Thomas East

EAST [Est, Este], Thomas. b. Swavesey, near Cambridge, ca. 1540; d. London, 1608. Born in Swavesey, Cambridge, East spent his working life in London. He was the leading music printer of the late Elizabethan period, working as the assignee of William Byrd, who held a monopoly in the printing of polyphonic music. He printed most of Byrd’s and Morley’s music as well as such landmark publications as Musica transalpina (1588), Dowland’s Second Booke of Songes or Ayres (1600) and The Triumphes of Oriana (1601). After 1603 his books were published under the auspices of the Company of Stationers. His importance to hymnology rests with his 1592 publication, The Whole Booke of Psalmes: with...