(fl 1454–74). English composer. He was witness to a deed of the Este family in 1454 in which he is called the son of Petrus Suchar, a name that cannot be traced and is probably corrupt. (It is not clear whether he was the don Robertus de Anglia who in 1418 acquired a curacy formerly held by the composer Bartolomeo da Bologna; see Peverada, 131–2.) He went to Ferrara Cathedral in September 1460 to instruct the vicars in singing, and was still there a year later, perhaps staying until 1467 when he was enrolled by the chapter of S Petronio, Bologna, as magister cantus. There he remained until October 1474 when he returned to England. Apart from his two songs O fallaze e ria Fortuna and El mal foco arda (both in P-Pm 714 only), there is a poem Iti caldi suspir e mente afflitta by his Bolognese contemporary, Cesare Nappi, which appears with the annotation that it was set to music ‘Magistri Roberti angli’. The music of O fallaze e ria Fortuna is in a style that suggests it may originally have had English text and could belong to a repertory similar to that represented in the Ritson Manuscript (GB-Lbl Add.5665). Ramos de Pareia had some stern views on his mensural practice.
D. Fallows, ed.: Galfridus and Robertus de Anglia: Four Italian Songs (Newton Abbot, 1977) [complete edn, incl. Nappi's poem]
D. Fallows: ‘Robertus de Anglia and the Oporto Song Collection’, Source Materials and the Interpretation of Music: a Memorial Volume to Thurston Dart, ed. I. Bent (London, 1981), 99–128
L. Lockwood: Music in Renaissance Ferrara (Oxford, 1984), 109–18
E. Peverada: Vita musicale nella chiesa ferrarese del Quattrocento (Ferrara, 1991)
DAVID FALLOWS