John Hilton

John Hilton the Younger was an English church composer and musician, the son of John Hilton the Elder. He was born in Cambridge, presumably around 1599, and died in Westminster, where he was buried on 21 March 1657. His output belongs to early Baroque England, at the transition between Elizabethan polyphony and the new styles of the seventeenth century.

In 1626 he took the degree of MusB at Trinity College, Cambridge, stating at that time that he had studied the science of music for ten years. The following year he published his Ayres or Fa La's for three voices, dedicated to the Doctor of Music William Heather, in a dedication in which he presented himself as a pupil returning to his master the first fruits of his labour. In 1628 he was appointed organist and clerk of St Margaret's, Westminster, a post he held for the rest of his life.

Among his personal ties, his friendship with William Lawes stands out; he dedicated an elegy to Lawes's memory, included in William and Henry Lawes's Choice Psalmes (1648). In 1652 he published Catch that Catch Can, a collection of canons, rounds and catches for three and four voices dedicated to his friend Robert Coleman. Twelve of its canons and thirty of its pieces are his. The work was a great success: it was reprinted in 1658 and in 1663, and afterwards circulated in various versions.

His secular vocal music and his output of songs and dramatic dialogues have received less attention than they deserve. Some specialists have dismissed them, yet many of the pieces are attractive and are distinguished from those of Morley without being inferior. Hilton was one of the first English composers of dramatic dialogues, although none of them was published during his lifetime. He appears to be the original compiler of British Library manuscript Add. 11608, in which he copied more than half of the contents. This source suggests the existence of a musical circle centred on him, in London or Westminster, around the 1640s.

His church music raises attribution doubts when set against that of his father. His authorship of the Te Deum is certain, and probably much of the services too; the remaining pieces could be by either of the two. His fantasias for consort, livelier and more modern in style, are more confidently attributed to the son. A portrait of him from 1649, at the age of fifty, is preserved at the Faculty of Music, Oxford.

Hilton occupies today a modest but significant place: his collection of catches was one of the most widely circulated of its time, and his works for solo voices and consort document English music of the mid-seventeenth century.