Thomas Farmer (

fl. ''Floruit'' ( ; usually abbreviated fl. or occasionally flor.; from Latin for 'flourished') denotes a date or period during which a person was known to have been alive or active. In English, the unabbreviated word may also be used as a noun indic ...

1685) was an English composer.

Life

Farmer was originally one of a company of musicians in London and played in the

waits WAITS is a heavily modified variant of Digital Equipment Corporation's Monitor operating system (later renamed to, and better known as, " TOPS-10") for the PDP-6 and PDP-10 mainframe computers, used at the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Labor ...

. He took the degree of Mus. B. at Cambridge in 1684. The date of his death is fixed only by the fact that

Henry Purcell Henry Purcell (, rare: ; September 1659 – 21 November 1695) was an English composer of Baroque music, most remembered for his more than 100 songs; a tragic opera, Dido and Aeneas, ''Dido and Aeneas''; and his incidental music to a version o ...

wrote an elegy on him to words by

Nahum Tate Nahum Tate ( ; 1652 – 30 July 1715) was an Anglo-Irish poet, hymnist, and lyricist, who became Poet Laureate in 1692. Tate is best known for '' The History of King Lear'', his 1681 adaptation of Shakespeare's ''King Lear'', and for his libr ...

, published in ''Orpheus Britannicus'', ii. 35, and beginning "Young Thyrsis' fate ye hills and groves deplore". This establishes the fact that Farmer died before November 1695, and probably he died young. John Hawkins stated that his house was in Martlet Court, Bow Street,

Covent Garden Covent Garden is a district in London, on the eastern fringes of the West End, between St Martin's Lane and Drury Lane. It is associated with the former fruit-and-vegetable market in the central square, now a popular shopping and tourist sit ...

Works

He contributed songs to

John Playford John Playford (1623–1686) was a London bookseller, publisher, minor composer and member of the Stationers' Company. He published books on music theory, instruction books for several instruments and psalters with tunes for singing in churches. ...

's ''Choice Ayres, Songs, and Dialogues'' (second edition, 1675). One of these is described as "in the Citizen turn'd Gentleman"; this was the sub-title of

Edward Ravenscroft Edward Ravenscroft ( – 1707) was an English dramatist who belonged to an ancient Flintshire family. He was entered at the Middle Temple, but devoted his attention mainly to literature. Ravenscroft was the first critic to posit that Shakesp ...

's '' Mamamouchi'', produced 1675. ''Apollo's Banquet'' contains "Mr. Farmer's Magot", for violin. His instrumental compositions are entirely for strings, in three or four parts. He wrote the tunes in '' The Princess of Cleve'', which appear in a set of manuscript parts dated December 62, owned by

Thomas Fuller Thomas Fuller (baptised 19 June 1608 – 16 August 1661) was an English churchman and historian. He is now remembered for his writings, particularly his ''Worthies of England'', published in 1662, after his death. He was a prolific author, and ...

; Fuller possessed three other compositions in three parts by him, and various overtures are contained in

British Library The British Library is the national library of the United Kingdom. Based in London, it is one of the largest libraries in the world, with an estimated collection of between 170 and 200 million items from multiple countries. As a legal deposit li ...

Add MS 24889. He contributed songs to ''The Theater of Musick'', 1685 to 1687, and to Thomas d'Urfey's third collection, 1685. In 1686 his own collection of airs in four parts appeared, under the title of ''A Consort of Musick'', containing 33 lessons. A ''Second Consort'', containing 11 lessons, appeared in 1690.

References

* ;Attribution {{DEFAULTSORT:Farmer, Thomas Year of birth missing Year of death unknown 17th-century deaths 17th-century English classical composers English Baroque composers English classical musicians Alumni of the University of Cambridge Composers from London English male classical composers 17th-century English male musicians