Richard Hygons (also Higons, Huchons, Hugo; c. 1435 – c. 1509) was an English composer of the early Renaissance.
While only two compositions of this late 15th-century composer have survived, one of them, a five-voice setting of the Salve Regina Marian antiphon, has attracted interest from musicologists because of its close relationship to music being written at the same time on the continent, as well as its high level of workmanship.
Hygons seems to have spent his entire career at Wells Cathedral; at any rate, no records survive indicating his activities elsewhere.
Only two compositions of Hygons are known to survive: a two-voice setting of the Gaude virgo mater Christi, which appears on a single surviving leaf of a choirbook from Wells Cathedral (the enormous majority of music from the 15th century and early 16th century was destroyed in the Dissolution of the Monasteries by Henry VIII), and the famous Salve Regina from the Eton Choirbook.
The Salve Regina is unique among English music of the period in that its cantus firmus, drawn from the melisma on the word "caput" in the Sarum antiphon Venit ad Petrum, is the same as that from three earlier Caput masses by composers from elsewhere: Jacob Obrecht, Johannes Ockeghem, and an anonymous composer once thought to be Guillaume Dufay.