The most famous of these collections was The Triumphs of Oriana, which was made in honor of Queen Elizabeth and featured the compositions of Morley, Thomas Weelkes, and John Wilbye among other representatives of the English madrigalists.
Evidence has been presented that "Oriana" actually refers to Anne of Denmark, who would become Queen of England alongside James VI of Scotland (later James I of England) in an apparently failed early attempt to remove Elizabeth in order to restore England to Catholicism.
Thomas Hunt (madrigalist) (c. 1580–1658), English composer and madrigalist who contributed to The Triumphs of Oriana, 1601
Oriana Fallaci | The Triumphs of Oriana | Oriana | Triumphs of Caesar | Oriana Panozzo | A Fada Oriana |
Ellis Gibbons was evidently counted as having promise by his contemporaries: at the age of 28 he became the only composer, other than the editor Thomas Morley himself, to contribute two madrigals to The Triumphs of Oriana, a collection of 25 madrigals published in 1601, although the American musicologist Joseph Kerman (in his 1962 comparative study of the English madrigal) states that "possibly one of the two is by Edward Gibbons."
One of the more notable compilations of English madrigals was The Triumphs of Oriana, a collection of madrigals compiled by Thomas Morley, which contained 25 different madrigals by 23 different composers.