HEAVENLY NOYSE

"..The Fairy Queene and her maids daunced in the garden, singing a song of six parts, with the music of an exquisite consort, wherein was the lute, pandora, bass violl, citterne, treble viol and flute" (from a description from 1591 of an 'honourable entertainment at Elvetham). This particularly English combination of six instruments, all belonging to different families of instruments, was very popular in the Elizabethan period. The wonderful music consists of colourful arrangements (noteworthy as among the first instances of instrumentation) and original compositions of pavans, galliards and other dances and settings of popular tunes. The music has been preserved in four major sources, though none has a complete set of parts: printed publications by Thomas Morley (The First Booke of Consort Lessons, 1599 & 1611) and Philip Rosseter (Lessons for Consort, 1609) and two manuscript sources. The consort was used both privately and in in the theatre. The Amphion Consort will perform some of this music at the National Portrait Gallery, where a painting depicting scenes from the life of Sir Henry Unton (1557-96) - shown here - presents the only pictorial evidence of the complete set of six instruments to have survived from the period.