Reports.

A term formerly used in England and Scotland to mean points of imitation or imitative entries (it seems not to have been used in the singular). There are, however, eight examples of reports in the Scottish Psalter of 1635 where the word appears to have been used in a more general sense for settings in which the parts move in free polyphony rather than in strictly imitative style. In Purcell's revision of the treatise that appears in the third part of Playford's Introduction to the Skill of Musick (12/1694) the term is mentioned as being synonymous with imitation, without further explanation.

See also Psalms, metrical, §IV, 1.

M. BURDEN