Peter Philips (1561-1628): Consort Music

00:00 Pavan & Galliard, 1580 (FVB nos 85, 87; reconstructed by Peter Holman)
violin, 3 violas, bass violin, 2 lutes in G
03:51 Pavan, 1580 (after Dallis nos 70, 71) treble lute in C, lute in G
07:09 Paget Pavan & Galliard, 1590? (Tregian no 3) violin, 3 violas, bass violin, lute in G +, organ
12:31 Aria del Gran Duca Ferdinando di Toscana (Emilio de´Cavalieri, c1550-1602; set by Philips) (Tregian no 16) violin, 3 violas, bass violin, 2 lutes in G, virginals
14:23 Galliard (Tregian no 13) violin, 3 violas, bass violin
15:12 Galliard or Coranto (Augustine Bassano, †1604; set by Philips) (Tregian no 6)
violin, 3 violas, bass violin, 2 lutes in G
16:18 Pavan & Galliard (Thomas Morley, 1557-1602; set by Philips) (Tregian no 4)
violin, 3 violas, bass violin, 2 lutes in G
20:19 Pavan & Galliard (Augustine Bassano; arr. Philips?) (Tregian no 8) violin, 3 violas, bass violin, drum
22:41 Dolorosa Pavan & Galliard, 1593 (Tregian no 1) violin, 3 violas, bass violin, 2 lutes in G, organ
28:23 Divisions on the Dolorosa Pavan (Nikolaus a Kempis, c1600-1676) (Kempis no 26) bass viol, virginals
35:34 Alman Tregian (Tregian no 15) violin, 3 violas, bass violin, 2 lutes in G, organ
36:56 Balla d´Amore (Francis Tregian, 1574-1619; set by Philips) (Tregian no 7)
violin, 3 violas, bass violin, lute in G, theorbo
40:05 Pavan & Galliard in F (Tregian no 2) violin, 3 violas, bass violin, virginals
44:27 Aria (arr. Thomas Simpson, 1582-1628?) (Simpson no 3) 2 violins, viola *, bass violin, theorbo
45:56 Passamezzo Pavan (Drexel, p 373) 2 violins, 2 violas, 2 bass violins, lute in G, theorbo, organ

The Parley of Instruments
Pavlo Besnosiuk: Renaissance violin / Judith Tarling: Renaissance violin, viola (*)
Theresa Caudle & Jane Norman: Renaissance viola
Jane Coe: bass violin / Mark Caudle: bass violin, bass viol
Tom Finucane: lute in G (+), treble lute in C / Paula Chateauneuf: lute in G, theorbo
Peter Holman: virginals, chamber organ, drum

Pitch: A = 440 / Temperament: meantone, set by Peter Holman

Recording: December 1986, Seldon Hall, Haberdashers' Aske's School, Hertfordshire, United Kingdom

Principal sources:
Francis Tregian ¨Canzone et Pavane di diversi¨, British Library, Egerton MS 3665, pp 1022-32
The Fitzwilliam Virginal Book (FVB), Cambridge, Fitzwilliam Museum MS 32.G.29
New York Public Library, Drexel MS 5624
The Dallis Lute Manuscript, Dublin, Trinity College MS D.3.30
Thomas Simpson ¨Taffel-consort¨ (Hamburg, 1621)
Nicolaus a Kempis ¨Symphoniae unius, duorum, trium, IV, V, et VI instrumentorum¨ (Antwerp, 1642)

Artwork: The senses of hearing, touch and taste (1618) by Jan Brueghel the Elder (painted the setting) and Peter Paul Rubens (painted the figures).

Peter Philips is the one first-rate English composer from the sixteenth and early seventeenth century who remains largely unknown today, even to specialists. His modern reputation has suffered from a form of musical chauvinism that works to the disadvantage of emigres: since he left England at an early age, never to return, he has been largely ignored by English musicologists, and equally he has been treated as a foreigner by their colleagues in his adopted country, the Spanish Netherlands — now Belgium. As a result, very little of Philips's music has found its way into print in this century, and still less of it has been recorded. Yet it is equal in quality to the best work of that richly productive period. His keyboard music invites comparison with Byrd, his consort music with Dowland, his motets and madrigals with Weelkes and Gibbons — or rather with Marenzio and Lassus, because his vocal music in particular belongs to the cosmopolitan European tradition. In his own time Philips exerted a considerable influence on composers in the Netherlands and Germany; his popular pieces like the 1580 Pavan and the Dolorosa Pavan were still being imitated and elaborated by followers like Nicolaus a Kempis as late as the middle of the seventeenth century.