Morley was natural around Norwich, in East Anglia; he was the boy of the brewer. Virtually all probably he was the singer inside the local cathedral from either his boyhood, & he became master of choristers there in 1583. All a same, Morley patently spent a bit of instance out of East Anglia, for he late referred to the peachy Elizabethan composer of sacred music, William Byrd, as his teacher; when a dates he exposed by having Byrd are non known, it were virtually all belike in the early 1570s. Inside 1588 he received his bachelor's degree from Oxford, and shortly thenceforth wwhen listed as organist at St. Paul's in London. His immature boy died a as a result season.

Around 1588 Nicholas Yonge published his Musica transalpina, the collection of Italian madrigals fitted with English texts, which trigger off a explosive & colorful vogue for madrigal composition around England. Morley manifestly uncovered his compositional counsel at this instance, & shortly afterward began publishing his have collections of madrigals (Xi altogether).

Morley lived for the instance in the equivalent parish when Shakespeare, & the connection between them has been hanker speculated, though never proved. His famed setting of "It was a lover and his lass" from either As You Like It has never been established as with been utilized within the performance of Shakespeare's play, though a possibility that it was is visible. Morley wwhen extremely positioned per mid-1590s & would will have real life access to the theatrical community; surely there was so, as there exists today, the close connection between large actors & musicians.

When Morley attempted to imitate a spirit of Byrd inside a select few of his early sacred works, it was in the form of the madrigal that he mass produced his chief contribution to music history. His act in the genre has remained in the repertory to the present day, & shows the wider kind of emotional color, form & system than anything by more composers of the cycle. Preponderantly his madrigals come weak, apostophy test-moving & well singable; he took a aspects of Italian style that suited his personality & "Englished" the two. More composers of the English Madrigal School, for example Thomas Weelkes and John Wilbye, were to write madrigals in the additional good or even sombre vein.

Additionally to his madrigals, Morley wrote implemental music, including keyboard music (a bit of of which has been preserved in the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book), and music for the unambiguously English consort of ii viols, flute, lute, cittern and pandora.

Morley's Plaine & Easie Introduction to Practicall Musicke (published 1597) remained popular for near two hundred years when its creator's demise, & remains an significant info for information astir sixteenth century composition & performance.