beneath it. One summer morning Bull made one of the maids swap places with his wife, and he slept with the other maid in the truckle bed. The archbishop added that Bull had also assaulted a church minister in front of the congregation.
Trumbull first tried to cover for Bull, then grew afraid for his own position. In early 1614 he wrote to the King. He insisted that Bull had left neither because of any wrong done to him nor because of religion. Instead, Trumbull wrote, Bull had stolen away "through the guilt of a corrupt conscience" to escape deserved punishment.
Bull had his own version of events, and he set it down in a letter to the mayor of Antwerp.
Among the letters Bull wrote in Flanders was the one to the mayor of Antwerp, which blamed religious persecution for his exile. He wrote that "information had been laid against him that he was of the Catholic faith, and that he could not acknowledge His Majesty as head of the Church. Which is a capital offence there." There is no evidence that Bull was actually a Catholic. The claim seems to have been believed, since he was never extradited, despite Trumbull complaining to the Archduke.
The Brussels court employed Bull briefly but released him once Trumbull communicated King James's displeasure. Even so, he kept receiving money from the court until 1618. In 1615 Antwerp Cathedral appointed him assistant organist, and in 1617 he became its principal organist. While in Antwerp he most probably met Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck, the most influential keyboard composer of the age.
Through the 1620s Bull carried on as an organist, an organ builder and a consultant. He died in Antwerp and was buried on the 15th of March 1628 in the cemetery next to the cathedral.
His only printed publication had appeared shortly before his flight.
Seven of Bull's pieces appeared in 1612 or 1613 in Parthenia, or the Maydenhead of the First Musicke That Ever Was Printed for the Virginalls. The virginals were a keyboard instrument, and this collection was dedicated to the 15-year-old Princess Elizabeth, who was Bull's student. It marked her betrothal to Frederick V, Elector Palatine of the Rhine. William Byrd and Orlando Gibbons, two of the most famous composers of the age, also contributed pieces. Bull wrote an anthem too, God the father, God the son, for the princess's wedding in 1613.
In the early 17th century only Sweelinck in the Netherlands and Girolamo Frescobaldi in Italy stood above Bull among keyboard composers. Some would also place his countryman and elder, the celebrated William Byrd, above him. Many of his keyboard works were gathered into the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book.
Some of his pieces there have a lighter character and carry whimsical titles. They include "A Battle and No Battle," "Bonny Peg of Ramsey" and "The King's Hunt." Another is called "Bull's Good-Night."
A book of 120 canons is among the most unusual collections of music from Bull's period, and it is an astonishing display of contrapuntal skill. Of those 120 canons, 116 are built on the Miserere. Bull transformed that simple theme in many ways, shortening it, stretching it out, running it backwards and mixing time signatures. The technical names for these devices are diminution, augmentation and retrograde.
His five-part anthem Almighty God, which by the Leading of a Star, known colloquially as the Star Anthem, was the most popular Jacobean verse anthem. It appears in more contemporary sources than any other. Bull also wrote other verse anthems and further canons.
Much of his music was lost when he fled England. Some of it was destroyed, and some was stolen by other composers. Today the misattributions can occasionally be corrected on stylistic grounds.
The opposite error also persists. Bull is often credited, falsely, as the composer of "God Save the King," the national or royal anthem of a number of Commonwealth realms, their territories and the Crown Dependencies.
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Common questions
Who was John Bull the composer?
John Bull was an English composer, organist, virginalist and organ builder who lived from 1562 or 1563 to 1628. He was a renowned keyboard performer, and most of his compositions were written for keyboard.
Where was John Bull the composer born?
John Bull's birthplace is uncertain. Susi Jeans's research suggests the parish of Old Radnor in the Diocese of Hereford, although no birth record has been found. Thurston Dart had earlier proposed Somerset, London and Hereford.
Why did John Bull the composer leave England in 1613?
John Bull fled England in October 1613 to escape the anger of the Archbishop of Canterbury and King James over a charge of adultery. Bull himself later claimed in a letter to the mayor of Antwerp that he fled religious persecution.
Was John Bull the composer a spy for Queen Elizabeth?
There is some evidence that Queen Elizabeth sent John Bull on espionage missions. His eighteen-month trip to the continent in 1601-02, officially for his health, has never been satisfactorily explained.
What is John Bull the composer known for writing?
John Bull is known for keyboard music, including seven pieces in Parthenia and works in the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book. He also wrote the Star Anthem and a book of 120 canons, 116 of them based on the Miserere.
Did John Bull the composer write God Save the King?
No. John Bull is often credited, falsely, as the composer of "God Save the King."
Where did John Bull the composer die?
John Bull died in Antwerp, where he had been principal organist of the cathedral since 1617. He was buried on the 15th of March 1628 in the cemetery next to the cathedral.
All sources
10 references cited across the entry
- 1Thurston Dart: Search for the Real John Bull. New York Times, 1 November 1959, sec. 2, p.1
- 2John Bull: Keyboard Music. Calendar of the Life of John Bull, compiled by Thurston Dart, vol I, p. xxi.
- 3Leigh Henry, pp.153–170.
- 4Walker Cunningham, p.3
- 6Thurston Dart, "An Unknown Letter from Dr. John Bull," Acta Musicologica 32 (1960), p.175
- 7HMC Downshire, vol. 4 (London, 1940), pp. 270–1.
- 8The Harvard Biographical Dictionary of Music, edited by Don Michael Randel (Belknap Press, 1996), p. 117.
- 10Bull Boul, Bul, Bol, JohnOliver Neighbour et al. — Oxford University Press — 2001