{{Short description|English organist and composer}} {{Use dmy dates|date=October 2019}} '''Thomas Chilcot''' (1707?{{spaced ndash}}1766), was an English organist and composer.
==Life== Thomas Chilcot of Bath, Somerset was born in the West of England (probably Bath) in or about 1707.<ref>Biography from Tim Rishton, 'Thomas Chilcot and his concertos' except where otherwise stated</ref> He was the son of John Chilcot and Elizabeth Powell.<ref>St. Peter's Tawstock, Effigies: http://sites.rootsweb.com/~ukdevon/TawstockInsideMIs.htm</ref> Records of his birth, like most other records from his life, are now lost. Chilcot was educated at Bath Charity School, whose headmaster, Henry Dixon, had a strong interest in church music. On 6 July 1721 Chilcot (presumably aged 14) was apprenticed to Josiah Priest, the organist of Bath Abbey since 1714 - seemingly the only occasion on which the school allowed a pupil to be apprenticed to a musician.<ref>Thomas Chilcot and His Concertos: The Chilcot Family in Bath, p. 12 http://www.rishton.info/pubs/chilcotthesis.pdf</ref> On Priest's death, just four years later, Chilcot was made Abbey organist on a probationary basis. At what should have been the conclusion of Chilcot's apprenticeship, in 1728, the appointment was made permanent. As City musician in fashionable Bath, Chilcot rapidly established a remarkable relationship with many noble families, attracting their patronage and subscriptions to his publications. He became a member and subsequently Grand Master of the Royal Cumberland Lodge of Freemasons. He was also amongst the original members of the Royal Society of Musicians, founded in 1738/1739.
As well as his work at the Abbey, Chilcot organised and directed some ambitious choral concerts (at which he played his own concertos) and appears also to have run a small instrument hire business.
He married Elizabeth Mills of Bath in 1729 and had seven children, of whom four survived. Following Elizabeth's death, he married Anne Wrey, a member of a prominent West Country family (the Wrey baronets), in 1749.
Chilcot died suddenly on 24 November 1766, after occupying a highly influential role in Bath for forty years. Almost no public notice was taken of his death and a complicated disagreement over Chilcot's estate meant that none of the elaborate arrangements that the composer had made for his own funeral procession, monument and memorial trusts, was ever carried out.<ref>Tim Rishton, 'The twelve harpsichord concertos of Thomas Chilcot', p.34</ref>
==Works== Chilcot's unpublished music, including at least four anthems, a ''Jubilate,'' an oratorio called ''Elfrida'' and what a posthumous auction catalogue describes as "his finest pieces of Music ... never Printed or Sold", has not survived.<ref>Tim Rishton, 'The twelve harpsichord concertos of Thomas Chilcot', p.34</ref>
His published music consists of: * ''Six Suites of Lessons for the Harpsicord or Spinet'' (London, Wm Smith, 1734). Modern edition by Le Pupitre (Paris, Heugel & cie, 1981) * ''Twelve English Songs with their symphonies. The words by Shakespeare and other Celebrated Poets.'' (William Shakespeare, Christopher Marlowe, Anacreon, and Euripides) (London, John Johnson, [1744]) * ''Six Concertos, for the Harpsichord'' (London, John Johnson, 1756) (dedicated to Lady Elizabeth Bathurst) * ''Six Concertos, for the Harpsichord'' (Bath, privately, 1765/1766)
==References== {{Reflist}}
==Bibliography== {{Cite DNB|wstitle=Chilcot, Thomas}}
B.J. Maslen: ‘Thomas Chilcot: a Forgotten Composer’, ''Musical Quarterly'', lxvi (1943), 294–5
David Falconer: ''Bath Abbey: its Choirs & its Music'' (Bath, 1984)
Tim Rishton: Thomas Chilcot and his Concertos (PhD thesis, U. of Wales, Bangor, 1991)
Tim Rishton: ‘The Eighteenth-Century British Keyboard Concerto after Handel’, ''Aspects of Keyboard Music: Essays in Honour of Susi Jeans'', ed. R. Judd (Oxford, 1992), 121–39
Tim Rishton: 'Chilcot, Thomas', article in ''New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians''
''Seraphic Lays': Thomas Chilcot 1707-1766'', ''Hexachord: The Journal of Early Music Wales'' vol II no. 2 (February 2000), 4–13
Tim Rishton: 'The twelve harpsichord concertos of Thomas Chilcot', ''Early Keyboard Journal'' Vol 23 (2005), 33-66
==External links== * {{IMSLP|id=Chilcot, Thomas}}
{{Authority control}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Chilcot, Thomas}} Category:1700s births Category:1766 deaths Category:Year of birth uncertain Category:English Baroque composers Category:English organists Category:English male organists Category:18th-century English classical composers Category:18th-century English male musicians Category:18th-century English keyboardists Category:English male classical composers