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Daniel Bacheler
March 16, 1574 - January 29, 1619
composed during the Renaissance period
Biography
Though in our own time the name of John Dowland has become the emblem of English lute playing, Daniel Bacheler may claim to be his equal; Dowland's own son Robert called Bacheler "the right perfect Musition." Born the fifth of ten children in a Buckinghamshire farmhouse, Bacheler apparently showed musical talent at an early age. At seven, he became a musical apprentice to his uncle (who happened to be Queen Elizabeth's dancing-master in Westminster). At 15 Bacheler entered the service of Francis Walsingham, the English secretary of state. Bacheler's earliest surviving music was copied, probably by the composer himself at age 16, into a set of partbooks for Walsingham's courtiers; this music already shows Bacheler's stylistic mastery. His esteem among the English nobility is also evident in his participation in Philip Sydney's funeral: Bacheler was riding the knight's warhorse! In 1590, Bacheler joined the household of Robert Deveraux, the Earl of Essex (who married Sydney's widow), and he probably continued to serve Essex up to the Earl's execution in 1601. It was in this decade (Bacheler's third) that a song of his, which set one of the Earl's sonnets, was sung for Queen Elizabeth herself.
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