This book looks at the work of one of England's finest composers, William Lawes. It provides a contextual examination of music at the court of Charles I, a detailed study of Lawes's autograph sources and an examination of his consort music.

Winner of the Nicholas Bessaraboff Prize Musical repertory of great importance and quality was performed on viols in sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century England. This is reported by Thomas Mace (1676) who says that ’Your Best Provision’ for playing such music is a chest of old English viols, and he names five early English viol makers than which ’there are no Better in the World’. Enlightened scholars and performers (both professional and amateur) who aim to understand and play this music require reliable historical information and need suitable viols, but so little is known about the instruments and their makers that we cannot specify appropriate instruments with much precision. Our ignorance cannot be remedied exclusively by the scrutiny or use of surviving antique viols because they are extremely rare, they are not accessible to performers and the information they embody is crucially compromised by degradation and alteration. Drawing on a wide variety of evidence including the surviving instruments, music composed for those instruments, and the documentary evidence surrounding the trade of instrument making, Fleming and Bryan draw significant conclusions about the changing nature and varieties of viol in early modern England.

This book surveys the most significant published materials relating to William Byrd. It presents a collection of all-new original essays covering everything from feminist to postcolonial readings of his play as well as source queries and analysis of historical performances of the play.

Peter Philips (c.1560-1628) was an English organist, composer, priest and spy. He was embroiled in multifarious intersecting musical, social, religious and political networks linking him with some of the key international players in these spheres. Despite the undeniable quality of his music, Philips does not fit easily into an overarching, progressive view of music history in which developments taking place in centres judged by historians to be of importance are given precedence over developments elsewhere, which are dismissed as peripheral. These principal loci of musical development are given prominence over secondary ones because of their perceived significance in terms of later music. However, a consideration of the networks in which Philips was involved suggests that he was anything but at the periphery of the musical, cultural, religious and political life of his day. In this book, Philips’s life and music serve as a touchstone for a discussion of various kinds of network in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. The study of networks enriches our appreciation and understanding of musicians and the context in which they worked. The wider implication of this approach is a constructive challenge to orthodox historiographies of Western art music in the Early Modern Period.

In the 1530s, five Bassano brothers, who were outstanding wind players and instrument makers, emigrated from Venice to England. Dr Lasocki‘s authoritative new book, the first to be devoted to the family, is a minutely researched account of these brothers, their sons (and a daughter) and their grandsons. The first half of the book discusses the everyday affairs of the family - their relationships, religion, property, law suits, finances, and standing in society. Two chapters, one written by Roger Prior, are devoted to Emilia Bassano, whose identification as thedark lady of Shakespeare‘s sonnets is supported by a wealth of evidence. The second half of the book discusses the family‘s musical activities. At the English Court the Bassanos made up a recorder consort that lasted 90 years; they also played in the flute/cornett and shawm/sackbutt consorts. As instrument makers their fame was spread throughout Europe. The book‘s appendixes present information on the Venetian branch of the family and the musical activities of the English branch since 1665.

Revised and expanded, A Performer's Guide to Seventeenth Century Music is a comprehensive reference guide for students and professional musicians. The book contains useful material on vocal and choral music and style; instrumentation; performance practice; ornamentation, tuning, temperament; meter and tempo; basso continuo; dance; theatrical production; and much more. The volume includes new chapters on the violin, the violoncello and violone, and the trombone—as well as updated and expanded reference materials, internet resources, and other newly available material. This highly accessible handbook will prove a welcome reference for any musician or singer interested in historically informed performance.

A Library Journal Starred Review (March 2024) praises the book as a "remarkable resource that will please both musical professionals and amateurs, along with teachers and their students, and conductors and singers.” Throughout the ages, people have wanted to sing in a communal context. This desire apparently stems from a deeply rooted human instinct. Consequently, choral performance historically has often been related to human rituals and ceremonies, especially rites of a religious nature. Historical Dictionary of Choral Music, Second Edition contains a chronology, an introduction, and an extensive bibliography. The dictionary section has more than 1,300 cross-referenced entries on composers, conductors, choral ensembles, choral genres, and choral repertoire. This book is an excellent resource for students, researchers, and anyone wanting to know more about choral music.

Based on primary sources, many of which have never been published or examined in detail, this book examines the music of the late seventeenth-century composers, Biber, Schmeltzer and Muffat, and the compositions preserved in the extensive Moravian archives in Kromeriz. These works have never before been fully examined in the cultural and conceptual contexts of their time. Charles E. Brewer sets these composers and their music within a framework that first examines the basic Baroque concepts of instrumental style, and then provides a context for the specific works. The dances of Schmeltzer, for example, functioned both as incidental music in Viennese operas and as music for elaborate court pantomimes and balls. These same cultural practices also account for some of Biber's most programmatic music, which accompanied similar entertainments in Kromeriz and Salzburg. The many sonatas by these composers have also been misunderstood by not being placed in a context where it was normal to be entertained in church and edified in court. Many of the works discussed here remain unpublished but have, in recent years, been recorded. This book enhances our understanding and appreciation of these recordings by providing an analysis of the context in which the works were first performed.