This kaleidoscopic programme gives an overview of popular music in Jacobean and Carolean England. It defines two levels of popularity – with the upper-middle classes and with the common people. The former centres mainly on the material of domestic music-making, the modest songs they would have sung, and the instrumental solo or consort music with which, in the absence of radio or television, the household might have entertained themselves (and maybe guests) in their leisure time. Amateurs and professionals may have rubbed shoulders in the more virtuoso consort music. The latter, the common people’s music, embraces “dance tunes and ballads sold and learnt on the street or in the tavern”. To the efforts of the unschooled man in the street were added those of municipal waits and itinerant players. The album’s title, that of the last song, refers to the cap-raising of buskers when approaching potential ‘clients’.
The Dufay Collective have assembled a rich and varied collection of 25 items, played and sung with patent enthusiasm and considerable skill; the bowed-string sound sometimes has rough edges and a few notes are not quite centred, which, even if not regarded as a touch of ‘authenticity’, does not diminish the pleasure given by this splendid disc. The variety of the music and of the sounds made possible by the battery of instruments used, prevents the ear from settling into any kind of rut.
In reviewing a previous recording by this group (10/92), MB complained about the lack of information regarding sources. Here only three items are ascribed to “various sources”; was the consort version of Fortune my foe, one of those three, notionally built around Dowland’s lute setting (P62)? It would be nice to know. Here then is a gust of refreshing air, one not liable to cause earache.'