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<mask> (born 3 July 1975) is an English singer-songwriter, composer, producer musician and film maker from London. His music has been compared to David Bowie and he is the last musician to collaborate with David Bowie and Kate Bush mentor Lindsay Kemp. He is also an active campaigner for the preservation of the London district known as Soho and its role in the enhancement of the performing arts. He is the founder of Save Soho, a coalition of performers including Stephen Fry and Benedict Cumberbatch, residents and politicians that came together out of concern for the future of Soho’s historic role as a national platform for the performing arts. He has been critical of Spotify, after removing his discography from the streaming service in December 2021 in protest of the company's investment in a military defence company. <mask>a in the mid-1990s.He runs the record label TA Music, and has released twenty three albums. He is also author and composer of the musical Secrets of Soho. and is winner of BBC Radio London Album of the year 2015 for his album The Soho Hobo. Early life
<mask>'s childhood was spent travelling through Europe, as his mother, Polly Perkins, performed cabaret in theatres and nightclubs. Between the ages of eight and fourteen, he lived in France, Spain and the UK. <mask> has stated he believes in magic after meeting a Pagan "witch" at the age of nine. At fourteen years old, he enrolled as a bard in The Order of Bards, Ovates and Druids.The teachings inspired him to leave his mother's home in Spain and return alone to England to study at the Rudolf Steiner School, where he formed the band Jocasta with best friend Jack Reynolds. Career

Jocasta

In 1994, <mask> and the band moved from Hertfordshire to London. Jocasta had chart hits with "Go" and "Change Me" in 1997. The band's only album, No Coincidence was released in June 1997, but they disbanded soon after its release. Solo career
In 1999 he signed a publishing deal with V2 Music, and also became Master of Music at Shakespeare's Globe Theatre, composing original music for Peter Oswald's 'Augustine's Oak', a new verse play written especially for the Globe. In 2000 his new band called Spearshaker recorded several songs at Rockfield Studios in Monmouth, Wales, which would later be released on <mask>'s solo album 'En Route'. In 2001, <mask> left V2 and signed to Universal Music Publishing.For two years, he wrote and produced music for newly signed artists at Universal, mostly pop, R&B, garage and hip hop. In 2003 <mask> travelled to the Wat Tham Krabok Buddhist monastery in Thailand, where he was successfully treated for drug addiction. Life at the monastery had a profound effect on <mask> who subsequently left London and moved to Thailand to live in the monastery, where the monks built him a recording studio. He recorded his debut solo album Lokutara with the monks who cured him, in which the music was created by following cracks in the earth, which metamorphosed into pop rock melodies. A Tham Krabok success story, <mask> returned to the UK in 2004. Over the following 18 months, he recorded and released 6 solo albums, including Secrets of Soho recorded in Francis Bacon's spiritual home (The Colony Room). <mask> embarked on his 11th solo album Sonnet 155 by writing over 30 letters to Shakespearean actors, including Ian McKellen, Derek Jacobi, Pete Postlethwaite, Richard Briers, Janet Suzman and Emma Thompson in the hope that they would provide further inspiration and help turn ideas into songs.The responses he received became the basis for many of <mask>'s songs. The album is a rock/classical crossover all driven by Shakespearean themes. Sonnet 155 previewed to standing ovations at the Almeida Theatre, London (2 & 9 May 2010), a cross-media performance, including contributions from actors Richard Briers, Paul McGann, Benedict Cumberbatch and Lisa Dillon. The album also re-interprets classical pieces of music by Mozart, Rimsky-Korsakov and Michael Nyman – each song a contemporary response to a Shakespearean theme. B7 Media are currently developing the format of the stage show with a view to taking Sonnet 155 on tour. In 2012, <mask> began performing new songs under the name The Soho Hobo. He performed several shows at The Soho Theatre, The Groucho Club and The Lexington with actors Jessie Wallace, Gary Kemp and Phil Daniels throughout 2012 and 2013 as showcases for his forthcoming album about Soho.In 2015 he gave the Mayor of London, Boris Johnson a guided tour of Soho as part of <mask>'s Save Soho campaign. The pair were filmed by ITV news singing a duet of <mask>'s song "Don't Go Changing Soho". In 2015 he also appeared on The Voice and after auditioning, was selected by Ricky Wilson. By the second round, he was out of the competition losing his battle against eventual winner Stevie McCrorie. He released a single 'Hearts 4 Meat' in support of the Save Soho campaign that he leads with Stephen Fry and Benedict Cumberbatch. The song was inspired by Caitlin Moran's article in The Times 'Where is London If Soho Is Gone?'. In July 2015, <mask> released his 14th album The Soho Hobo

In 2019, he released "Don't Go Changing Soho", a Christmas tribute single to the area featuring Marc Almond, Boy George, Chrissie Hynde, Marty Wilde, Glen Matlock, Polly Perkins, Mari Wilson, Emily Capell, and Gary Kemp.Composition
<mask> composed the theme tune for the 2021 radio soap opera Greenborne. Personal life
<mask> lives in London and was listed to represent Soho in Historic England's 2016 exhibition ‘I Am London’. He is a feminist and a lifelong vegetarian. Activism

What Love Would Want
While <mask> identifies his sexual orientation as straight, he has said in interviews that he comes from an LGBT background, being brought up by two women since birth, with an extended family of gay women and men. This distinction in <mask>'s upbringing became the subject of media attention in 2017 surrounding the release of his song and video 'What Love Would Want'. Described by Fused Magazine as "A response to the divisive and for some, frightening times we are living in", <mask>'s song was inspired by Emma Watson's speech on The United Nations's He For She Campaign and Stephen Fry's speech on the Catholic Church's condemnation of gay people. The song's video was published on 17 May 2017 to mark International Day Against Homophobia, Transphobia and Biphobia (IDAHOT).<mask> supported the event with a series of live performances in Toronto on the day, complete with a cruise boat choir performance on Lake Ontario. "What Love Would Want" is one of the first songs to premiere via Blockchain technology with Canadian company Musicoin, the world's first smart cryptocurrency for music securing exclusive release of the song before its general release. Actor Stephen Fry supported the song's message with an appearance in <mask>'s video. <mask> subsequently went on to support and work with Amnesty International at live events across the United Kingdom throughout 2017, including the petition hand-in at the Russian Embassy in London in protest of Chechnya's gay purge, where <mask> performed the song alongside campaigners Sir Ian McKellen, Peter Tatchell and Sir Michael Cashman. Appearances at the Isle of Wight Festival with Human Rights activist Shane Enright and a performance at the Isle of Wight's inaugural Pride Festival and Hastings Pride were instigated by <mask> to promote Amnesty's Love Is A Human Right campaign. <mask>'s "What Love Would Want" has since become an ongoing multi-media project to promote love and diversity. Soho
As founder and leader of the Save Soho group, <mask> succeeded in saving iconic venue Madame Jojo's and stopped Transport for London from closing Soho Square to make way for a work depot in the construction of Crossrail 2, as documented in his 2020 feature-length documentary Soho Is...

Dreaming
In 2020, <mask> embarked on his 19th solo album Constellations, conceived with independent dream researcher Kate Alderton, in an exploration of the relationship between music, dreams and art.<mask> and Alderton trained with The Centre for Social Dreaming in Amsterdam and held seven Social Dreaming matrices hosted by The Cockpit Theatre in London. Their work together featured in the 'Independent Association For The Study of Dreams' Spring edition of Dreamtime magazine. Album discography
Jocasta – No Coincidence (1997)
Seeker's Serum (1998)
Lokutara (2004)
En Route (2005)
Secrets of Soho (2006)
Soho Confidential (2006)
Hijo de la Luna (2007)
Clever Ain't Wise (2007)
Another World (2007)
Restrung (2007)
Oaky Dokey (2009)
Sonnet 155 (2010)
Augustine's Oak (2011)
The Soho Hobo (2015)
Sounds To Pictures, Volume One: Conversations (2017)
I Am For You (2017)
Sounds To Pictures, Volume Two: Inspirations (2018)
You Are For Me (2018)
Sounds To Pictures, Volume Three: Constellations (2020)
Jocasta - Ideas Are Bulletproof (2020)
When Staying Alive's The Latest Craze (2020)
Tales From The Tracks (2021)
Maybe Magic (2022)

References

External links
 <mask>'s official website

Waldorf school alumni
Living people
1975 births
English male guitarists
English composers
English male singers
English rock singers
English songwriters
Rhythm guitarists
Rock songwriters
Britpop musicians
The Voice UK contestants

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<mask> (born Bek David Campbell; July 8, 1970) is an American musician, singer, songwriter, and record producer. He rose to fame in the early 1990s with his experimental and lo-fi style, and became known for creating musical collages of wide-ranging genres. He has musically encompassed folk, funk, soul, hip hop, electronic, alternative rock, country, and psychedelia. He has released 14 studio albums (three of which were released on indie labels), as well as several non-album singles and a book of sheet music. Born and raised in Los Angeles, <mask> grew towards hip-hop and folk in his teens and began to perform locally at coffeehouses and clubs. He moved to New York City in 1989 and became involved in the city's anti-folk movement. Returning to Los Angeles in the early 1990s, he cut his breakthrough single "Loser", which became a worldwide hit in 1994, and released his first major album, Mellow Gold, the same year.Odelay, released in 1996, topped critic polls and won several awards. He released the country-influenced, twangy Mutations in 1998, and the funk-infused Midnite Vultures in 1999. The soft-acoustic Sea Change in 2002 showcased a more serious <mask>, and 2005's Guero returned to Odelays sample-based production. The Information in 2006 was inspired by electro-funk, hip hop, and psychedelia; 2008's Modern Guilt was inspired by '60s pop music; and 2014's folk-infused Morning Phase won Album of the Year at the 57th Grammy Awards. His 2017 album, Colors, won awards for Best Alternative Album and Best Engineered Album at the 61st Annual Grammy Awards. His fourteenth studio album, Hyperspace, was released on November 22, 2019. With a pop art collage of musical styles, oblique and ironic lyrics, and postmodern arrangements incorporating samples, drum machines, live instrumentation and sound effects, <mask> has been hailed by critics and the public throughout his musical career as being among the most idiosyncratically creative musicians of 1990s and 2000s alternative rock.Two of <mask>'s most popular and acclaimed recordings are Odelay and Sea Change, both of which were ranked on Rolling Stone list of the 500 greatest albums of all time. The four-time platinum artist has collaborated with several artists and has made several contributions to soundtracks. Early life
<mask> was born Bek David Campbell in Los Angeles, California, on July 8, 1970, the son of American visual artist Bibbe Hansen and Canadian arranger, composer, and conductor David Campbell. Hansen grew up amid Andy Warhol's The Factory art scene of the 1960s in New York City and was a Warhol superstar. She moved to California at age 17 and met Campbell there. <mask>'s maternal grandmother was Jewish, while his maternal grandfather, artist Al Hansen, was of Norwegian descent and was a pioneer in the avant-garde Fluxus movement. <mask> has said that he was "raised celebrating Jewish holidays" and that he considers himself Jewish.<mask> was born in a rooming house near downtown Los Angeles. As a child, he lived in a declining neighborhood near Hollywood Boulevard. He later recalled, "By the time we left there, they were ripping out miles of houses en masse and building low-rent, giant apartment blocks." The lower-class family struggled financially, moving to Hoover and Ninth Street, a neighborhood populated primarily by Koreans and Salvadorian refugees. He was sent for a time to live with his paternal grandparents in Kansas, later remarking that he thought "they were kind of concerned" about his "weird" home life. Since his paternal grandfather was a Presbyterian minister, <mask> grew up influenced by church music and hymns. He also spent time in Europe with his maternal grandfather.After his parents separated when he was 10, <mask> stayed with his mother and brother Channing in Los Angeles, where he was influenced by the city's diverse musical offerings—everything from hip hop to Latin music and his mother's art scene—all of which would later reappear in his work. <mask> obtained his first guitar at 16 and became a street musician, often playing Lead Belly covers at Lafayette Park. During his teens, <mask> discovered the music of Sonic Youth, Pussy Galore, and X, but remained uninterested in most music outside the folk genre until many years into his career. The first contemporary music that made a direct connection with <mask> was hip hop, which he first heard on Grandmaster Flash records in the early 1980s. Growing up in a predominantly Latin district, he found himself the only white child at his school, and quickly learned how to breakdance. When he was 17, <mask> grew fascinated after hearing a Mississippi John Hurt record at a friend's house, and spent hours in his room trying to emulate Hurt's finger-picking techniques. Shortly thereafter, <mask> explored blues and folk music further, discovering Woody Guthrie and Blind Willie Johnson.Feeling like "a total outcast", <mask> dropped out of school after junior high. He later said that although he felt school was important, he felt unsafe there. When he applied to the new performing arts high school downtown, he was rejected. His brother took him to post-Beat jazz places in Echo Park and Silver Lake. He hung out at the Los Angeles City College, perusing records, books and old sheet music in its library. He used a fake ID to sit in on classes there, and he also befriended a literature instructor and his poet wife. He worked at a string of menial jobs, including loading trucks and operating a leaf blower.Career

Early performances and first releases (1988–1993)
<mask> began as a folk musician, switching between country blues, Delta blues, and more traditional rural folk music in his teenage years. He began performing on city buses, often covering Mississippi John Hurt alongside original, sometimes improvisational compositions. "I'd get on the bus and start playing Mississippi John Hurt with totally improvised lyrics. Some drunk would start yelling at me, calling me Axl Rose. So I'd start singing about Axl Rose and the levee and bus passes and strychnine, mixing the whole thing up," he later recalled. He was also in a band called Youthless that hosted Dadaist-inspired freeform events at city coffee shops. "We had Radio Shack mics and this homemade speaker and we'd draft people in the audience to recite comic books or do a beatbox thing, or we'd tie the whole audience up in masking tape," <mask> recalled.In 1989, <mask> caught a bus to New York City with little more than $8.00 and a guitar. He spent the summer attempting to find a job and a place to live with little success. <mask> eventually began to frequent Manhattan's Lower East Side and stumbled upon the tail end of the East Village's anti-folk scene's first wave. <mask> became involved in a loose posse of acoustic musicians—including Cindy Lee Berryhill, Kirk Kelly, Paleface, and Lach, headed by Roger Manning—whose raggedness and eccentricity placed them well outside the acoustic mainstream. "The whole mission was to destroy all the clichés and make up some new ones," said <mask> of his New York years. "Everybody knew each other. You could go up onstage and say anything, and you wouldn't feel weird or feel any pressure."Inspired by that freedom and by the local spoken-word performers, <mask> began to write free-associative, surrealistic songs about pizza, MTV, and working at McDonald's, turning mundane thoughts into songs. <mask> was roommates with Paleface, sleeping on his couch and attending open mic nights together. Daunted by the prospect of another homeless New York winter, <mask> returned to his home of Los Angeles in early 1991. "I was tired of being cold, tired of getting beat up," he later remarked. "It was hard to be in New York with no money, no place [...] I kinda used up all the friends I had. Everyone on the scene got sick of me." Back in Los Angeles, <mask> began to work at a video store in the Silver Lake neighborhood, "doing things like alphabetizing the pornography section".He began performing in arthouse clubs and coffeehouses such as Al's Bar and Raji's. In order to keep indifferent audiences engaged in his music, <mask> would play in a spontaneous, joking manner. "I'd be banging away on a Son House tune and the whole audience would be talking. So maybe out of desperation or boredom, or the audience's boredom, I'd make up these ridiculous songs just to see if people were listening," he later remarked. Virtually an unknown to the public and an enigma to those who met him, <mask> would hop onstage between acts in local clubs and play "strange folk songs", accompanied by "what could best be described as performance art" while sometimes wearing a Star Wars stormtrooper mask. <mask> met someone who offered to help record demos in his living room, and he began to pass cassette tapes around. Eventually, <mask> gained key boosters in Margaret Mittleman, the West Coast's director of talent acquisitions for BMG Music Publishing, and the partners behind independent record label Bong Load Custom Records: Tom Rothrock, Rob Schnapf and Brad Lambert.Schnapf saw <mask> perform at Jabberjaw and felt he would suit their small venture. <mask> expressed a loose interest in hip hop, and Rothrock introduced him to Carl Stephenson, a record producer for Rap-A-Lot Records. In 1992, <mask> visited Stephenson's home to collaborate. The result—the slide-sampling hip hop track "Loser"—was a one-off experiment that <mask> set aside, going back to his folk songs, making his home tapes such as Golden Feelings, and releasing several independent singles. Mellow Gold, and independent albums (1993–1994)
By 1993, <mask> was living in a rat-infested shed near a Los Angeles alleyway with little money. Bong Load issued "Loser" as a single in March 1993 on 12" vinyl with only 500 copies pressed. <mask> felt that "Loser" was mediocre, and only agreed to its release at Rothrock's insistence."Loser" unexpectedly received radio airplay, starting in Los Angeles, where college radio station KXLU was the first to play it, and later on Santa Monica College radio station KCRW, where radio host Chris Douridas played the song on Morning Becomes Eclectic, the station's flagship music program. "I called the record label that day and asked to have <mask> play live on the air," Douridas said. "He came in that Friday, rapped to a tape of "Loser" and did his song 'MTV Makes Me Want to Smoke Crack.'" That night, <mask> performed at the Los Angeles club Cafe Troy to a packed audience and talent scouts from major labels. The song then spread to Seattle through KNDD The End, and KROQ-FM began playing the song on an almost hourly basis. As Bong Load struggled to press more copies of "Loser", <mask> was beset with offers to sign with major labels. During the bidding war in November, <mask> spent several days in Olympia, Washington, recording material with Calvin Johnson of Beat Happening, which would later see release the following year on Johnson's K Records as One Foot in the Grave.A fierce bidding war ensued, with Geffen Records A&R director Mark Kates signing <mask> in December 1993 amid intense competition from Warner Bros. and Capitol. <mask>'s non-exclusive contract with Geffen allowed him an unusual amount of creative freedom, with <mask> remaining free to release material through such small, independent labels as Flipside, which issued the sprawling, 25-track collection of pre-"Loser" recordings titled Stereopathetic Soulmanure on February 22 the following year. By the time <mask> released his first album for Geffen, the low-budget, genre-blending Mellow Gold on March 1, "Loser" was already in the top 40 and its video in MTV's Buzz Bin. "Loser" quickly ascended the charts in the U.S., reaching a peak of number ten on the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart and topping the Modern Rock Tracks chart. The song also charted in the UK, Australia, New Zealand, and throughout Europe. <mask>'s newfound position of attention led to his characterization as the "King of Slackers", as the media dubbed him the center of the new so-called "slacker" movement. Critics, feeling it the essential follow-up to Radiohead's "Creep", found vacantness in the lyrics of "Loser" strongly associated with Generation X, although <mask> himself strongly contested his position as the face of the "slacker" generation: "Slacker my ass.I mean, I never had any slack. I was working a $4-an-hour job trying to stay alive. That slacker stuff is for people who have the time to be depressed about everything." Backlash and Odelay (1994–1997)
Feeling as though he was "constantly trying to prove myself", <mask> suffered a backlash, with skeptics denouncing him as a self-indulgent fake and the latest marketing opportunity. In the summer of 1994, <mask> was struggling and many of his fellow musicians thought he had lost his way. Combined with the song's wildly popular music video and the world tour, <mask> reacted believing the attention could not last, resulting in a status as a "one-hit wonder". At other concerts, crowds were treated to twenty minutes of reggae or Miles Davis or jazz-punk iterations of "Loser".At one-day festivals in California, he surrounded himself with an artnoise combo. The drummer set fire to his cymbals; the lead guitarist "played" his guitar with the strings faced towards his body; and <mask> changed the words to "Loser" so that nobody could sing along. "I can't tell you how many times I was looking at faces that were looking back at me with complete bewilderment—or just pointing and shaking their heads and laughing—while performing during that period," he later recalled. Despite this, <mask> gained the respect of his peers, such as Tom Petty and Johnny Cash, and created an entire wave of bands determined to recapture the Mellow Gold sound. Feeling his previous releases were just collections of demos recorded over the course of several years, <mask> desired to enter the studio and record an album in a continuous linear fashion, which became Odelay. <mask> blends country, blues, rap, jazz and rock on Odelay, the result of a year and half of feverish "cutting, pasting, layering, dubbing, and, of course, sampling". Each day, the

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 musicians started from scratch, often working on songs for 16 hours straight.Odelays conception lies in an unfinished studio album <mask> first embarked on following the success of "Loser", chronicling the difficult time he experienced: "There was a cycle of everyone dying around me," he recalled later. He was constantly recording, and eventually put together an album of somber, orchestrated folk tunes; one that, perhaps, "could have been a commercial blockbuster along with similarly themed work by Smashing Pumpkins, Nine Inch Nails and Nirvana". Instead, <mask> plucked one song from it—the Odelay album closer "Ramshackle"—and shelved the rest ("Brother" and "Feather In Your Cap" were, however, later released as B-sides). <mask> was introduced to the Dust Brothers, producers of the Beastie Boys' album Paul's Boutique, whose cut-and-paste, sample-heavy production suited <mask>'s vision of a more fun, accessible album. After a record executive explained that Odelay would be a "huge mistake", he spent many months thinking "that I'd blown it forever". Odelay was released on June 18, 1996, to commercial success and critical acclaim. The record produced several hit singles, including "Where It's At", "Devils Haircut", and "The New Pollution", and was nominated for the Grammy Award for Album of the Year in 1997, winning a Grammy Award for Best Alternative Music Album as well as a Grammy Award for Best Male Rock Vocal Performance for "Where It's At".During one busy week in January 1997, he landed his Grammy nominations, appeared on Saturday Night Live and Howard Stern, and did a last-minute trot on The Rosie O'Donnell Show. The combined buzz gave Odelay a second wind, leading to an expanded fan base and additional exposure <mask> enjoyed but, like several executives at Geffen, was bewildered by the success of Odelay. He would often get recognized in public, which made him feel strange. "It's just weird. It doesn't feel right. It doesn't feel natural to me. I don't think I was made for that.I was never good at that," he later told Pitchfork. Odelay sold two million copies and put "one-hit wonder" criticisms to rest. During this time, he contributed the song "Deadweight" to the soundtrack of the film A Life Less Ordinary (1997). Mutations and Midnite Vultures (1998–2001)
Having not been in a proper studio since "Deadweight", <mask> felt anxious to "go in and just do some stuff real quick", and compiled several songs he had had for years. <mask> and his bandmates hammered out fourteen songs in fourteen days, although just twelve made it onto the album, 1998's Mutations. <mask> decided on Nigel Godrich, producer for Radiohead's OK Computer the previous year, to be behind the boards for the project. Godrich was leaving the United States for England in a short time, which led to the album's quick production schedule—"No looking back, no doctoring anything".The whole point of the record was to capture the performance of the musicians live, an uncharacteristic far-cry from the cut-and-paste aesthetic of Odelay. Though the album was originally slated for release by Bong Load Records, Geffen intervened and issued the record against <mask>'s wishes. The artist then sought to void his contracts with both record labels, and in turn the labels sued him for breach of contract. The litigation went on for years and it remains unclear to this day if it has ever been completely resolved. <mask> was later awarded Best Alternative Music Performance for Mutations at the 42nd Grammy Awards. Midnite Vultures, <mask>'s next studio effort, was originally recorded as a double album, and more than 25 nearly completed songs were left behind. In the studio, <mask> and producers studied contemporary hip hop and R&B, specifically R. Kelly, in order to embrace and incorporate those influences in the way Al Green and Stax records had done in previous decades.In July 1998, a core group began to assemble at <mask>'s Pasadena home: bassist Justin Meldal-Johnsen, keyboardist Roger Joseph Manning Jr., and producer-engineers Mickey Petralia and Tony Hoffer. Dozens of session players passed through, including <mask>'s father, David Campbell, who played viola and arranged some of the strings. The musicians held communal meals and mountain-bike rides on dusty trails nearby, but remained focused on <mask>'s instructions: to make an up-tempo album that would be fun to play on tour night after night. "I had so many things going on", said <mask> of the recording process. "I had a couple of rooms of computers hooked up, I was doing B sides for Japan, I was programming beats in one room and someone would be cooking dinner in the other room." In November 1999, Geffen released the much-anticipated Midnite Vultures, which attracted confusion: "fans and critics misguidedly worried whether it was serious or a goof," and as a result, The New York Times wrote that the album "never won the audience it deserved". The record was supported by an extensive world tour.For <mask>, it was a return to the high-energy performances that had been his trademark as far back as Lollapalooza. The live stage set included a red bed that descended from the ceiling for the song "Debra", and the touring band was complemented by a brass section. Midnite Vultures was nominated for Best Album at the 43rd Annual Grammy Awards. Sea Change (2002–2003)
In 2000, <mask> and his fiancée, stylist Leigh Limon, ended their nine-year relationship. <mask> lapsed into a period of melancholy and introspection, during which he wrote the bleak, acoustic-based tracks later found on Sea Change. <mask> sat on the songs, not wanting to talk about his personal life; he later said that he wanted to focus on music and "not really strew my baggage across the public lobby". Eventually, however, he decided the songs spoke to a common experience (a relationship breakup), and that it would not seem self-indulgent to record them.In 2001, <mask> drifted back to the songs and called producer Nigel Godrich. Retailers initially predicted that the album would not receive much radio support, but they also believed that <mask>'s maverick reputation and critical acclaim, in addition to the possibility of multiple Grammy nominations, might offset Sea Changes noncommercial sound. Sea Change, issued by Geffen in September 2002, was regardless a commercial hit and critical darling, with Rolling Stone revering it as "the best album <mask> has ever made, [...] an impeccable album of truth and light from the end of love. This is his Blood on the Tracks." The album was later listed by the magazine as one of the best records of the decade and of all-time, and it also placed second on the year's Pazz & Jop Critics Poll. Sea Change yielded a low-key, theater-based acoustic tour, as well as a larger tour with The Flaming Lips as <mask>'s opening and backing band. <mask> was playful and energetic, sometimes throwing in covers of The Rolling Stones, Big Star, The Zombies and The Velvet Underground.Following the release of Sea Change, <mask> felt newer compositions were sketches for something more evolved in the same direction, and wrote nearly 35 more songs in the coming months, keeping demos of them on tapes in a suitcase. During his solo tour, the tapes were left backstage during a stop in Washington, D.C., and <mask> was never able to recover them. It was disheartening to the musician, who felt the two years of songwriting represented something more technically complex. As a result, <mask> took a break and wrote no original compositions in 2003. Feeling as though it might take him a while to "get back to that [songwriting] territory", he entered the studio with Dust Brothers to complete a project that dated back to Odelay. Nearly half of the songs had existed since the 1990s. Guero and The Information (2004–2007)
Guero, <mask>'s eighth studio album, was recorded over the span of nine months during which several significant events occurred in his life: his girlfriend, Marissa Ribisi, became pregnant; they were married; their son, Cosimo, was born; and they moved out of Silver Lake.The collaboration with the Dust Brothers, his second, was notable for their use of high-tech measures to achieve a lo-fi sound. For example, after recording a "sonically perfect" version of a song at one of the nicest recording studios in Hollywood, the Dust Brothers processed it in an Echoplex to create a gritty, reverb-heavy sound: "We did this high-tech recording and ran it through a transistor radio. It sounded too good, that was the problem." Initially due to be released in October 2004, Guero faced delays and did not come out till March 2005, though unmastered copies of the tracks surfaced online in January. Guero debuted at number two on the Billboard 200, selling 162,000 copies, an all-time sales high. Lead single "E-Pro" peaked at number one at Modern Rock radio, making it his first chart-topper since "Loser". <mask>, inspired by the Nintendocore remix scene and feeling a connection with its lo-fi, home-recording method, collaborated with artists 8-Bit and Paza on Hell Yes, an EP issued in February 2005.In December 2005, Geffen also issued Guerolito, a fully reworked version of Guero featuring remixes by the Beastie Boys' Ad-Rock, the Dust Brothers' John King and Scottish electronic duo Boards of Canada. Guerolito combines remixes previously heard as B-sides and new versions of album tracks to make a track-by-track reconfiguration of the album. Also released in 2005 was A Brief Overview, a 12-track promotional-only "History of Beck" compilation CD sampler that featured a combination of older and newer <mask> tracks. The Information, <mask>'s ninth studio album, began production around the same time as Guero, in 2003. Working with producer Nigel Godrich, <mask> built a studio in his garden, where they wrote many of the tracks. "The idea was to get people in a room together recording live, hitting bad notes and screaming," said <mask>, adding that the album is best described as "introspective hip hop". <mask> described the recording process as "painful", noting that he edited down songs constantly and he perhaps recorded the album three times.For the release, <mask> was allowed for the first time to fulfill a long-running wish for an unconventional rollout: he made low-budget videos to accompany each song, packaged the CD with sheets of stickers so buyers could customize the cover, and leaked tracks and videos on his website months ahead of the album's release. Digital download releases automatically downloaded the song's additional video for each single sale, and physical copies came bundled with an additional DVD featuring fifteen videos. Modern Guilt (2008)
In 2007, <mask> released the single "Timebomb", which was nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Solo Rock Vocal Performance. For his next studio effort, his tenth, <mask> tapped Danger Mouse to produce, and the two first met in December 2007 to record. The duo knocked out two tracks in two days, but the notion that the album would be finished in a timely fashion soon evaporated. <mask> had known Danger Mouse casually before, as many of his former musicians ended up working with Danger Mouse's side project, Gnarls Barkley. Still, the musicians were surprised at how well they got along.Following the grueling recording schedule, <mask> was exhausted, calling it "the most intense work I've ever done on anything", relating that he "did at least 10 weeks with no days off, until four or five in the morning every night." <mask>'s original vision was a short 10-track burst with two-minute songs, but the songs gradually grew as he fit 'two years of songwriting into two and a half months." Modern Guilt (2008) was "full of off-kilter rhythms and left-field breakdowns, with an overall 1960s vibe." Record Club, Song Reader, production work and non-album singles (2009–2013)

Modern Guilt was the final release in <mask>'s contract with Geffen Records. <mask>, then 38, had held the contract since his early 20s. Released from his label contract and going independent, <mask> began working more heavily on his own seven-year-old label, which went through a variety of names. His focus on smaller, more quixotic projects, <mask> moonlighted as a producer, working with artists such as Charlotte Gainsbourg, Thurston Moore and Stephen Malkmus.<mask> worked for five or six days a week at the small studio on his property in Malibu, and founded Record Club, a project whereby an entire classic album—by The Velvet Underground, Leonard Cohen, INXS, Yanni—would be covered by another singer in the span of a single day. <mask> provided four songs for the film Scott Pilgrim vs. the World (2010), each attributed to the title character's fictional band, Sex Bob-Omb. <mask> also collaborated with Philip Glass, Jack White, Tobacco of Black Moth Super Rainbow, Jamie Lidell, Seu Jorge, Childish Gambino, and The Lonely Island. Song Reader, a project <mask> released in December 2012, is 20 songs presented only as sheet music, in the hopes that enterprising musicians will record their own versions. The idea of Song Reader came about nearly fifteen years prior, shortly after the release of Odelay. When sent a book of transcribed sheet music for that album, <mask> decided to play through it and grew interested in the world before recorded sound. He aimed to keep the arrangements as open as possible, to re-create the simplicity of the standards, and became preoccupied with creating only pieces that could fit within the Great American Songbook.In 2013 <mask> began playing special Song Reader concerts with a variety of guests and announced he was working on a record of Song Reader material with other musicians as well as possibly a compilation of fan versions. In the summer of 2013, <mask> was reported to be working on two new studio albums: one a more self-contained acoustic disc in the vein of One Foot in the Grave and another described as a "proper follow-up" to Modern Guilt. <mask> expected to release both albums independently, and released two standalone singles over the course of the summer: the electro ballad "Defriended" and the chorus-heavy "I Won't Be Long". A third

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 single, "Gimme", appeared on September 17. Morning Phase, Colors, and Hyperspace (2014–present)

In October 2013, <mask> signed to Capitol Records. On January 20, 2014, <mask> released the track "Blue Moon", which was to be the lead single for his twelfth studio album, Morning Phase. On February 4, second single "Waking Light" was released, just prior to the official release of Morning Phase on February 21, 2014.For the recording of the album, <mask> reunited with many of the same musicians with whom he had worked on the critically acclaimed 2002 album Sea Change, and likely because of this, it has been noted that the two albums have a similar genre. On February 8, 2015, at the 57th Annual Grammy Awards, Morning Phase won three Grammys: Best Engineered Album, Non-Classical; Best Rock Album; and Album of the Year. Upon receiving the Album of the Year award, the album beat out Pharrell Williams's G I R L, Beyoncé's self-titled album, Sam Smith's In the Lonely Hour, and Ed Sheeran's x. In the time after Morning Phases release and general critical success, <mask> mentioned that he had been working on another album at around the same time, but that the new album would be more of a pop record. Shortly after Morning Phases Grammy wins, on June 15, 2015, <mask> released the first single titled "Dreams" off this upcoming thirteenth studio album. "I was really trying to make something that would be good to play live," he said shortly after its release. However, no further word was heard from <mask> pertaining to the release of the album.On June 2, 2016, almost a year after the initial release of "Dreams", <mask> released a new single titled "Wow", along with a lyric video of the song and an announcement that his still untitled album would be released on October 21, 2016. In September 2016, the album was delayed with no new release date announced and, on September 24, <mask> said he did not know "when it's coming out. It's probably in a few months." Once again, however, no further singles were released and no new release date was scheduled for the album. On September 8, 2017, <mask> released the single "Dear Life", which was quickly followed up with the official release of "Up All Night" on September 18. Colors was released on October 13, 2017. It was recorded at co-executive producer Greg Kurstin's Los Angeles studio, with <mask> and Kurstin playing nearly every instrument themselves.The experimental pop-fused record received generally positive reviews from critics. On July 18, 2018, <mask> performed the title track Colors, and the first single "Wow" on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. On April 15, 2019, <mask> released a single co-produced with Pharrell Williams titled "Saw Lightning" from his fourteenth studio album, titled Hyperspace. The song "Dark Places" was released on November 6, with the album being released on November 22. Collaborations and contributions
In 1999, <mask> contributed to a tribute album for Bruce Haack and Esther Nelson and their label Dimension 5 Records. The album, Dimension Mix, released in 2005, was a benefit for Cure Autism Now that was produced by Ross Harris, an early collaborator who designed the artwork for Mellow Gold. On June 20, 2009, <mask> announced that he was starting an experiment called Record Club, in which he and other musicians would record cover versions of entire albums in one day.The first album covered by Beck's Record Club was The Velvet Underground & Nico. Starting on June 18, the club began posting covers of songs from the album on Thursday evenings, each with its own video. On September 4, 2009, Beck announced the second Record Club album, Songs of Leonard Cohen. Contributors included MGMT, Devendra Banhart, Andrew Stockdale of Wolfmother and Binki Shapiro of Little Joy. In the third Record Club venture, Wilco, Feist, Jamie Lidell and James Gadson joined Beck to cover Skip Spence's Oar. The first song, "Little Hands", was posted on Beck's website on November 12, 2009. The Record Club has since covered albums by INXS and Yanni.On June 19, 2009, <mask> announced Planned Obsolescence, a weekly DJ set put together by <mask> or guest DJs. Soon after, on July 7, <mask> announced that his website would be featuring "extended informal conversations with musicians, artists, filmmakers, and other various persons" in a section called Irrelevant Topics. Then, on July 12, he added a section called Videotheque, which he said would contain "promotional videos from each album, as well as live clips, TV show appearances and other rarities". Also in 2009, <mask> collaborated with Charlotte Gainsbourg on her album IRM, which was released in January 2010. <mask> wrote the music, co-wrote the lyrics, and produced and mixed the album. The lead single, "Heaven Can Wait", is a duet by <mask> and Gainsbourg. In late February 2010, it was announced that electronic artist Tobacco of Black Moth Super Rainbow had collaborated with <mask> on two songs, "Fresh Hex" and "Grape Aerosmith", on his upcoming album Maniac Meat.Tobacco revealed that in making the album, <mask> sent the vocal parts to him, and that they had never actually met. In March 2010, <mask> revealed that he had produced songs for the new Jamie Lidell album, Compass. In the summer of 2010, <mask> contributed songs to both The Twilight Saga: Eclipse soundtrack, with "Let's Get Lost" (a duet with Bat for Lashes), and True Blood (HBO Original Series Soundtrack, Vol. 2), with "Bad Blood". He also contributed songs to the soundtrack of Edgar Wright's film Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, which was released in August 2010. In 2011, he collaborated with Seu Jorge on a track titled "Tropicália (Mario C. 2011 Remix)" for the Red Hot Organization's most recent charitable album Red Hot+Rio 2, a follow-up to the 1996 album Red Hot + Rio. Proceeds from the sales will be donated to raise awareness and money to fight AIDS/HIV and related health and social issues.He also contributed on the song "Attracted to Us" on Turtleneck & Chain, the second album from The Lonely Island. Also in 2011, <mask> produced a solo album by Thurston Moore of Sonic Youth called Demolished Thoughts. An album he produced for Stephen Malkmus and the Jicks, Mirror Traffic, was released in August 2011. In October 2011, it was widely reported that <mask> and producer Hector Castillo were collaborating with American composer Philip Glass to produce a remix album of the composer's works in honor of his 75th birthday. The album, Rework Philip Glass Remixed, was released on October 23, 2012, to critical acclaim, and featured <mask> as both a curator and a performer. In particular, Pitchfork described <mask>'s 22-minute contribution to the album, "NYC: 73–78", as "a fantasia ... the most startling and original piece of music with <mask>'s name on it in a while, and the first new work to bear his own spirit in even longer." Reflecting on <mask>'s contribution to the album, Glass remarked that he was "impressed by the novelty and freshness of a lot of the ideas".Beyond his work as a performer, <mask> acted as the album's curator, bringing together a diverse collection of artists—including Amon Tobin, Tyondai Braxton, Nosaj Thing, and Memory Tapes—whose work had also been influenced by Glass. In December 2012, an interactive iPhone app titled "Rework_" was released to complement the album. <mask> has contributed three new songs—"Cities", "Touch the People" and "Spiral Staircase"—to the video game Sound Shapes for PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, and PlayStation Vita. <mask> collaborated on two songs for Childish Gambino's "Royalty" mixtape in 2012. In 2014, <mask> collaborated with Sia for the song "Moonquake Lake", which is featured in the soundtrack for the 2014 Annie film. In 2015, <mask> collaborated with former Fun. frontman Nate Ruess on the single "What This World Is Coming To", which was one of the Grammy-winning artist's many works featured on his debut solo album Grand Romantic released in June 2015.He also collaborated with electronic dance music duo The Chemical Brothers on their most recent album Born in the Echoes, providing lead vocals and also credited in writing for the track "Wide Open", released in July. In 2016, <mask> collaborated with French electronic music band M83, providing vocals for the song "Time Wind" from their album Junk. He was also featured on "Tiny Cities" by Flume. He also collaborated with Lady Gaga on the song "Dancin' in Circles", from her 2016 album Joanne. In 2017, <mask> appeared in the multiple award-winning film The American Epic Sessions, directed by Bernard MacMahon. He recorded "14 Rivers, 14 Floods" backed by a full gospel choir, live onto the first electrical sound recording system from the 1920s. In 2019, <mask> worked with Jenny Lewis on the song "Do Si Do" from her album On the Line.He also collaborated with Cage the Elephant on the song "Night Running" from their album Social Cues. In 2020, <mask> collaborated with virtual band Gorillaz to create the song "The Valley of the Pagans" which appears on Song Machine, Season One: Strange Timez. In 2021, <mask> collaborated with Paul McCartney to make his hit single "Find My Way" on the album McCartney III Imagined. As for festival stages the artist was inter alia part of the Newport Folk Festival in July. Musical style
<mask>'s musical style has been considered alternative and indie. He has played many of the instruments in his music himself. <mask> has also done some remixes for fellow artists, notably David Bowie and Björk.He has been known to synthesize several musical elements together in his music, including folk, psychedelia, electronic, country, Latin music, hip hop, funk, soul, blues, noise music, jazz, and many types of rock. He has also taken music from Los Angeles as a reference point in his songs. Pitchfork Media applauded Midnite Vultures, saying, "<mask> wonderfully blends Prince, Talking Heads, Paul's Boutique, 'Shake Your Bon-Bon', and Mathlete on Midnite Vultures, his most consistent and playful album yet." The review commented that his mix of "goofy piety and ambiguous intent" helped the album. A <mask> song called "Harry Partch", a tribute to the composer of the same name and his "corporeal" music, employs Partch's 43-tone scale. Art career
During 1998, <mask>'s art collaborations with his grandfather Al Hansen were featured in an exhibition titled "Beck & Al Hansen: Playing With Matches", which showcased solo and collaborative collage, assemblage, drawing and poetry works. The show toured from the Santa Monica Museum of Art to galleries in New York City and Winnipeg, Manitoba, in Canada.A catalog of the show was published by Plug in Editions/Smart Art Press. Personal life
<mask>'s nine-year relationship with designer Leigh Limon and their subsequent breakup is said to have inspired his 2002 album, Sea Change. He wrote most of the songs for the album in one week after the breakup. In April 2004, shortly before the birth of their son Cosimo Henri, <mask> married actress Marissa Ribisi, the twin sister of actor Giovanni Ribisi. Their daughter, Tuesday, was born in 2007. <mask> filed for divorce from Ribisi on February 15, 2019. Their divorce was finalized on September 3, 2021.<mask> has described himself as both Jewish and a Scientologist. Through his parents, he has been involved in Scientology for most of his life; his ex-wife, Marissa, is also a second-generation Scientologist. He publicly acknowledged his affiliation for the first time in a New York Times Magazine interview on March 6, 2005. Further confirmation came in an interview with the Sunday Tribune in June 2005, where he stated, "Yeah, I'm a Scientologist. My father has been a Scientologist for about 35 years, so I grew up in and around it." Despite this, <mask> disavowed previous reports of his being a Scientologist in a November 2019 interview with the Sydney Morning Herald and said, "I think there's a misconception that I'm a Scientologist. I'm not a Scientologist.I don't have any connection or affiliation with it." He added that "I was raised celebrating Jewish holidays, and I consider myself Jewish." As mentioned above, <mask>'s mother is former Andy Warhol The Factory collaborator, artist/writer/performer Bibbe Hansen. His siblings are fiber artist Channing Hansen (born in 1972 in Los Angeles, California) and poet Rain Whittaker. <mask> suffered a spinal injury while filming the music video for 2005's "E-Pro". The incident was severe enough to curtail his touring schedule for a few years, but he has since recovered. Appearances in media
The 1986 punk rock musical film Population: 1, starring Tomata du Plenty of The Screamers, features a young <mask> in a small nonspeaking role.<mask> also appears in Southlander (2001), an American independent film by Steve Hanft and Ross Harris. <mask> has performed on Saturday Night Live seven times. During his 2006 performance in the Hugh Laurie episode, <mask> was accompanied by the puppets that had been used onstage during his world tour. He has made two cameo appearances as himself on Saturday Night Live: one in a sketch about medicinal marijuana, and one in a VH1 Behind the Music parody that featured "Fat Albert & the Junkyard Gang". <mask> performed a guest voice as himself on Matt Groening's animated show Futurama, in the episode "Bendin' in the Wind". He performed in episode 10 of the fourth season of The Larry Sanders Show, in which the producer character Artie (Rip Torn) referred to him as a "hillbilly from outer space". He also made a very brief voice appearance in the 1998 cartoon feature film The Rugrats Movie, and guest-starred as himself in a 1997 episode of Space Ghost Coast to Coast titled "Edelweiss".On January 22, 2010, <mask> appeared on the last episode of The Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien as a backup guitarist for a Will Ferrell-led rendition of Lynyrd Skynyrd's "Free Bird" alongside ZZ Top guitarist Billy Gibbons, Ben Harper, and O'Brien himself on guitar. On March 1, 2014, <mask> was the musical guest on a Saturday Night Live episode hosted by Jim Parsons. <mask> also appeared, as himself, in the 2017 film The Circle, giving a musical performance of the song

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<mask> (died 18 May 1554), a Welshman from Llanigon, Brecknockshire, was a scholar of Italian and Italian history, politician and a clerk of the Privy Council under Edward VI. <mask> was executed for treason after the collapse of Wyatt's Rebellion under Mary I. Early years
<mask> was a native of Llanigon, and brother to Sir <mask>, clerk of Meline, Pembrokeshire and of Llanigon as shown in the Heraldic Visitations of Wales by Lewis Dwnn. His biographer in The History of Parliament has estimated his birth year as "by 1524". He was presumably educated at Oxford University, where a person of both his name was admitted bachelor of the canon law on 2 December 1529. He may also have been the <mask> who, along with two other commissioners, inquired into and reported on 27 January 1534 to <mask> from Ludlow on certain extortions in Radnorshire and the Welsh marches. Early work
In 1544 he was, according to his own account "constrained by misfortune to abandon the place of his nativity", perhaps for his religious opinions.He spent the next five years abroad, chiefly in Italy, and is mentioned in 1545 as being commissioned to pay some money to Sir Anthony Browne in Venice. In February 1547, when the news of the death of Henry VIII reached Italy, <mask> was at Bologna, where, in the course of a discussion with some Italian gentlemen, he defended the personal character and public policy of the deceased king. He subsequently drew up a narrative of the discussion, and an Italian version was issued abroad in 1552. There is a copy in the British Library bearing the title, II Pellegrino Inglese ne'l quale si defende l' innocente & la sincera vita de'l pio & religioso re d' Inghilterra Henrico ottauo. He also wrote, but did not publish, an English version, to which he added a dedication to the Italian poet Pietro Aretino, and a copy of this, possibly in <mask>'s own writing, is preserved among the Cottonian MSS. at the British Museum. <mask>'s work is specially valuable as representing the popular view of the character of Henry VIII current in England at the time of his death.It is not free from mistakes, but the Victorian historian James Anthony Froude wrote of it that it had "the accuracies and the inaccuracies" which might be naturally expected "in any account of a series of intricate events given by memory without the assistance of documents". From Bologna <mask> appears to have gone to Padua, whence on 3 February 1549 he forwarded to his "verie good friende Maister [John] Tamwoorth at Venice" an Italian primer which he had undertaken at his request. This Tamworth showed to Sir Walter Mildmay, who, approving of it, "caused it to be put in printe", under the title of Principal Rules of the Italian Grammer, with a Dictionarie for the better understandynge of Boccace, Petrarcha, and Dante, gathered into this tongue by <mask>. It was printed by Berthelet in 1550, subsequent editions being brought out by H. Wykes in 1560 and 1567, and by T. Powell in 1562. This was the first work of its kind in English. During the summer of 1549 <mask> appears to have returned to England "highly fam'd for his travels through France and Italy", and bringing home with him another work, the result of his Italian studies, which was also published by Berthelet under the title The Historie of Italie ... (1549). This work was dedicated, under the date of 20 September 1549, to John Dudley, Earl of Warwick.It is believed to have been suppressed and publicly burnt, probably after <mask>'s execution, yet it was twice reprinted by <mask>, in 1561 and (with cuts) in 1562. He was elected Member of Parliament for Old Sarum in the parliament called in 1549, but did not serve the entire term. Appointments to Edward VI
On 19 April 1550, partly owing to his knowledge of modern languages, but chiefly perhaps for his defence of the late king, <mask> was appointed one of the clerks of the privy council, and was sworn in on the same day at Greenwich. Possibly a portion of the register of the council for the next year is in his autograph. The new clerk had "his fortunes to make", and, though not a spiritual person, he 'greedily affected a certain good prebend of St. Paul's', which, doubtless at his instigation, the council on 23 June 1550 agreed to settle on him. Ridley, who had intended this preferment for his chaplain Grindal, stigmatised <mask> as "an ungodly man", and resisted the grant, but without success; for when the prebend fell vacant, it was conveyed to the king, "for the furnishing of his stables", and its emoluments granted to <mask>. This "unreasonable piece of covetousness" was, in John Strype's opinion, "the greatest blur sticking upon" <mask>'s character.Among many other grants which <mask> received was that of the tolls of Presteign, Builth, and 'Elvael' in Radnorshire on 27 December 1551, and the parsonage of Presteign with the patronage of the vicarage on 26 October 1552. These were in addition to a sum of £248 previously given him "by waie of rewarde", 7 January 1551 In April 1551 he was appointed member of the embassy which, with the Marquis of Northampton at its head, proceeded in June to the French king, to negotiate the marriage of Princess Elizabeth of France to Edward. To cover his expenses, he was granted imprests amounting to £300; and on 26 June he was despatched to England with letters to the council asking for further instructions, with which he probably returned to France. While clerk of the council <mask> became a sort of political instructor to the young king, who appears to have narrowly watched the proceedings of his council, and, without the knowledge of its members, sought <mask>'s opinion on their policy and on the principles of government generally. The nature of this teaching may be gathered from a series of eighty-five questions drawn by <mask> for the king, and still preserved, along with a prefatory letter, in his own writing at the British Museum; they were printed in Strype's Ecclesiastical Memorials. Another autograph manuscript in the same collection contains six political discourses confidentially written for the king. These were published in their entirety, while that treating of foreign affairs was summarised by Burnet, and printed by Froude.Some further commonplaces of state drawn up by <mask> for the king's use are also printed in Strype. Froude suggests that <mask>'s teaching, if not his hand, is also perceptible in the king's journal. He also dedicated to the king as "a poore newe yeres gift", probably in January 1551, an English translation from the Italian of Josaphat Barbaro's account of his voyages to the east, which had been first published in Venice in 1543. With an introduction by Lord Stanley of Alderley, <mask>'s translation was published by the Hakluyt Society in a volume of Travels to Tana and Persia (London, 1873). <mask>'s manuscript is still preserved at the British Library. He was MP for Downton, Wiltshire in the young king's last parliament, called in March 1553. Charges of treason
Influential as was <mask>'s position at court, it was not free from danger, and, realising this, he vainly asked to be sent on government business to Venice.<ref> cites: Cal.State Papers, Dom. ;; 1547–80, p. 43).</ref> On the accession of Mary, <mask> lost all his preferments, including his employment at court, because "he had (it is said) imbibed the principles of Christopher Goodman against the regimen of women, and too freely vented them". He attached himself to the ultra-Protestant party, and according to Bale designed the murder of Bishop Gardiner, but of this there is no evidence. He took an active part in Sir <mask>'s conspiracy. On 27 December 1553 he left London for Mohuns Ottery in Devonshire, the residence of Sir Peter Carew, who was the leader of the disaffected in the west; but when Carew failed to raise the west, <mask> on 2 February 1554 fled, going "from county to county, in disguise, not knowing where to conceal himself; and yet he did not desist from sending seditious bills and letters to his friends declaring his treasonable intentions, in order that he might induce them to join him in his treasons". Probably his intention was to escape to Wales, but he went no further than Gloucestershire, with which county he had some previous connection. He was arrested, and on 20 February he was committed to the Tower along with Sir Nicholas Throckmorton.Conscious "that he should suffer a shameful death", he attempted on the 26th to commit suicide "by thrusting a knife into his body under his paps, but the wound did not prove mortal". He was put on the rack with the view of extracting some statement implicating the Princess Elizabeth, and it was probably to prevent this that he attempted suicide. The chief evidence against him, apart from his sojourn at Sir Peter Carew's house, was the confession of a fellow conspirator, Sir Nicholas Arnold, who alleged that on the announcement of the proposed marriage between Mary and Philip II of Spain, <mask> "put various arguments against such marriage in writing", and finally on 22 December suggested that the difficulty might be solved by asking one John Fitzwilliams to kill the queen. This "devyse" was communicated to Sir <mask>, who, when suing for pardon during his own trial, said that he had indignantly repudiated it. Throckmorton, however, when his own trial came on, traversed the allegations of Arnold, who (he said) sought "to discharge himself if he could so transfer the devise to <mask>". In support of his statement he asked that the court should examine Fitzwilliams, who was prepared to give evidence, but was denied audience, at the request of the attorney-general. When, however, <mask>'s own trial came on at the Guildhall on 8 May, he was found guilty of treason; and, on the 18th, was drawn upon a sled to Tyburn, where he was hanged, beheaded, and quartered, making "a right godly end", saying at his death that "he died for his country".On the following day his head was set on London Bridge "and iii. quarters set over Crepullgate", whereabouts he had perhaps previously lived. In a private act of parliament, passed on the accession of Elizabeth, <mask>'s name was included among those whose heirs and children were restored in blood after their attainder, but it is not known whether he was married or had a family. Appreciation
<mask> was a shrewd observer of men and affairs, but, according to Wood, had a "hot fiery spirit", which was probably the cause of most of his troubles. He was certainly "one of the most learned of his time". His Italian grammar and dictionary were the first works of the kind published in English, while his History of Italy was formerly held in the highest esteem for its comprehensive account of the chief Italian states. All his works are remarkable for their methodical arrangement, his style is always lucid, and his English shows "much better orthography than that current at a later period".Notes

References

Attribution

Further reading
 Edward Chaney, The Evolution of the Grand Tour'', 2nd ed. (Routledge, 2000). 1554 deaths
English translators
Welsh expatriates in Italy
Executed Welsh people
People executed under the Tudors for treason against England
Clerks of the Privy Council
Year of birth unknown
16th-century Welsh people
People executed by Tudor England by hanging, drawing and quartering
People from Radnorshire
People executed under Mary I of England
People executed by Tudor England by decapitation
Welsh politicians convicted of crimes

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Miles Thomas
William Thomas
Thomas Cromwell
Thomas
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Thomas
William Thomas
Thomas
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Thomas Marshe
Thomas
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Thomas Wyatt
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Thomas Wyatt
William Thomas
Thomas
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Thomas


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<mask> (c. 1572 – 25 August 1632) was an English Elizabethan dramatist and pamphleteer, a versatile and prolific writer, whose career spanned several decades and brought him into contact with many of the period's most famous dramatists. Early life
Little is known of <mask>'s early life or origins. From references in his pamphlets, <mask> is believed to have been born in London around 1572, but nothing is known for certain about his youth. His last name suggests Dutch ancestry, and his work, some of which is translated from Latin, suggests that he attended grammar school. <mask> embarked on a career as a theatre writer in the middle 1590s. His handwriting is found in the manuscript of Sir <mask>, though the date of his involvement is undetermined. More certain is his work as a playwright for the Admiral's Men of Philip Henslowe, in whose account book he is first mentioned in early 1598.While there are plays connected with his name performed as early as 1594, it is not clear that he was the original author; his work often involved revision and updating. Between 1598 and 1602, he was involved in about forty plays for Henslowe, usually in collaboration. To these years belong the collaborations with Ben Jonson and John Marston, which presumably contributed to the War of the Theatres in 1600 and 1601. But <mask> is credited as the sole author of The Shoemaker's Holiday (1599), his acknowledged masterpiece – a boisterous, rowdy comedy of London life as seen through the eyes of a romanticist. Francis Meres includes <mask> in his list of notable playwrights in 1598. For Jonson, however, <mask> was a bumbling hack, a "dresser of plays about town"; Jonson lampooned <mask> as Demetrius Fannius in Poetaster and as Anaides in Cynthia's Revels. <mask>'s riposte, Satiromastix, performed both by the Lord Chamberlain's Men and the child actors of Paul's, casts Jonson as an affected, hypocritical Horace.Satiromastix marks the end of the "poetomachia"; in 1603, Jonson and <mask> collaborated again, on a pageant for the Royal Entry, delayed from the coronation of James I, for which <mask> also wrote the festival book The Magnificent Entertainment. After this commission, however, the early Jacobean period was notably mixed for the author. In late 1602, he appears to have broken his association with Henslowe, for unknown reasons. He wrote for Worcester's Men for a time, then returned to the Admiral's Men (now patronized by Prince Henry) to produce The Honest Whore, an apparent success. But the failures of The Whore of Babylon (1607) and If This Be Not a Good Play, the Devil is in It (1611) left him crestfallen; the latter play was rejected by Prince Henry's Men before failing for Queen Anne's Men at the Red Bull Theatre. Legal troubles
In 1612, <mask>'s lifelong problem with debt (he had earlier, 1599, been imprisoned in Poultry Compter) reached a crisis when he was imprisoned in the King's Bench Prison on a debt of forty pounds to the father of John Webster. He remained there for seven years, and despite the support of associates such as Edward Alleyn and Endymion Porter, these years were difficult; <mask> reports that the experience turned his hair white.He continued as pamphleteer throughout his years in prison. Later years
On release, he resumed writing plays, now with collaborators both from his generation (John Day and John Webster) and slightly younger writers (John Ford and Philip Massinger). Among these plays is one, Keep the Widow Waking (1624, with Ford, Webster, and William Rowley), which dramatized two recent murders in Whitechapel. In the latter half of the decade, <mask> turned once more to pamphlet-writing, revamping old work and writing a new preface to his most popular tract, The Bellman of London. <mask> published no more work after 1632, and he is usually associated with the "<mask>, householder", who was buried at St. James's in Clerkenwell that year. Work

Drama
When <mask> began writing plays, <mask> and <mask> were still alive; when he died, John Dryden had already been born. Like most dramatists of the period, he adapted as well as he could to changing tastes; however, even his work in the fashionable Jacobean genres of satire and tragicomedy bears the marks of his Elizabethan training: its humour is genial, its action romantic.The majority of his surviving plays are comedies or tragicomedies. Most of <mask>'s work is lost. His apparently disordered life, and his lack of a firm connection (such as Shakespeare or Fletcher had) with a single company, may have militated against the preservation or publication of manuscripts. Close to twenty of his plays were published during his lifetime; of these, more than half are comedies, with three significant tragedies: Lust's Dominion (presumably identical to The Spanish Moor's Tragedy, written with Day, Marston, and William Haughton, 1600), The Witch of Edmonton (with Ford and Rowley, 1621), and The Virgin Martyr (with Massinger, 1620). The first phase of <mask>'s career is documented in Henslowe's diary. His name appears for the first time in connection with "fayeton" (presumably, Phaeton) in 1598. There follow, before 1599, payments for work on The Triplicity of Cuckolds, The Mad Man's Morris, and Hannibal and Hermes.He worked on these plays with Robert Wilson, Henry Chettle, and Michael Drayton. With Drayton, he also worked on history plays on the French civil wars, Earl Godwin, and others. In 1599, he wrote plays on Troilus and Cressida, Agamemnon (with Chettle), and Page of Plymouth. In that year, also, he collaborated with Chettle, Jonson, and Marston on a play about Robert II. 1599 also saw the production of three plays that have survived. It was during this year that he produced his most famous work, The Shoemaker's Holiday, or the Gentle Craft, categorised by modern critics as citizen comedy. This play reflects his concerns with the daily lives of ordinary Londoners, and contains the poem The Merry Month of May.This play exemplifies his intermingling of everyday subjects with the fantastical, embodied in this case by the rise of a craftsman to Mayor and the involvement of an unnamed but idealised king in the concluding banquet. Old Fortunatus and Patient Grissel, the latter on the folkloric theme treated by Chaucer in The Clerk's Tale. In 1600, he worked on The Seven Wise Masters, Fortune's Tennis, Cupid and Psyche, and Fair Constance of Rome. The next year, in addition to Satiromastix, he worked on a play possibly about Sebastian of Portugal and Blurt, Master Constable, on which he may have worked with <mask>. In 1602 he revised two older plays, Pontius Pilate (1597) and the second part of Sir John Oldcastle. He also collaborated on Caesar's Fall, Jephthah, A Medicine for a Curst Wife, Sir <mask> (on Wyatt's rebellion), and Christmas Comes But Once a Year. Except for Blurt, which was performed by the Blackfriars Children, the earlier of these works were performed at the Admiral's Fortune Theatre.After 1602, <mask> split his attention between pamphlets and plays; thus, his dramatic output decreased considerably. He and Middleton wrote The Honest Whore for the Fortune in 1604, and <mask> wrote a sequel himself the following year. The <mask> collaboration The Family of Love also dates from this general era. <mask> and Webster wrote Westward Ho and Northward Ho for Paul's Boys. The failures of the anti-Catholic Whore of Babylon and tragicomic If This Be Not... have already been noted. The Roaring Girl, a city comedy that incorporates the real-life contemporary figure 'Moll Cutpurse', otherwise known as Mary Frith, was a collaboration with Middleton in 1611. In the same year, he also wrote another tragicomedy called Match Me in London.During his imprisonment, <mask> did not write plays. After his release, he collaborated with Day on Guy of Warwick (1620), The Wonder of a Kingdom (1623), and The Bellman of Paris (1623). With Ford, he wrote The Sun's Darling (1624), The Fairy Knight (1624), and The Bristow Merchant (1624). He also wrote the tragicomedy The Noble Spanish Soldier (1622) and later reworked material from this play into a comedic form to produce The Welsh Ambassador (1623). Another play, The Late Murder of the Son upon the Mother, or Keep the Widow Waking, a dramatization of two recent murders in Whitechapel, occasioned a suit for slander heard in the Star Chamber. That play is lost. <mask>'s plays of the 1620s were staged at the large amphitheatres on the north side of London, most commonly at the Red Bull; only two of his later plays were seen at the more exclusive, indoor Cockpit Theatre, and these two were presumably produced by Christopher Beeston, who operated both the Red Bull and the Cockpit.By the 1620s, the Shoreditch amphitheaters had become deeply identified with the louder and less reputable categories of play-goers, such as apprentices. <mask>'s type of play appears to have suited them perfectly. Full of bold action, careless about generic differences, and always (in the end) complementary to the values and beliefs of such audiences, his drama carried some of the vigorous optimism of Elizabethan dramaturgy into the Caroline era. Prose
He exhibited a similar vigour in his pamphlets, which span almost his whole writing career, and which treat a great variety of subjects and styles. <mask>'s first spate of pamphleteering began in 1603, perhaps during a period when plague had closed the theaters. His first was The Wonderfull Yeare, a journalistic account of the death of Elizabeth, accession of James I, and the 1603 plague, that combined a wide variety of literary genres in an attempt to convey the extraordinary events of that year ('wonderful' meaning astonishing, not excellent). It succeeded well enough to prompt two more plague pamphlets, News From Gravesend and The Meeting of Gallants at an Ordinary.The Double PP (1606) is an anti-Catholic tract written in response to the Gunpowder Plot. News From Hell (1606) is an homage to and continuation of Nash's Pierce Penniless. The Seven Deadly Sins of London (1606) is another plague pamphlet. After 1608, <mask> produced his most popular pamphlets: a series of "cony-catching" pamphlets that described the various tricks and deceits of confidence-men and thieves, including thieves' cant. These pamphlets, which <mask> often updated and reissued, include The Belman of London (1608, now The Bellman of London), Lanthorne and Candle-light, Villainies Discovered by Candlelight, and English Villainies. They owe their form and many of their incidents to similar pamphlets by Robert Greene. Other pamphlets are journalistic in form and offer vivid pictures of Jacobean London.The Dead Term (1608) describes Westminster during summer vacation. The Guls Horne-Booke (1609, now The Gull's Hornbook) describes the life of city gallants, including a valuable account of behaviour in the London theatres. Work for Armourers (1609) and The Artillery Garden (1616) (the latter in verse) describe aspects of England's military industries. London Look Back (1630) treats 1625, the year of James's death, while Wars, Wars, Wars (1628) describes European turmoil. As might be expected, <mask> turned his experience in prison to profitable account. Dekker His Dreame (1620) is a long poem describing his despairing confinement; he contributed six prison-based sketches to the sixth edition (1616) of Sir <mask>'s Characters; and he revised Lanthorne and Candlelight to reflect what he had learned in prison. <mask>'s pamphlets, even more than his plays, reveal signs of hasty and careless composition.Yet the best of them can still entertain, and almost all of them offer valuably precise depictions of everyday life in the Jacobean period. <mask>'s poetry entered into modern popular song (although almost unnoticeably) when some of the lyrics of the poem "Golden Slumbers", from <mask>'s play Patient Grissel, were included by Paul McCartney in the Beatles' 1969 song "Golden Slumbers". References
Bednarz, James P. Shakespeare and the Poets' War. New York: Columbia University Press, 2001. Bowers, F. – ‘The Dramatic Works of <mask>’, In 4 Volumes – Cambridge University Press – 1961
Chapman, L.S. – ‘<mask> and the Traditions of the English Drama’ – Lang – 1985
Gasper, J. – ‘The Dragon and the Dove: The Plays of <mask>’ – Oxford: Clarendon – 1990.Gregg, Kate. <mask>: A Study in Economic and Social Backgrounds. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1924. G.R. Hibbard, ed., Three Elizabethan pamphlets by Robert Greene, <mask>, <mask> (Folcroft, PA: Folcroft Library Editions, 1972). Hunt, Mary. <mask>: A Study.New York: Columbia University Press, 1911. McLuskie, Kathleen. <mask> and Heywood: Professional Dramatists. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1993. Wilson, F. P, editor. The Plague Pamphlets of <mask>. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1925.References

External links

 The Noble Spanish Soldier (1622) at Project Gutenberg
 The Wonderful Year (1603) at University of Oregon
 A Knight's Conjuring (1607) at Google Books
 The Gull's Hornbook (1609, modern spelling) at Big Wind
 The Guls Horn-Booke (1609, orig. spelling) at Renascence Editions

1570s births
1632 deaths
16th-century male writers
17th-century English male writers
16th-century English dramatists and playwrights
17th-century English dramatists and playwrights
English people of Dutch descent
English Renaissance dramatists
English pamphleteers
People imprisoned for debt
16th-century English writers

masks:
Thomas Dekker
Dekker
Dekker
Career Dekker
Thomas More
Dekker
Dekker
Dekker
Dekker
Dekker
Dekker
Dekker
Dekker
Dekker
Dekker
Death Dekker
Thomas Dekker
Dekker
Thomas Nashe
Thomas Lodge
Dekker
Dekker
Thomas Middleton
Thomas Wyatt
Dekker
Dekker
Middleton Dekker
Dekker
Dekker
Dekker
Dekker
Dekker
Dekker
Dekker
Dekker
Thomas Overbury
Dekker
Dekker
Dekker
Thomas Dekker
Thomas Dekker
Thomas Dekker
Thomas Dekker
Thomas Nash
Thomas Dekker
Thomas Dekker
Dekker
Thomas Dekker


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<mask> (蘇頲; 680 – July 31, 737), courtesy name <mask> (廷碩), formally Duke Wenxian of Xu (許文憲公), was an official of the Chinese dynasty Tang Dynasty and Wu Zetian's Zhou Dynasty, serving as a chancellor during the reign of Emperor Xuanzong. He was a capable supporting chancellor to Song Jing, and he was also immensely gifted literarily, ranking with Zhang Yue as the two great literary figures of their time. They were known in unison as 燕许大手笔 ("Immense pen-brushes from Yan and Xu"). Background
<mask> was born in 680, near the end of the reign of Emperor Gaozong. At that time, his father <mask> was serving on the staff of Emperor Gaozong's son Li Dan the Prince of Yu. It was said that <mask> was intelligent and handsome in his youth, and was able to remember and recite texts with 1,000 characters. During Wu Zetian's reign
During the reign of Emperor Gaozong's wife Wu Zetian, <mask>g passed the imperial examinations and was made the magistrate of Wucheng County (烏程, in modern Huzhou, Jiangsu).He eventually became an imperial censor with the title Jiancha Yushi (監察御史). Late in her reign, during the Chang'an era (701-705), she had <mask> review the cases that her secret police official Lai Junchen had handled early in her reign which had resulted in many executions. <mask> was able to uncover many wrongful convictions and get people's honors posthumously restored. During Emperor Zhongzong's second reign
In 705, Wu Zetian was overthrown in a coup, and her son and crown prince Li Xian, a former emperor, returned to the throne (as Emperor Zhongzong). <mask> was made an imperial attendant (給事中, Jishizhong) and an imperial scholar at Xiuwen Pavilion (修文館). He was soon made Zhongshu Sheren (中書舍人), a mid-level official at the legislative bureau of government (中書省, Zhongshu Sheng). Soon thereafter, <mask>'s father <mask> was made chancellor, and the family was considered an exceedingly honored one.At that time, most official commissions were drafted by <mask>, and his language was considered very beautiful. During Emperor Shang's reign and Emperor Ruizong's second reign
In 710, Emperor Zhongzong died suddenly—a death that traditional historians believed to be a poisoning carried out by his powerful wife Empress Wei and her daughter Li Guo'er the Princess Anle, so that Empress Wei could become "emperor" like Wu Zetian and Li Guo'er could be crown princess. Meanwhile, Emperor Zhongzong's son Li Chongmao the Prince of Wen was named emperor (as Emperor Shang), but Empress Wei retained power as empress dowager and regent. Less than a month later, Empress Wei and Li Guo'er were killed in a coup led by Emperor Zhongzong's sister Princess Taiping and nephew Li Longji the Prince of Linzi. Li Longji's father Li Dan the Prince of Xiang, himself a former emperor, was initially named regent, and in the aftermaths of the coup, there were many commission and demotion orders to be written, with <mask>g in charge of drafting them. He was reading them so quickly to his scribe that the scribe commented, "Lord, please be slower. Otherwise, my wrist would be dislocated."The chancellor Li Jiao, who was <mask>'s superior and who was himself known for great literary talent, commented, "The Sheren thinks as fast as a gushing spring. I, Li Jiao, cannot compare to him." Soon, under the urging of Princess Taiping, Li Longji, and Li Longji's brother Li Chengqi, Li Dan took the throne himself (as Emperor Ruizong), displacing Emperor Shang. Sometime thereafter, <mask> was made the deputy minister of worship (太常少卿, Taichang Shaoqing). Later in 710, <mask> died. <mask> inherited the title of Duke of Xu and left government service to observe a mourning period for his father. Soon thereafter, Emperor Ruizong tried to recall him to government service as the deputy minister of public works (工部侍郎, Gongbu Shilang), which he declined—and when Emperor Ruizong sent the official Li Rizhi to visit <mask> to urge him to return to government service, Li Rizhi saw that <mask>'s mourning was deep and genuine.Emperor Ruizong thus allowed <mask>g to serve out the traditional three-year mourning period. During Emperor Xuanzong's reign
In 712, Emperor Ruizong passed the throne to Li Longji, who took the throne as Emperor Xuanzong. Once <mask>g's mourning period was over, Emperor Xuanzong began considering where he could place <mask>. He considered making <mask>hongshu Shilang (中書侍郎), the deputy head of the legislative bureau, but was unsure whether there was a precedent, and so he asked the chancellors, "Is there precedent for someone to become Zhongshu Shilang from being Gongbu Shilang?" He received a response of, "Your Imperial Majesty should care about whether he is suitable, not precedent." Emperor Xuanzong thus made <mask>hongshu Shilang—and gave him the unprecedented honor of sharing the food normally served only to chancellors. At that time, Li Ai (李乂), who was also a capable writer, was also Zhongshu Shilang.Emperor Xuanzong thus commented to <mask>:

This started a precedent for officials who draft imperial edicts to also leave their names on the edicts for posterity. Subsequently, after Emperor Ruizong died in 716, Emperor Xuanzong wanted to build a stele at Emperor Ruizong's tomb Jingling (靖陵). <mask> opposed, pointing out that not only was it not fitting with tradition, but that if he did so, all of the prior emperors' tombs needed to be retroactively given steles. Emperor Xuanzong thus stopped the project. Around the new year 717, <mask>, whose title had been changed to Ziwei Shilang (紫微侍郎) by that point due to a number of name changes in offices that Emperor Xuanzong instituted, was given the designation Tong Ziwei Huangmen Pingzhangshi (同紫微黃門平章事), making him a chancellor de facto. He worked well with the more senior chancellor Song Jing. It was said that Song was strict and often made the decisions that <mask> obeyed.Whenever Song made reports to Emperor Xuanzong, <mask> would make reports that supplemented Song's. Song once commented:

Later in 717, there was a controversy over whether Emperors Zhongzong and Ruizong, as brothers, could both be worshipped at the ancestral temple. The officials in charge of worship, Chen Zhenjie (陳貞節), Feng Zong (馮宗), and <mask>'s cousin <mask> (蘇獻), advocated moving Emperor Zhongzong's cult out of the imperial temple and having him worshipped at a separate temple, as they believed that the traditional requirement that the emperor worship seven ancestors referred to seven generations of ancestors, and that Emperors Zhongzong and Ruizong, of the same generation, thus constituted only one of the seven ancestors together. <mask> (孫平子), however, believed that this violated the principle that past emperors should all be worshipped. Because <mask>an was <mask>g's cousin, <mask>g advocated for him, and eventually his suggestion was accepted. Over the next few years, <mask> concurred with Song on many matters of morality and governmental cleanliness, including:

 In winter 717, when Emperor Xuanzong requested that Song and <mask> submit a number of formal names and titles for his sons and daughters—but separately requested a set of particularly honorable names, presumably for a favorite son—Song and <mask> pointed out that this would be viewed as favoritism, and therefore submitted a group of names without any designation as to what were particularly honorable names. When Emperor Xuanzong's father-in-law Wang Renjiao (王仁皎) died, Wang Renjiao's son Wang Shouyi (王守一) requested that a tomb be built for Wang Renjiao that would be as large as Emperor Xuanzong's maternal grandfather Dou Xiaochen (竇孝諶), and Emperor Xuanzong initially agreed.Song and <mask> pointed out that Dou's tomb was already considered overly wasteful and should not be followed. Emperor Xuanzong agreed, and reduced the scale of Wang Renjiao's tomb. By 720, however, Song's strictness would eventually bring his and <mask>'s removal. Song had ordered that individuals who had repeatedly appealed their cases without cause be detained by the imperial censors, until they were willing to drop their appeals. This drew much anger from people. At that time, there happened to be a drought, which, according to popular beliefs at the time, would be accompanied by the appearance of a spirit known as the Hanba (旱魃). One day, while Emperor Xuanzong was watching a play, an actor dressed as the Hanba, and stated:

Meanwhile, further, Song and <mask> were strictly prohibiting the use of damaged coins, which they had tried to replace with newly minted coins.However, the damaged coins were still in circulation despite the prohibition, particularly in the region between the Yangtze River and the Huai River. Song sent the imperial censor Xiao Yinzhi (蕭隱之) to the region to be in charge of collecting the damaged coins and taking them out of circulation. Xiao was strict in his behavior, drawing much resentment. Emperor Xuanzong, when he heard this, demoted Xiao, and in spring 720 removed Song and <mask> from their chancellor posts, making <mask> the minister of rites (禮部尚書, Libu Shangshu) instead. He replaced Song and <mask> with Yuan Qianyao and Zhang Jiazhen. In 725, when Emperor Xuanzong suspected that the civil service selections were not done properly, he commissioned 10 officials, including <mask>, to reexamine the official commissions of that year, against advice that doing so undermined the authority of the civil service affairs ministry, although he stopped doing this in 726. Also in 725, when Emperor Xuanzong offered sacrifices to heaven and earthat Mount Tai, he had <mask> draft the text of the monument there.It was said that <mask> was frugal and did not care about money—and that he shared his salaries with his younger brothers and family members, with no savings left. He died in 727. Initially, there was no posthumous honors given to him. The official Wei Shu (韋述) submitted a petition pointing out <mask>'s contributions, and Emperor Xuanzong, in response, bestowed posthumous honors on <mask>. Notes and references

 Old Book of Tang, vol. 88. New Book of Tang, vol.125. Zizhi Tongjian, vols. 207, 210, 211, 212, 213. External links
Books of the Quan Tangshi that include collected poems of <mask> at the Chinese Text Project:
Book 73
Book 74

Chancellors under Emperor Xuanzong of Tang
680 births
737 deaths

masks:
Su Ting
Tingshuo
Su Ting
Su Gui
Su Ting
Su Tin
Su
Su
Su Ting
Su Ting
Su Gui
Su
Su Tin
Su Ting
Su Ting
Su Gui
Su Ting
Su Ting
Su Ting
Su Tin
Su Tin
Su
Su Z
Su Z
Su
Su
Su
Su
Su
Su Ting
Su Xian
Sun Pingzi
Su Xi
Su Tin
Su Tin
Su
Su
Su
Su
Su
Su
Su
Su
Su
Su
Su
Su
Su
Su
Su Ting