He was praised in his time by a visit in 1624 from the French ambassador, Charles de L'Aubespine, who stated upon entering Westminster Abbey that “At the entrance, the organ was touched by the best finger of that age, Mr. Orlando Gibbons." Musicologist and composer, Frederick Ouseley, dubbed him to be the "English Palestrina" and the Canadian pianist Glenn Gould praised him highly and compared his music, especially for the keyboard, to the likes of Beethoven and Webern. Gibbons paved the way for a future generation of English composers by perfecting the Byrd's foundations of the English madrigal as well as both full and verse anthems, and especially by teaching music to his oldest son, Christopher, who in turn taught John Blow, Pelham Humfrey and most notably Henry Purcell, the English pioneer of the Baroque era. The modern music critic John Rockwell claimed that the oeuvre of Gibbons: "all attested not merely to a significant figure in music's past but to a composer who can still speak directly to the present."