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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 January 2020
The history of English music composed for the viols in consort begins in about 1530 and ends in about 1680—one hundred and fifty years of chamber music, comprising a repertory that is as rich as it is varied, and one that is almost overwhelming in its sheer bulk. Above all it is players' music, music to be heard from the inside; yet even Roger North, a judicious and public-spirited antiquary, writes in 1728 of consort music in terms of its effect on the audience or of its appearance in score. He complains that:
‘in In nomines I never could see a cadence compleat but proffers & Baulks Innumerable. That wch is properly termed Ayre was an Intire stranger to this sort of harmony, and ye Audience might sitt with all ye tranquillity in ye world, & hear continuall shiftings of tones, with numberless sincopes & varietys, such as they were, and not be in ye least moved, if pleased it was enough.’
1 The Musicall Gramarian, ed. Hilda Andrews, 1925, p. 9. Other quotations given in the next here are from the same volume, pp. 12 and 10.Google Scholar
2 A Plaine and Easie Introduction to Practicall Musicke, 1597, pp. 180–1.Google Scholar
3 Musicall Gramarian, pp. 12–3.Google Scholar
4 Breife Introduction to the Skill of Musick, 1654, preface.Google Scholar
5 Proceedings, 47th Session, pp. 1–20.Google Scholar