Greensleeves - John Johnson

"Be ye ensured that I will be as good unto you
as ever a Queen was unto her people"
— Elizabeth I -

John Johnson (1540 - 1594),
like most English Court musicians, probably began his career as a boy serving an apprenticeship to a player engaged in a great noble house, possibly that of the Earl of Leicester. This would normally last for seven years, and may have begun as soon as the early 1560s. One extant indenture, for a lutenist of a later generation, Daniel Bachelar, records that the boy entered his apprenticeship at the tender age of seven, and there is nothing to suggest that this was unusual. The system was essential for any musician of low birth aspiring to a Court post, for it provided the crucial patronage and personal contacts which would otherwise be totally out of reach, however prodigious his talent. In 1577 Johnson entered Royal service as one of Her Majestys Musitians for the three lutes. Together with Mathias Mason and Thomas Cardell, appointed around the same time, Johnson was among the first group of native English players to win the Royal accolade. The roster of lutenists formally engaged in that capacity by Elizabeth at times eventually rose as high as six or seven, and more lute players were employed in other posts, while extras were doubtless taken on as required for special occasions such as Court masques. Thus Johnson joined the Court just when his instruments time seems to have come.

Johnsons lute playing must have been exceptional, but his historical importance resides, of course, in the quality and quantity of music by him that has come down to us today. While we have a few fine compositions by native English lutenists before him, John Johnson can reasonably be regarded as the founder of the school of English lute music of the Golden Age which was to culminate in the work of John Dowland (1563-1626). Johnson absorbed both the prevailing Italianate style and a more idiosyncratically English taste to produce a substantial body of work of real distinction. His music is found, almost always anonymously, in manuscripts from all over Europe, to an extent only matched (and greatly exceeded, it must be said) by John Dowlands, yet, as far as we know, Johnson never left England. John Johnson, Queen Elizabeths favourite lutenist, died in 1594, when the Golden Age school of lutenists was at its zenith.

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