John Redford

Who was John Redford?

John Redford was a major English composer, organist, and dramatist of the Tudor period.

From about 1525 he was organist at St Paul's Cathedral. He was choirmaster there from 1531 until his death in 1547. Many of his works are represented in the Mulliner Book.

Redford is notable as one of the earliest composers, rather than improvisers, of organ music, having notated a significant quantity of keyboard music, all of it liturgical in function, based on plainchant melodies; a few vocal works by him also survive. As he held the post of Almoner and Master of the Choristers, Redford was responsible for the arrangement of the choristers performances, including writing and directing plays and interludes.

The most celebrated of these entertainments is the morality play, The Play of Wyt and Science, which exists in one manuscript in the British Library. However, the first five pages of the manuscript are missing; there is no way to know how much is lost.

Redford also wrote a number of poems, including the 23 verse Nolo mortem peccatoris, which was set to music by Thomas Morley, who was a later organist at St Paul's.