Consort song

A '''consort song''' was a characteristic English song form of the late 16th and early 17th centuries, for solo voice or voices accompanied by a group of instruments, most commonly viols.<ref>{{Cite book|last=Brett|first=Philip|title=The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians|publisher=Macmillan Publishers (China) Limited|year=1993|isbn=0-333-23111-2|location=Hong Kong|pages=675|language=en}}</ref> Although usually in five parts, some early examples of four-part songs exist. It is considered to be the chief representative of a native musical tradition which resisted the onslaught of the italianate madrigal and the English lute ayre, and survived those forms' brilliant but short-lived ascendancy {{harv|Brett|2001}}.

In contemporary usage, the term was confined to a number of songs for four voices accompanied by the standard mixed consort of six instruments, found in ''Teares or Lamentacions of a Sorrowfull Soule: Composed with Musicall Ayres and Songs, both for Voyces and Divers Instruments'' by William Leighton, published in 1614, but was first used in the modern sense by Thurston Dart {{harv|Brett|2001}}.

William Byrd is recognized as the composer whose adoption and development of the consort song established its musical importance. He regarded it as a standard means to set vernacular poetry {{harv|Brett|2001}}.

==References== {{Reflist}} * {{wikicite|ref={{harvid|Brett|2001}}|reference=Brett, Philip. 2001. "Consort Song". ''The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians'', second edition, edited by Stanley Sadie and John Tyrrell. London: Macmillan Publishers.}}

==Further reading== * Brett, Philip. 1961–62. "The English Consort Song, 1570–1625". ''Proceedings of the Royal Musical Association'' 88:73–88. *Kerman, Joseph. 1962. ''The Elizabethan Madrigal: A Comparative Study''. [New York]: American Musicological Society.

Category:16th-century music genres Category:17th-century music genres Category:Song forms