Robert Ramsey  ( ?? -1644)

(died:. Cambridge, 12 Feb 1644). He may have accompanied the king 
(James I) to London in 1603. He is first mentioned in the 
Trinity College Steward’s Book in 1616, when he received payment for 
assisting at the college in March and May of 1615. From then until his 
death he was organist and master of the choristers at Trinity College.  
We may assume that he was active as a composer from about 1610. 
Three of his works, the elaborate Dialogues of Sorrow upon the 
Death of the Late Prince Henrie, Sleep Fleshly Birth and 
What Tears, Dear Prince, are obituary tributes to Henry, Prince of Wales, 
who died in 1612 He married in 1622 and had three children.

Ramsey’s music reflects the influence of contemporary Italian music 
and the emergence of the early Baroque style in England. 

Most of his compositions are settings of English or Latin liturgical texts. 
The Latin works embrace the spirit of the seconda pratica to a greater 
extent than the English and were probably intended not for Trinity but for 
Peterhouse, where Latin was sung. The two settings of the (Latin) Te Deum 
and Jubilate recall Monteverdi’s new-style church music. The English S
ervice on the other hand is similar in style to Gibbons’s Short Service.

Between these extremes of style lie the motets and collects, in all of which 
imitative points still serve a structural purpose although the textures are not 
really polyphonic. Expressive dissonance takes precedence over beauty 
of line or imitative interplay. The anthem O come, let us sing unto the 
Lord is conspicuously modern. Its clearcut phrase lengths, rhythmic 
patterns, affective melodic lines and concluding ‘Alleluia’ are characteristic 
of the Restoration full anthem. The earlier madrigal-anthem is best exemplified 
in How are the mighty fallen and When David heard that Absalon was slain.