John Lloyd

John Lloyd (c. 1475 – London, 3 April 1523) was a priest and composer of Tudor England, whose nationality, English or Welsh, is unclear in the sources. His name also appears as Floyd and Flude, which complicates the documentary tracing of his career.

The known record begins in 1499, when he applied for an allowance from the monastery of Thetford, which passed to William Cornysh on his death. In 1505 he was a priest of the Chapel Royal, although his permanent career as a member of the chapel was not consolidated until around 1509. In 1520 he was in France, at the Field of the Cloth of Gold, and afterwards he made a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, returning shortly before his death. His will, dated January 1519, included bequests to churches in Caerleon and Bristol.

Hawkins described him as a bachelor of music, but the degree and the university where he obtained it are unknown. According to the same author, he was buried in the chapel at the Savoy, with an inscription describing him as a cultivator of virtue and religion.

He is very probably credited with the antiphon Ave regina and the mass O quam suavis, preserved in a manuscript at the University of Cambridge. Both works are full of notational puzzles: the mass rhythmically transforms the tenor, and in the antiphon the duration of the notes depends on the vowels of an apparent text. These pieces are thought to have served as his academic exercise for obtaining a degree in music.

His legacy belongs to the current of esoteric academic compositions of the quadrivium, alongside composers such as Fayrfax, Ashwell, Aston and Taverner. The mass, in a very florid and melismatic style, is one of the most ambitious realisations of that repertoire.