Robert Hacomplaynt

Robert Hacomplaynt, also written Hacomplayne, Hacomblen or Hacumblen, was an English churchman and composer born in London around 1455 or 1456 and died in Cambridge in September 1528.

He entered Eton College as a scholar in 1469, aged thirteen, and later King's College, Cambridge, where he was admitted in 1472. He took his degrees between 1475 and 1507, was a member of the college's body of scholars between 1475 and 1509 and, in that latter year, became Provost of the college, a post he held until his death. In that role he oversaw the upkeep of the foundation's musical life; in 1516 a payment is recorded for repairing the organs, agreed by the Provost himself.

His only surviving work is a five-voice Salve regina included in the Eton Choirbook. It is a highly crafted piece, somewhat stiff as a whole, notable for its intricate rhythm and for the ingenuity with which it applies imitation to very varied melodic ideas. The cantus firmus, of unidentified origin, is quoted in sections for full voices and in others for reduced forces, sometimes transposed. An inventory of King's College from 1529 also mentions a "Haycomplaynes Gaude", now lost, which was probably a version of Gaude flore virginali or Gaude virgo mater Christi.