Henry Youll

Henry Youll was an English composer active around 1608, of whom only very few reliable biographical details survive. His name is associated with the musical life of Elizabethan and Jacobean England, although the exact identification of the man with certain documentary records remains a matter of conjecture.

According to a proposal by Canon George Youell, the composer may have been the Henry Youll who graduated from Magdalene College, Cambridge, in 1593 and who, after marrying, worked as a schoolmaster in Eye, near Diss. Before that post he may have served as tutor in the household of Edward Bacon at Coddenham, near Ipswich, to whose four children he dedicated his only publication, the Canzonets to Three Voyces, published in London in 1608. This is a reasonable hypothesis, not an established fact.

His music reveals notable limitations: it shows no aptitude for the sad or pathetic expression. He took as his model Morley's canzonets for three voices of 1593, although no piece in the volume is structurally a genuine canzonet, and the last six are balletts. His delicate charm does not compensate for the lack of wit and inventiveness that distinguishes Morley.