Parsons / William Byrd, / Christopher Tye, / Gibbons / Joh: As Our Sweet Cords With Discords Mixed Be – Englis

   in Early Music Today (Mar, 2016)
As you might guess, Consortium5 consists of five players, their instruments recorders encompassing a range from descant to bass. Little or none of their chosen repertoire was written specifically for recorders but then little of it was written for any other specific instruments – though viol consorts were probably uppermost in composers’ minds.

All the pieces belong to the 16th-century English Renaissance or, in a handful of instances, the early 17th-century. The great names are those of Byrd and Dowland but a second league consisting of Christopher Tye, the Alfonso Ferraboscos, father and son, Antony Holborne, William Brade, Robert Parsons and John Ward provide comparably interesting pieces in this context. Bringing …