DICTIONARY OF MUSIC - El Atril

GREENE GREETING 233
gave rise to the joke, attribiitod to Handel, that
' Toctor Greene had gone to the devil.' In 1730,
on the death of Dr. Tudway, Greene was elected
Professor of Music in the University of Gambridge,
with the degree of Doctor of Music. As
his exercise on the occasion he set Pope's Ode on
St. Cecilia's Day, altered and abbreviated, and
with a new stanza introduced, expressly for the
occasion, by the poet himself. This composition
\vas performed at Cambridge at the Commencement
on Monday, July 6, 1730. (A duet from it
is given by Hawkins in his Hidory^ chap. 191.)
In 1735, on the death of John Eccles, Dr. Greene
was appointed his successor as Master of the
King's band of music, in which capacity he
produced many odes for the king's birthday and
New Year's Day. In 1743 he published his
* Forty Select Anthems,' the work on which his
reputation mainly rests. These compositions, it
has been remarked, ' place him at the head of the
list of English ecclesiastical composers, for they
combine the science and vigour of our earlier
writers with the melody of the best German and
Italian masters who floiu'ished in the first half
of the ISth century' {Harmonicou for 1829, p.
72). In 1750 Greene received a considerable
accession of fortune by the death of a cousin, a
natural son of his uncle, Seijeant Greene, who
bequeathed him an estate in Essex worth £700
a year. Being thus raised to affluence he commenced
the execution of a long-meditated project,
the formation and publication in score of a
collection of the best English cathedral music.
By the year 1755 he had amassed a considerable
number of services and anthems, wdiich he had
reduced into score and collated, when Ins I'ailing
health led him to beciueatlr by will his materials
to his friend Dr. Boyce, with a request that he
would complete the work. [See Boyce.] Dr.
Greene died on December 1, 1755,' leaving an
only daughter Katherine, who was married to
Dr. Michael Festing, Vicar of ^^'yke Regis,
Dorset, the son of her father's friend the violinist.
[Greene was buried at St. Olave's, Jewry, and
on May 18, 1888, his remains were removed to
St. Paul's Cathedral and placed beside those of
Boyce. A portrait of Dr. Greene was in the
possession of Henry Festing. Esq., of Bois Hall,
Addlestone, Surrey, in May 1895.]
In addition to the before-named compositions,
Greene produced a Te Deum in D major, with
orchesti'al accompaniments, composed, it is con-
jectured, for the thanksgiving for the sup])ression
of the Scottish rebellion in 1745 ; a service in C,
composed 1737 (printed in Arnold's Cathedral
Music) ; numerous anthems—some printed and
others still in MS. ; 'Jephthah,' oratorio, 1737 ;
'The Force of Truth,' oratorio, 1744 ; a paraphrase
of part of the Song of Deborah and Barak,
1 The d,^te is eatabliahed, as against the .'ird, not only hy the inscription
on the coffin-plate (according to the A^ic.ar-Choral Book'.
but by the announcement in the Public Jdivrti.^f^ ot Wednesday.
' Dec. 3, to the effect that On Monday night died at his house iu
Beaufort Buildings. Dr. Maurice Greene,' etc.
1732 ; Addison's ode, ' The spacious firmament,'
' Florimel ; or, Love's Revenge, ' dramatic pasto-
ral, 1737 ; 'The Judgment of Hercules,' masque,
1740; 'Phrebe,' pastoral opera, 1748; 'The
Chaplet,' a collection of twelve English songs ;
' Spenser's Amoretti,' a collection of twenty-five
two books each containing 'A
sonnets (1739) ;
' Cantata and four English songs' ; Catches and
Canons for three or four voices, with a collection
of Songs for two and three voices' ; organ volun-
taries, and several sets of harpsichord lessons.
(See the QucUen-Lcx ikon.) It must not be forgotten
that Greene was one of the founders of
that most valuable institution ' The Society of
Musicians.' [FE.STING. See Mus. I'imes, June
1888, and Feb. 1903.] w. H. H.
GREENSLEEVES. An old English ballad and
tune mentioned by Shakespeare ('Merry AVives,'
ii. 1 ; V. 5). The ballad— 'A new Northerne
dittye of the LadyeGreene Sleeves'—wasentered
in the Stationers' Register, Sept. 1580 (22nd of
Elizabeth) ; but the tune is probably as old as
the reign of Henry VIII. It was also known as
'The Blacksmith' and 'The Brewer' (Cromwell),
and was a great favourite with the Cava-
liers. Chapipell (from whose Popular Music of
the Ohicn Tunc the above is taken, Plate 3, and
pp. 227-233) gives the tune in its oldest form as
follows:
m your com-pa-ny. Greensleevea 'was all my joy,
Green - sleeves i^aa my delight, Greensleevea was my
heart of gold, and who but my Lii - dy GreenBleeves.
A modified version is found in the ' Beggar's
Opera,' to the words ' Since laws were made for
ev'ry degree,' and the tune is still sung to
' Christmas comes but once a year,' and to songs
with the burden ' Vhich nobody can deny.' G.
GREETING, Thom.^s, was a teacher of the
flageolet in London in the latter half of the 1 7th
century, when the instrument appears to have
been played on by ladies as well as gentlemen,
as we gather from Pepys's Di'fa'^, which informs
us that in 1667 Mrs. Pepys was a jiupil of
Greeting. He also taught Pepys himself. In
1680 " Greeting issued a thin oblong small 8vo
volume entitled Tlie Pleasant Companion ; or,
. but no such