​Musical & Amicable Society Historically informed, amicably performed.​
Fiddlers Three:
Music from Charles II's ‘Private Musick’
Personnel
Catherin Martin – violin
Anna Curzon – violin
Kate Fawcett – violin
Jonathan Rees – bass viol and bass violin
Aileen Henry – harp
Lynda Sayce – theorbo and guitar
Martin Perkins – harpsichord and organ
Track Listing
Henry Purcell: Three Parts upon a Ground
John Jenkins: Fantasia Suite no. 4 in A minor
Christopher Preston: Suite for Harpsichord in G
Anon: Divisions on I am the Duke of Norfolk
Thomas Baltzar: Pavan in C major
Davis Mell: Suite for solo violin in scordatura in D minor
Purcell: Pavan in G minor, Z752
Gottfried Finger: Sonata IX a tre, in D (op. 1)
Anon: 2 pieces for guitar, (Elizabeth Cromwell Guitar Book)
Nicola Matteis: Ground on La Folia
Christopher Simpson: Improvised divisions on a ground in F
Lambert Pietkin: Sonata in D minor
Bartholomew Isaack: Ground in A minor
Matteis: Ground in D minor
Programme Notes
The king’s Private Musick was one of several groups of musicians working at the English court in the seventeenth century. Its function was to provide the royal family with a range of vocal and instrumental music and it complemented other groups such as the royal ‘wind musicke’ and the musicians of the Chapel Royal. By the time of the Restoration in 1660, there were four official positions of ‘composer in ye private musick’, for which post-holders were paid in addition to their performing duties. Charles II reappointed many of the court musicians who had served his father, yet years in exile in France had changed the monarch’s tastes and preferences. According to biographer Roger North, Charles had an ‘utter detestation of Fancys’ and the period saw the decline in consort music for viols and winds, and the emergence of the violin as the string instrument of choice. The violin band expanded to create the Twenty-four Violins, imitating the group Charles witnessed at Louis XIV’s court, and some court violinists served multiple roles by playing for services at the Chapel Royal, for the public theatres during the early years of the Restoration, as well as for the king’s private entertainment in the Privy Chamber.​
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The oldest composer recorded here is John Jenkins – a composer who survived the turbulent times by constantly reinventing his musical style. His consort music illustrates well the gradual move from the late-Renaissance viol consort style of Byrd and his contemporaries to Italianate trio-sonata textures. At the Restoration Jenkins was appointed as a theorbo player and was active at court until around 1663. His 10 fantasia-suites, scored for three violins, bass viol and organ, were written for the musicians of the Private Musick. The fourth fantasia-suite shows Jenkins still innovating, with modulations to daringly remote keys. Davis Mell was one of the musicians who held a court appointment both before and after the Civil Wars, despite being employed in Cromwell’s household from around 1656 to 1658. This seemingly disloyal behaviour may have been overlooked by Charles II by virtue of Mell’s standing as the foremost violinist of his generation. However, after the arrival of Baltzar, one contemporary commentator wrote: ‘The company did look upon Mr Mell to have a prodigious hand on the violin, and they thought that no person, as all London did, could goe beyond him. But when Thomas Baltser, an outlander, came to Oxon in the next yeare, they had other thoughts of Mr Mell, who tho he play’d farr sweeter than Baltsar, yet Baltsar’s hand was more quick and could run it insensibly to the end of the finger-board.’ Our two offerings of Baltzar and Mell perfectly illustrate these two characteristics: listen out for the virtuosic passagework leading to an unheard-of high e at the end of the last section of the Pavan compared to the sweet sonorities created by the scordatura tuning in Mell’s suite in d minor.
The arrival in England in the late 1650s of German virtuoso violinist Thomas Baltzar (by way of Sweden) had an undoubted influence on the English musical landscape and the emergence of the unusual combination of three violins and continuo. His masterful Suite in C, from which we include the opening Pavan 10. on this disc, led to a modest flourishing of works for the same forces, by Jenkins, Matteis, Finger, and Henry Purcell, also recorded here. Baltzar’s appointment to the Private Musick in 1661 increased the number of violinists from two to three. The strong link with the musical community at Oxford, where Charles I moved his court – including a small number of his musicians – at the outbreak of the Civil Wars, continued through the Commonwealth years and beyond the Restoration. Edward Lowe, professor from 1661 until his death in 1682, copied out works for performance at the university’s Music School and it is thanks to his large collection of manuscript music that we have some of the works which were composed by and for these influential court musicians. The painting known as ‘The Cabal’, (reproduced as the cover artwork for this recording) dating from 1662-3, shows what is likely to be Baltzar with fellow members of the Private Musick.[1] Violinists Davis Mell and Humphrey Madge are thought to be depicted here, as well as John Banister, the violinist and flageolet player whose wind instrument lies on the table. A striking feature of this painting is the inclusion of an Italian-style harp. It is likely that the player was Charles Evans, ‘Musician in Ordinary for the Italian Harpe’ from 1660 until at least 1683. Although smaller harps were used earlier in the seventeenth century (notably, the metal-strung Irish harp used for William Lawes’ Harp Consorts), Evans is the only professional harper we know of in Restoration London. There is no extant solo harp music from this time, and it is assumed he played chordal accompaniment as part of the basso continuo group in this repertoire.
The Italian violinist, Nicola Matteis, had arrived in London in about 1670. Roger North wrote that ‘his circumstances were low, and it was say’d that he travelled thro’ Germany on foot with his violin under a full coat at his back’. His flamboyant playing amazed audiences and contemporary musicians alike. His four published books of violin music include a wide variety of continental music, yet he clearly understood the English fondness for grounds, as can be heard in the rustic Ground in D minor 25. which ends our disc. He also contributed to the rise of the ground bass genre in his solo violin works: the variations on the popular continental dance ‘La Folia’ 19. recorded here for the first time were not published, but were preserved in the Oxford Music School collection by Lowe in the 1670s. Matteis was also partly responsible for the growing popularity of the guitar in England, and even published a tutor book. Lowe’s interest in collecting music both native and foreign resulted in the survival of two instrumental works by the Flemish composer Lambert Pietkin, which are not to be found anywhere else. The writing in the Sonata in D minor, recorded here for the first time, at times suggests the original instrumentation may have been two violins, viola, cello and continuo, yet the manuscript parts use three treble clefs, indicating that Lowe was copying out an adaptation of the work suitable for the new lineup of three violins, and this work may well have been part of the Private Musick’s repertoire. At the time of John Jenkins’ death in 1678, the young Henry Purcell had been working as composer for the violins at court for a year. Despite this position, he seems to have written little music for the Twenty-Four Violins but numerous sacred works and a group of consort pieces which relate to the musicians of the Private Musick.
Perhaps in response to the death of the venerable composer some 67 years his senior, Purcell wrote his Pavan in G minor Z752 15. in a deliberately old style, looking back to the viol consort works of Jenkins’ early years and utilizing the three violinists in the group. In dramatic contrast, the Three Parts upon a Ground Z731 1. , also dating from 1678, is a supreme example of all the contrapuntal methods of writing of the day contained within the structure of a fashionable Lullian chaconne-like movement which surely would have impressed his colleagues and charmed the Francophile Charles II alike. Bartholomew Isaack was a few years Purcell’s junior and probably overlapped with him as a chorister of the Chapel Royal. Among his output, which is largely of songs and anthems, is a Ground in A minor 24. which appears to have been modelled on Purcell’s Three Parts upon a Ground, with the same experimental contrapuntal interplay, although the character couldn’t be more different. Despite not being directly linked to the musicians of the Private Musick, Isaack’s choice of three violins suggests this combination was becoming an accepted makeup of consorts. The solo pieces recorded here, interspersing the larger works for three violins, have connections with the Private Musick, its members or supporters. The leading exponent of the viol at this time was Christopher Simpson, who, as a Roman Catholic, never received a royal appointment, before or after the Civil Wars. He found employment through private patrons who enabled him to develop his unrivalled skill in playing elaborate embellishments known as divisions over a ground bass.
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Simpson’s fame was cemented by the publication of his The Division-Viol in 1659, a work which is part viol tutor book, part composition treatise and part method for improvising divisions. This certainly accelerated the interest in division pieces and surely influenced these by Matteis, Purcell, as well as the commercial prints of The Division Violin and others from 1684. Although never making it into the formal employ of the king, Simpson clearly commanded great respect from important figures of the day, including Matthew Locke, who commemorated his ‘exemplary life and excellent skill’, and Jenkins, who called him his ‘very precious friend’. Most of his written sets of divisions were to be used as examples for learners to improve their skill of inventive improvisation, and it is in this spirit that our recording of his Ground in F (VdGS27) uses opening fragments of Simpson’s original as the starting point for an improvisation. The instrument of choice for gentlewomen of the mid-seventeenth century was the 5-string guitar, as evidenced by the large number of portraits of wealthy daughters posing with decorative guitars from the 1650s to 1680s. Surviving repertoire before the published collections of Corbetta and Matteis (1671, 1680) is scant but an important source which sheds light on the popularity among the gentry comes from a manuscript book owned by Elizabeth Cromwell, started when she was 12 years old.
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Representative of the period is a delightful suite by royal household harpsichordist, Christopher Preston. This found its way into print thanks to the commercial collaboration of Matthew Locke with the music printer John Carr, who rose to the challenge of printing keyboard music, a rarity due to the complexities of including more than one note per stave using the traditional block printing. The resulting publication was Melothesia: Or, Certain General Rules for Playing Upon A Continued-Bass. With A choice Collection of Lessons for the Harpsichord and Organ of all Sorts, published in 1673. Its title indicates the market demand not only for solo keyboard pieces, but for instruction on how to accompany according to the rules of figured bass; lute tablature having almost completely disappeared from song collections and instrumental music publications by this time.
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In preparing for this recording, we have aimed to resolve as many questions as possible to get close to the performing circumstances of the times. Pitch is a contentious issue which is often compromised in modern practice due to the availability of suitable modern replica instruments, and the historical pitches used which often varied from place to place even in the same city. In keeping with the practicalities of the time, we have based our pitch around the available organ. Most surviving seventeenth-century consort instruments – organs known to be used in domestic settings rather than cathedrals and chapels – are pitched between A=440 and A=465 (from modern pitch to a semitone above modern pitch). A few notable instruments are lower than our modern pitch, but not as low as the conventional ‘Baroque pitch’ (A=415) often used for this music. The stringed instruments we use – violins, theorbo, guitar, harp, viol – are easily transposable: the musicians of the Private Musick would have tuned to a variety of pitches when playing with consort organs, in theatres, with wind instruments and in churches. Settling for a pitch of A=440 creates a vibrant, bright sonority and brings a fresh sound to the repertoire.
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Many of the Oxford sources of music on this disc have multiple continuo parts – that is, more than one part with figured bass indicating the harmony – opening up the idea that two or more chordal instruments may have taken part. Hence, we have allowed ourselves the luxury of the full continuo team of harp, theorbo, guitar, organ and harpsichord to accompany the bowed strings. We have used the iconographic evidence of the Italian harp in ‘The Cabal’ as inspiration for experimentation and to give a variety of sound-worlds. We have included guitar in our continuo team for the Ground by Matteis, who published his treatise on basso continuo playing on the guitar, Le false consonanse della musica in London around 1680. We are lucky to have been able to use a newly-built consort organ based on principles of the Italian/English organo di legno tradition. The narrow-scaled wooden principal and stopped diapason pipes produce a sweet tone which support but don’t overwhelm the instruments they accompany and inform a manner of playing less fully chordal and more akin to the written-out accompaniments found in the anthems and service settings of the period, or those Jenkins provided for his viol consorts.
Martin Perkins
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Recorded and produced by Robin Bigwood.
Recorded at Royal Birmingham Conservatoire, 23–25 July 2025.
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Keyboard Instruments
Flemish double manual harpsichord by Marc Ducornet and Malcolm Greenhalgh in Paris, 2015, based on the 1624 Ruckers in the Musée Unterlinden in Colmar, France.
English consort organ, ‘Lady of Clare’, by William Drake Ltd, 2025, based on 17th century English originals.
Temperament: 6th comma meantone, A=440Hz, prepared by Simon Neal.
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Bibliography
Andrew Ashbee, Records of English Court Music, Volume 1 (1660–1685). London: Routledge, 1991.
David Force, 'A Holding, Uniting-Constant Friend': The Organ in Seventeenth-Century English Domestic Music. PhD dissertation, 2019.
Rebecca Herrissone, Musical Creativity in Restoration England. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013.
Peter Holman, ‘Thomas Baltzar (?1631-1663), The 'Incomparable Lubicer on the Violin’ Chelys, Volume 13 (1984), pp. 3-38.
Holman "‘Evenly, Softly, and Sweetly Acchording to All": The Organ Accompaniment of English Consort Music’ in John Jenkins and his Time, eds A. Ashbee and P. Holman. Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1996. pp. 353-82.
Christopher Page, The Guitar in Stuart England: A Social and Musical History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017.
Margaret Mabbett, ‘Italian Musicians in Restoration England (1660–90)’ in Music & Letters, Volume 67, No. 3 (July, 1986). pp. 237-47.
Graham Dixon, 'Purcell's Italianate Circle', in The Purcell Companion, ed. Michael Burden. London: Faber & Faber, 1986. pp. 38-51.