This article is about the English composer, for other people with the same name, see John Eccles

John Eccles

John Eccles was an English composer.Born in London, eldest son of professional musician Solomon Eccles, John Eccles was appointed to the King's Private Musick in 1694, and in 1700 became Master of the King's Musick...

.

John Eccles (1668 – 12 January 1735) was an English

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

 composer

Composer

A composer is a person who creates music, either by musical notation or oral tradition, for interpretation and performance, or through direct manipulation of sonic material through electronic media...

.

Born in London

London

London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...

, eldest son of professional musician Solomon Eccles

Solomon Eccles

Solomon Eccles , also known as Solomon Eagle, was an English composer.-Life:Solomon Eagle was mentioned in Daniel Defoe's semi-fictional account of the plague of 1665 titled A Journal of the Plague Year. Defoe wrote:...

, John Eccles was appointed to the King's Private Musick in 1694, and in 1700 became Master of the King's Musick

Master of the Queen's Music

Master of the Queen's Music is a post in the Royal Household of the Sovereign of the United Kingdom. The holder of the post originally served the monarch of England.The post is roughly comparable to that of Poet Laureate...

. Also in 1700 he finished second in a competition to write music for William Congreve

William Congreve

William Congreve was an English playwright and poet.-Early life:Congreve was born in Bardsey, West Yorkshire, England . His parents were William Congreve and his wife, Mary ; a sister was buried in London in 1672...

's masque

Masque

The masque was a form of festive courtly entertainment which flourished in 16th and early 17th century Europe, though it was developed earlier in Italy, in forms including the intermedio...

 The Judgement of Paris

The Judgement of Paris (opera)

The Judgement of Paris is an operatic libretto written by William Congreve. It was set by four British Baroque composers - John Weldon, John Eccles, Daniel Purcell and Gottfried Finger - as part of a music competition held in 1700-1701...

(John Weldon

John Weldon

John Weldon may refer to:* John Weldon , British musician* John Weldon , Academy Award-winning National Film Board of Canada animator-See also:* Brinsley MacNamara , Irish writer, born John Weldon...

 won).

{(The Wikipedia page for Solomon Eccles refers to him as as the grandfather, rather than father, of John and Henry. Their birth dates suggest that the attribution stated here may be incorrect.))

Eccles was very active as a composer for the theatre

Theatre

Theatre is a collaborative form of fine art that uses live performers to present the experience of a real or imagined event before a live audience in a specific place. The performers may communicate this experience to the audience through combinations of gesture, speech, song, music or dance...

, and from the 1690s wrote a large amount of incidental music

Incidental music

Incidental music is music in a play, television program, radio program, video game, film or some other form not primarily musical. The term is less frequently applied to film music, with such music being referred to instead as the "film score" or "soundtrack"....

 including music for William Congreve's Love for Love, John Dryden

John Dryden

John Dryden was an influential English poet, literary critic, translator, and playwright who dominated the literary life of Restoration England to such a point that the period came to be known in literary circles as the Age of Dryden.Walter Scott called him "Glorious John." He was made Poet...

's The Spanish Friar and William Shakespeare

William Shakespeare

William Shakespeare was an English poet and playwright, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's national poet and the "Bard of Avon"...

's Macbeth

Macbeth

The Tragedy of Macbeth is a play by William Shakespeare about a regicide and its aftermath. It is Shakespeare's shortest tragedy and is believed to have been written sometime between 1603 and 1607...

. Jointly with Henry Purcell

Henry Purcell

Henry Purcell – 21 November 1695), was an English organist and Baroque composer of secular and sacred music. Although Purcell incorporated Italian and French stylistic elements into his compositions, his legacy was a uniquely English form of Baroque music...

 he wrote incidental music for Thomas d'Urfey

Thomas d'Urfey

Thomas D'Urfey was an English writer and wit. He composed plays, songs, and poetry, in addition to writing jokes. He was an important innovator and contributor in the evolution of the Ballad opera....

's Don Quixote. He became a composer to Drury Lane

Drury Lane

Drury Lane is a street on the eastern boundary of the Covent Garden area of London, running between Aldwych and High Holborn. The northern part is in the borough of Camden and the southern part in the City of Westminster....

 theatre in 1693 and when some of the actors broke off to form their own company at Lincoln's Inn Fields in 1695, he composed music for them as well.

Eccles also wrote music for the coronation of Queen Anne

Anne of Great Britain

Anne ascended the thrones of England, Scotland and Ireland on 8 March 1702. On 1 May 1707, under the Act of Union, two of her realms, England and Scotland, were united as a single sovereign state, the Kingdom of Great Britain.Anne's Catholic father, James II and VII, was deposed during the...

 and a number of song

Song

In music, a song is a composition for voice or voices, performed by singing.A song may be accompanied by musical instruments, or it may be unaccompanied, as in the case of a cappella songs...

s. Many of his most famous songs, such as "I burn, I burn" were composed for actress-singer Anne Bracegirdle to perform. Eccles also wrote an all-sung English opera Semele with text by Congreve, but it was not staged until the 20th century. Congreve's libretto would later serve as the basis for George Frideric Handel

George Frideric Handel

George Frideric Handel was a German-British Baroque composer, famous for his operas, oratorios, anthems and organ concertos. Handel was born in 1685, in a family indifferent to music...

's Semele (1744).

For much of the later part of his life, Eccles lived in Kingston upon Thames

Kingston upon Thames

Kingston upon Thames is the principal settlement of the Royal Borough of Kingston upon Thames in southwest London. It was the ancient market town where Saxon kings were crowned and is now a suburb situated south west of Charing Cross. It is one of the major metropolitan centres identified in the...

 and wrote additional incidental music (though not as frequently as he had for Lincoln's Inn Fields) as well as the occasional court ode

Ode

Ode is a type of lyrical verse. A classic ode is structured in three major parts: the strophe, the antistrophe, and the epode. Different forms such as the homostrophic ode and the irregular ode also exist...

. He is reported to have spent much of his time fishing

Fishing

Fishing is the activity of trying to catch wild fish. Fish are normally caught in the wild. Techniques for catching fish include hand gathering, spearing, netting, angling and trapping....

.

He was the only Master of the King's Musick in the history of the post to serve four monarchs (King William III

William III of England

William III & II was a sovereign Prince of Orange of the House of Orange-Nassau by birth. From 1672 he governed as Stadtholder William III of Orange over Holland, Zeeland, Utrecht, Guelders, and Overijssel of the Dutch Republic. From 1689 he reigned as William III over England and Ireland...

, Queen Anne, King George I

George I of Great Britain

George I was King of Great Britain and Ireland from 1 August 1714 until his death, and ruler of the Duchy and Electorate of Brunswick-Lüneburg in the Holy Roman Empire from 1698....

 and King George II

George II of Great Britain

George II was King of Great Britain and Ireland, Duke of Brunswick-Lüneburg and Archtreasurer and Prince-elector of the Holy Roman Empire from 11 June 1727 until his death.George was the last British monarch born outside Great Britain. He was born and brought up in Northern Germany...

).

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