William Boyce

William Boyce (1711–1779) was an English composer, organist, and music editor whose career joined cathedral, parish, court, and instrumental music. Baptized in London in 1711, he entered the choir of St Paul’s Cathedral as a boy and later studied with the cathedral organist and composer Maurice Greene. His early professional appointments included organist posts in London, and in 1736 he became a composer to the Chapel Royal.

Boyce rose to one of the leading musical offices of eighteenth-century Britain. He succeeded Greene as Master of the King’s Musick and became an organist of the Chapel Royal. He supplied music for royal and state occasions as well as church services, while also writing instrumental works, songs, theatre music, and odes. Increasing deafness curtailed much of his organ work, but he continued his musical activity as a composer and editor.

A lasting part of Boyce’s legacy is his work preserving earlier English church music in the multi-volume collection Cathedral Music. His own sacred music and hymn tunes likewise continued in church use. The tune CHAPEL ROYAL, attributed to Boyce and dated to about 1765 in hymnological sources, has been paired with several texts, including Charles Wesley’s “If Death My Friend and Me Divide.”