Broken consort

[4] In late sixteenth-century England the word "consort" on its own was normally applied to groups of diverse instruments coming from different families,[5] and the sense of the term "broken" in the Elizabethan era refers primarily to division, the "breaking" of long notes into shorter ones.

[6] "It is the shimmering effect of this 'sweet broken music' that so delighted audiences then and continues to cast its spell today.

[12] There are also twenty-five surviving compositions for this type of consort by several composers in a collection published by Thomas Morley (1599/1611).

There were a number of other consort compositions published by Philip Rosseter (1609), and some vocal music accompanied by this specific consort was published in collections such as William Leighton's The Teares and Lamentatacions of a Sorrowfull Soule (1614) and the Psalms of David in Metre (1599) by Richard Allison.

[13] Sydney Beck made the first modern edition of Morley's collection and had a professional consort in New York state.