Nicholas Lanier at the Courts of Charles I and II

Nicholas Lanier was baptized on September 10, 1588. He was a favorite musician and artist at the Court of Charles I:

English composer, lutenist, singer and painter. He was a descendant of a French family of musicians that settled in England in the mid-16th century. He served the Earl of Salisbury to 1607, and the Cecil family between 1605 and 1613 as a domestic musician. Lanier joined the King's Musick as Musician in Ordinary for the lutes and voices in 1616; in addition to his position as lutenist, Lanier was a singer, and performer on the viol. He was named Master of the Musick of Prince Charles in 1618, and in 1626 he became the first holder of the title 'Master of the King's Musick.' He was Singer in the King's Consorte 1625-42, and Groom in Ordinary for the Queen's Privy Chamber 1639. It was Lanier who convinced the King to bring Van Dyck to England. His own portrait was painted by Van Dyck and the work hangs in Vienna at the Kunsthistoiches Museum. Nicholas was sent abroad to acquire artworks for the King (see Gordon Callon's bio of Nicholas Lanier II) and he assembled a vast collection for the king-- all of which were later dispersed when Charles I was executed-- indeed, some of the paintings were purchased by Laniers, in order to save them-- his uncles Clement Lanier and Jerome Lanier bought several. John Evelyn, in his diary, noted seeing at "Old Jerome Laniere's, Greenwich, some pictures which surely had been the King's." Nicholas the Younger bought four of the paintings. Nicholas lost his position during the Civil War, but was restored by Charles II, serving as Musician in Ordinary 1660-66. He served as first Marshall (for life) of the Corporation for Regulating the Art and Science of Music.

According to Gramophone:

Nicholas Lanier fits like a glove into the haute couture of Charles I’s court. As the first ‘Master of the King’s Musicke’, Lanier had his finger on the pulse of sophisticated domestic and continental musical practices, understood the subtle relationship between literature and music, sang and played ravishingly and was truly cultivated in all the arts, as painter, engraver, curator, dealer and friend of painters like Rubens and Van Dyck. As the redoubtable Roger North reports, ‘King Charles had a very ingenious vertuoso, one Nicholas Laniere, whom he employed into Itally to buy capitall pictures … And after his returne, he composed a recitativo, which was a poem being the tragedy of Hero and Leander. The King was exceedingly pleased with this pathetick song and caused Lanier often to sing it, while he stood next with his hand upon his shoulder.’

Lanier's Hero & Leander was based upon Christopher Marlowe's mini-epic poem, continued by George Chapman. There is a recording of this favorite of Charles I and Gramophone reviewed it favorably in 1999:

Hero and Leander is a remarkable achievement for its time (c1628) and place. This is a truly theatrical scena of the sort which Monteverdi would have recognized and admired, not least for the brilliance of the dramatic pacing.

Coincidentally, while I was at the new downtown public library here in Wichita on Saturday, I purchased a volume of five Longer Elizabethan Poems from the Heinemann Poetry Bookshelf, selected and edited by Martin Seymour-Smith, including Marlowe's and Chapman's Hero and Leander:

On Hellespont, guilty of true love's blood,
In view and opposite two cities stood,
Sea-borderers, disjoin'd by Neptune's might;
The one Abydos, the other Sestos hight.
At Sestos Hero dwelt; Hero the fair,
Whom young Apollo courted for her hair,
And offer'd as a dower his burning throne,
Where she could sit for men to gaze upon.
The outside of her garments were of lawn,
The lining purple silk, with gilt stars drawn;
Her wide sleeves green, and border'd with a grove,
Where Venus in her naked glory strove
To please the careless and disdainful eyes
Of proud Adonis, that before her lies;
Her kirtle blue, whereon was many a stain,
Made with the blood of wretched lovers slain.
Upon her head she ware a myrtle wreath,
From whence her veil reach'd to the ground beneath;
Her veil was artificial flowers and leaves,
Whose workmanship both man and beast deceives;
Many would praise the sweet smell as she past,
When 'twas the odour which her breath forth cast;
And there for honey bees have sought in vain,
And beat from thence, have lighted there again.
About her neck hung chains of pebble-stone,
Which lighten'd by her neck, like diamonds shone.
She ware no gloves; for neither sun nor wind
Would burn or parch her hands, but, to her mind,
Or warm or cool them, for they took delight
To play upon those hands, they were so white.
Buskins of shells, all silver'd, used she,
And branch'd with blushing coral to the knee;
Where sparrows perch'd, of hollow pearl and gold,
Such as the world would wonder to behold:
Those with sweet water oft her handmaid fills,
Which as she went, would chirrup through the bills.
Some say, for her the fairest Cupid pin'd,
And looking in her face, was strooken blind.
But this is true; so like was one the other,
As he imagin'd Hero was his mother;
And oftentimes into her bosom flew,
About her naked neck his bare arms threw,
And laid his childish head upon her breast,
And with still panting rock'd there took his rest.
So lovely-fair was Hero, Venus' nun,
As Nature wept, thinking she was undone,
Because she took more from her than she left,
And of such wondrous beauty her bereft:
Therefore, in sign her treasure suffer'd wrack,
Since Hero's time hath half the world been black.