A small instrumental ensemble for playing music composed before about 1700. The meaning is frequently extended to cover ensembles of voices with or without instrumental accompaniment, and the word is also applied to the music itself. During the early period of its use (from about 1575 to about 1700) the term also had a variety of meanings which often differ from those usually understood today.
The musical term ‘consort’ appears to have originated as a false representation of the existing Italian ‘concerto’, which in the early 16th century denoted simply an ensemble of voices or instruments. It is not known how the English term acquired its early implication of a mixed group of instruments, but by the early 17th century this specialized use was less common than the general one as defined in John Bullokar’s English Expositor (London, 1616/R): ‘A company: or a company of Musitions together’. The French ‘concert’ seems to have had a similar meaning in the early 17th century, for example in the section of Mersenne’s Harmonie universelle (1636–7) dealing with ‘Violes dans les Concerts’. In Cotgrave’s Dictionarie of the French and English Tongues (London, 1611/R) ‘concert de musique’ is equated with ‘a consort of musicke’.
The Italian term, however, was itself changing its meaning at the end of the 16th century. Boyden explained how ‘concerto’ came to be applied alongside its older sense in an etymologically more accurate way. This was to describe new styles which involved solo-like parts and ‘competing’ choirs and groups of instruments. An example is Monteverdi’s heading ‘Concerto’ in his Settimo libro di madrigali (1619), a usage echoed in Walter Porter’s Madrigales and Ayres (1632), modelled on Monteverdi’s publication, whose title-page refers to ‘Toccatos, Sinfonias and Rittornellos … After the manner of Consort Musique’. ‘Concerto’ was also used in Italy from the late 16th century in the sense of a musical entertainment in which a number of performers took part. It was presumably such an event that Fynes Moryson had in mind when he wrote in his unpublished Itinerary (c1619) concerning Italy: ‘And in all Churches upon all Sondayes and festifall dayes they have consortes of excelent musicke, both lowde and still Instruments and voyces’.
Both ‘concerto’ and ‘concert’ were used increasingly in the 17th century as titles for collections of instrumental ensemble music. In England the title ‘Consort’ was similarly used by the 1650s, for example in William Lawes’s Royal Consort and Locke’s Consort of Four Parts. It was rarely used for individual pieces, although in the plural it was treated as a collective expression by many authors, including Christopher Simpson in his Compendium of Practical Musick (1667):
You need not seek Outlandish Authors, especially for Instrumental Musick; no Nation (on my opinion) being equal to the English in that way; as well for their excellent, as their various and numerous Consorts, of 3, 4, 5, and 6 Parts, made properly for Instruments; of all which … Fancies are the Chief.
The majority of 16th-century music that would now be called ‘consort music’ was seldom referred to at the time as such. Indeed, the earliest recorded example of the English word ‘consort’ in a musical sense is in George Gascoigne’s description of a spectacle presented to Queen Elizabeth at Kenilworth in July 1575 (The Princelye Pleasures, London, 1576, lost; repr. in The Whole Woorks, London, 1587): ‘From thence her Majestie passing yet further on the brydge, Protheus appeared, sitting on a Dolphyns backe … With in the which Dolphyn a Consort of Musicke was secretely placed, the which sounded, and Protheus clearing his voyce, sang’. Another account of the same event by Robert Laneham describes this ensemble as ‘compoounded of six severall instruments’ (A Letter, London, ?1575/R). There is evidence to suggest that during the late 16th century the word ‘consort’ was applied primarily to groups of diverse instruments coming from different families, although more general uses of the word may also be found.
The classic grouping together of unlike instruments in England at the time consisted of the six instruments which, according to an anonymous chronicler (The Honourable Entertainement … at Elvetham, London, 1591), entertained the queen at the Earl of Hertford’s Hampshire estate of Elvetham: ‘After this speech, the Fairy Quene and her maides daunced about the garland, singing a song of sixe partes, with the musicke of an exquisite consort, wherein was the Lute, Bandora, Base-Violl, Citterne, Treble-violl, and Flute’. It was for this combination that Morley’s Consort Lessons (1599, 2/1611) and Rosseter’s Lessons for Consort (1609) were written. The use of the word ‘consort’ in these titles seems to be significant, since it occurs every time this instrumental grouping is involved. William Leighton’s Teares or Lamentacions (1614), for example, includes a section of four-part songs accompanied by the same group of six instruments. The list of contents in this publication clearly distinguishes between the accompanied ‘consort songs’ and the unaccompanied ‘4 Parts for Voyces’ and ‘Songs of 5. Parts for Voyces’. This appears to be the only known contemporary example of the term ‘consort song’. Praetorius wrote enthusiastically of the ‘Englisch Consort’ in the third volume of his Syntagma musicum (Wolfenbüttel, 1618, 2/1619/R), and showed that it could be made up of a great variety of different instruments, not just those specified above. His descriptions testify to the fame of such ensembles on the Continent in the early 17th century. This is supported by other literary and archival references, and by Dutch and German pictures showing characteristically English combinations of instruments being played together (see illustration).
A mixed ensemble is now often referred to as a ‘broken consort’, but this expression is of doubtful authenticity; there are no recorded examples of its use in Elizabethan times, and it is questionable whether it was ever used specifically to denote a consort of unlike instruments. The Lord Chancellor’s records for 1660 show that there was in King Charles II’s ‘private Musick’ a group known as ‘the Broken Consort’ which may well have given its name to Matthew Locke’s two sets of compositions called The Broken Consort in a manuscript bearing the general title Compositions for Broken, and whole Consorts. The meaning of ‘broken consort’ here is not entirely clear. Other references in the 17th century are extremely rare, but seem to signify disorder rather than a mixed group of instruments. ‘Whole consort’ is also seldom encountered and tends to denote completeness rather than homogeneity. Comparison may be made with the expression ‘full consort’ found from time to time in Elizabethan literature, for example in a passage from Sidney’s Lady of May which tells of Espilus singing to the accompaniment of his fellow shepherds’ recorders, and Therion’s foresters playing their cornetts; later ‘the shepheards and forresters made a full consort of their cornets and recorders’. The same sense was probably meant when the five recorders in the custody of the Norwich waits in 1584–5 were described as ‘beeying a Whoall noyse’.
Some confusion has arisen between the expression ‘broken consort’ and a quite different one, ‘broken music’, which occurs several times in Elizabethan and Jacobean literature. The latter term appears to be closely associated with music for mixed consort, as may be seen in Thomas Churchyard’s description of an entertainment before Queen Elizabeth at Norwich in 1578 (A Discourse of the Queenes Majesties Entertainment, London, ?1579). The device featured a cave in which was ‘A noble noyse of Musicke of al kind of instruments, severally to be sounded and played upon; and at one time they should be sounded all togither, that mighte serve for a consorte of broken Musicke’. Nearly 50 years later in Sylva sylvarum (1627) Francis Bacon equated ‘broken music’ with ‘consort music’ in a discussion about the blending together of different instruments:
In that Musicke, which we call Broken musicke, or Consort Musicke; Some Consorts of Instruments are sweeter than others; (a Thing not sufficiently yet observed:) As the Irish Harpe and Base Viall agree well; the Recorder and Stringed Musick agree well: Organs and the Voice agree well; etc. But the Virginalls and the Lute; Or the Welch-Harpe, and Irish-Harpe; Or the Voice and Pipes alone, agree not so well.
Other examples testify to the usefulness of ‘broken music’ for such functions as courtly masks and the accompaniment of eating. Perhaps the best known instances of the term occur in Shakespeare’s plays (Henry V, As you Like it, Troilus and Cressida), but unfortunately they can throw little light on its meaning, being used merely for the value of ‘broken’ as currency for making puns.
It is usually assumed in the light of Bacon’s discussion of ‘broken music’ that ‘broken’ refers to the breaking up of ‘whole’ sets of instruments into mixtures of instruments from different families, but this need not be the case. The term is not mentioned in mixed consort publications or manuscripts, or in detailed descriptions of mixed consorts such as those quoted above. Bacon was not defining the term and there may be other reasons why the music of such consorts came to be known as ‘broken music’. By far the most common Elizabethan connotation of ‘broken’ or ‘break’ in a musical context is that of division, the ‘breaking’ of long notes into smaller ones. Morley consistently used the word in this sense in his Plaine and Easie Introduction to Practicall Musicke (1597/R), for example: ‘When they did sing upon their plainsongs, he who sung the ground … sometimes would breake some notes in division, which they did for the more formall comming to their closes’. There are numerous other examples and later in the 17th century the word retained the same meaning. Christopher Simpson, for example, defined ‘division’ in The Division-Viol (2/1665/R) as ‘the Breaking, either of the Bass, or of any higher Part’. An echo of this use is perhaps to be found in the term ‘broken chord’, although the Oxford English Dictionary records no examples before 1879. Possibly ‘broken music’ implies, in the early stages of its use at any rate, music making a special feature of division. Rapid virtuoso passage-work is found in almost every example of the repertory for mixed consort. By the turn of the century ‘broken music’ in this sense may have become so closely connected with ‘consort music’ that the two were regarded as synonymous even if there was no rapid division.
The sources of English mixed consort music are unusual in that they specify with some precision which instruments are involved. Sources of other types of ensemble music normally give no such information, although they sometimes offer a broad choice of instruments. A rigid choice of performing medium is alien to 17th-century and earlier music, but complete flexibility, uninformed by historical and practical considerations, may equally lead to performances far removed from the spirit in which the music was written. The function of the music, rather than the music itself, tended to govern its instrumentation, an important factor being the nature of the occasion on which the music was played. At the English Jesuit college at Saint Omer in France, for example, the music of viols was associated in the early 17th century with the training of young musicians; mixed consort music was effective for the reception of guests and persons of distinction, while the music of wind instruments such as the ‘hautbois’ and the ‘recorders’ was suitable for the reception of people of high rank. In the theatre, where consort music was often played, instrumentation would often be determined by the symbolic associations of particular instruments. Strings, whether viols or violins, represented harmony, unity or agreement; oboes had magical associations and were often called for in connection with evil portents; the soft sound of flutes or recorders, sometimes referred to as ‘still music’, tended to symbolize death.
The social position of the players was also an important consideration in determining instrumentation. The instrumental resources of musical amateurs were different from those of professionals, and this is perhaps reflected in the title-pages of publications like Holborne’s Pavans, Galliards, Almains, and other short Aeirs … for Viols, Violins, or other Musicall Winde Instruments (1599). Professional musicians would probably use mainly violins and wind instruments according to the occasion, amateurs would use viols. During the 17th century the role of amateur instrumentalists became much more important than hitherto in the performance of consort music, and Henry Peacham in The Compleat Gentleman (London, 1622) makes clear the suitability of the viol for this purpose: ‘I desire no more in you then to sing your part sure, and at the first sight, withall, to play the same upon your Violl, or the exercise of the Lute, privately to your selfe’. Consequently, the vast majority of Jacobean consort compositions for domestic consumption tend to adopt a style idiomatic to the viols, although particular instruments are not normally specified. For an illustration of a consort of viols see Masque, fig.1.
See also Sources of instrumental ensemble music to 1630, §7.
MeyerECM
F.W. Galpin: Old English Instruments of Music (London, 1910, rev. 4/1965), 197ff
D.D. Boyden: ‘When is a Concerto not a Concerto?’, MQ, xliii (1957), 220–32
S. Beck, ed.: T. Morley: The First Book of Consort Lessons (New York, 1959), 1–32 [incl. preface]
R.L. Weaver: ‘Sixteenth-Century Instrumentation’, MQ, xlvii (1961), 363–78
W.A. Edwards: ‘The Performance of Ensemble Music in Elizabethan England’, PRMA, xcvii (1970–71), 113–23
H.M. Brown: Sixteenth-Century Instrumentation: the Music for the Florentine Intermedii, MSD, xxx (1973)
W.A. Edwards: The Sources of Elizabethan Consort Music (diss., U. of Cambridge, 1974)
L. Nordstrom: ‘The English Lute Duet and Consort Lesson’, LSJ, xviii (1976), 5–22
J. Irving: ‘Consort Playing in Mid-17th-Century Worcester’, EMc, xii (1984), 337–44
P. Holman: Four and Twenty Fiddlers: The Violin at the English Court 1540–1690 (Oxford, 1993, 2/1995)
R. Rastall: ‘Spatial Effects in English Instrumental Consort Music c.1560–1605’, EMc, xxv (1997), 269–88
WARWICK EDWARDS