![]() The sources for Sheppard's services are all of much later date and often incomplete. Although Day's collection was not finally published until 1565, there are reasons to believe that it was planned during the reign of Edward VI. Two sources compiled or planned during his lifetime contain a few of his anthems: the Wanley Partbooks (GB-Ob MSS Mus. The sources for Sheppard's English-texted music are more diverse. The six-part Gaude virgo Christiphera, the only large-scale votive antiphon by Sheppard to survive in anything more than a fragmentary state, appears in a seventeenth-century set of partbooks that now lacks its sixth, superius book (GB-Ob Tenbury 807-11) the missing treble part can be partially completed with the help of other sources, but is still lacking in the fully scored, six-voice sections. MSS 30480–4) and elsewhere and a setting for two soloists of the troped lesson 'Laudes Deo' for the first mass of Christmas Day is in a manuscript at Oxford (GB-Och Mus. His mass Cantate appears exclusively in the Forrest-Heyther partbooks a 'Kyrie' for Easter Day (see below) is found in the Hammond Partbooks (GB-Lbl Add. Other sources supply few additional pieces beyond extracts from longer compositions. Relatively few of the pieces in these two sources appear elsewhere. Much of the Gyffard music may have been composed during Sheppard's Magdalen years (Gyffard had formerly been a fellow of Merton College, Oxford). 17802-5), a set of four manuscript partbooks, probably copied for Dr Roger Gyffard during the 1570s. 979-83), copied after 1575, while his four-part pieces are in the so-called Gyffard Partbooks (GB-Lbl Add. Most are contained in two sets of partbooks: the principal source of his Latin music in five or more parts is the Baldwin partbooks at Christ Church, Oxford (GB-Och Mus. Sheppard's compositions for the Latin liturgy exist exclusively in post- Reformation anthologies. Despite this, he was awarded liveries for both the funeral of Queen Mary on 13 December and for the coronation of Elizabeth I on 15 January 1559. He made his will on 1 December and was buried at St Margaret's, Westminster on 21 December. Sheppard died in December 1558 during an influenza epidemic. In July 1559 he and his Chapel Royal colleague Richard Edwards were granted the reversion of a lease of a manor in Kent. In March 1556 he witnessed the will of a fellow Gentleman of the chapel, Luke Caustell, and on New Year's Day 1557 he presented a roll of songs to Mary Tudor. In 1554 he supplicated, apparently unsuccessfully, for the degree of Doctor of Music at Oxford University, stating that he had studied music for twenty years and had "composed many songs". He presumably remained active at the chapel up to the year of his death. Sheppard left Magdalen College in March 1548 and next appears in a list of the Gentleman of the Chapel Royal who sang at the funeral of King Edward VI in August 1553 he may have joined the chapel directly after his departure from Magdalen, but, because of a gap in Chapel Royal records from 1547, this is not certain. He served in this capacity during 1541-2 and again from 1544-8. ![]() ![]() The first undoubted sighting of him occurs when he was probably in his later twenties, as informator choristarum at Magdalen College, Oxford. Nothing certain is known about his early life. Sheppard was probably born around 1515, judging from his statement in 1554 that he had been composing music for twenty years. 1515 – December 1558) was an English composer of the Renaissance. ![]()
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