Maurice Greene

Maurice Greene (1696–1755) was an English composer, organist, teacher, and one of the leading church musicians of the early Georgian period. Born in London on August 12, 1696, he became a chorister at St Paul's Cathedral, where he studied under musicians including Charles King and later learned organ with Richard Brind. Greene held early organ appointments at London churches and in 1718 succeeded Brind as organist of St Paul's Cathedral.

His career advanced through several of the most important musical offices in eighteenth-century England. In 1727 he became organist and composer of the Chapel Royal. In 1730 he received the doctorate in music at Cambridge and became professor of music there, and in 1735 he was appointed Master of the King's Musick. He also taught musicians who would become prominent in the next generation, notably William Boyce and John Stanley, and took part in the institutional life of London's musical community.

Greene composed anthems, services, canticles, songs, keyboard works, court odes, and larger dramatic or sacred works. His church music includes the anthem “Lord, let me know mine end,” and his Forty Select Anthems appeared in 1743. Late in life he undertook a large collection of English cathedral music; after his death, the project passed to his pupil William Boyce, whose published Cathedral Music became an important repository of earlier Anglican repertory.

Hymn-tune indexes attribute the common-meter tune ST. NICHOLAS to Greene. That melody has been paired in later hymnals with several texts, including metrical Psalm 103. Its use in hymnody represents one small but durable part of Greene's wider legacy in Anglican sacred music.