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Music for my Lady This gentle musical 'portrait of a lady' includes a variety of superb instruments playing music of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The music is partially from Scotland and partially from France, and forms a fine snap shot of the sophisticated music for entertainment of the period. It is taken from a wide variety of manuscript and printed sources and ranges from very simple lute and guitar pieces to emotionally charged harpsichord music by one of the great harpsichord composers of the mid-eighteenth century. Few of the composers heard here are named. Jacques Duphly was active in Paris. A contemporary account describes him as having 'a lightness of touch and a certain softness, which, sustained by ornaments, marvellously render the character of his pieces'. Francois Campion, like Duphly, was originally from Rouen, but also made his way to the French capital, seeking greater fame and fortune than was available to him in a provincial town. Campion published music for his own instruments, the lute, guitar and theorbo, as well as treatises on accompanying and composition. The other pieces on this album are mostly anonymous or by musicians who never achieved the first rank of recognition. Nevertheless, their music, and their arrangements of popular and traditional songs have stood the test of time, as this assemblage of airs and ballads amply demonstrates. All have good tunes, and a gentle lilt which adds to their refined style. Particularly beautiful are the tunes played on the cittern, a small, guitar-like instrument, with metal strings which produce a particular sound. This was one of the many instruments which was equally at home in the drawing room of a society hostess or in the local tavern, where it could be strummed just like a modern guitar, making it a very rhythmic accompanying instrument. It contrasts strongly with the lute, with its more gentle and resonant sound from its larger size and gut strings. Artists. Sara Stowe, voice and recorder
Heather Birt, tenor viol and violin
Jon Banks, bass viol, harp
Stewart McCoy, lute
Matthew Spring, lute, the orbo, cittern and bass viol
Martin Souter, harpsichord