We have a variety of programmes to offer, reflecting different corners of the consort and ensemble repertoire. We are happy to modify these to suit particular occasions, and can also vary the number of players for each programme.
Two viols, with and without continuo
Available as a concert programme for three or four players. Music by Benjamin Hely, Christopher Simpson, John Jenkins, Daniel Norcomble, William Young, Richard Sumarte, Nicola Matteis, and others. This programme explores the repertoire that might originally have been played on our two historical bass viols by John Pitts (1675) and Edward Lewis (1703). For two bass viols with continuo (theorbo plus baroque guitar).
Musical firsts
Music from 17th and 18th century Germany for two viols and continuo. The title is taken from Conrad Höfler’s collection of suites for viola da gamba, titled in Latin “Primate Chelicae” and in in German “Musikalische Erstlinge”: musical firsts. Höfler’s contemporary August Kühnel published the first trio sonatas for viols in Germany, incorporating the English art of playing divisions, having travelled to London to learn this skill from the famed English players. Entering the eighteenth century, we encounter the fantasias for solo viol by Georg Philip Telemann, rediscovered only in 2015, and the one surviving sonata for viol by Georg Frideric Handel, alongside music for German baroque lute by Silvius Leopard Weiss.
The Compleat Violist
If we imagine a viol player in London in the early years of the 18th century, what music might he (or she!) have had in the cupboard? This programme attempts to answer the question, and takes us on a tour of Europe, from London to Amsterdam to Paris, Rome and beyond. Music by Simpson, Schenk, Marais, Corelli and more. We have performed this programme in versions both with, and without continuo (lute or guitar).
Tombeau les regrets
Contemplative music for two viols and theorbo by Marin Marais and M. de Sainte-Colombe. Tombeau les regrets is a meditative programme of music which follows the course of the bass viol in France, from its first flowering as a solo instrument under the hands of the mysterious Jean de Sainte-Colombe, to its apotheosis in the music of Sainte-Colombe’s most talented student: viol player, teacher, and composer of operas to Louis XIV, Marin Marais. The Tombeau les Regrets itself follows the course of the human soul in grief, ending with a final, beautiful major-key catharsis. These works are introduced by two short, evocative preludes by the French lutenist and viol player Robert de Visée, contemporary of Marais, and Louis XIV’s guitar teacher.
Consort Programmes:
Vivat regina!
A programme of words and music to celebrate the life of Queen Elizabeth I. For five or six viols, singer and narrator (could be the same person). Featuring music by William Byrd, Thomas Tallis, Robert Parsons, Antonio de Cabezon, John Dowland, and others. Developed in collaboration with Saxon Shore Early Music in Kenardinton, Kent, to celebrate the jubilee of HM Queen Elizabeth II in 2022.
Royal fantasies
Music for viols by William Byrd and Orlando Gibbons.
William Byrd may be well-known for his vocal and keyboard works, but his music for viol consort is among the best of the late 16th century. Early works such as the 4-part “Christe Redemptor”, a gentle plainchant setting, set the foreground for his 6-part fantasias, which demonstrate a mastery of contrapuntal technique while incorporating popular melodies and light, triple-time dance-like sections. “Browning”, a 5-part setting of the popular melody “Browning my dear”, takes the tune through some dazzling variations in style, tempo and rhythmic proportion, while the reserved fantasia in four parts is a double canon, a glance back to the renaissance counterpart of Byrd’s upbringing.
To complement Byrd’s music for viols, we have arrangements of his music by his contemporary, the lute player Francis Cutting, and by our lutenist Lynda Sayce. These explore some alternative textures, for example combining viols and lute in a re-working of a pavan and galliard from the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book, or two lyra viols, playing chordally in a style influenced by lute music. Finally, we have works for viols by Byrd’s younger contemporary, Orlando Gibbons. Gibbons’ 6-part fantasias are more madrigalian than Byrd’s, but the austere counterpoint of his 3-part fantasias show his roots in the same contrapuntal tradition, while his inspired set of variations on the song “Go from my window” provide the perfect counterpart to Byrd’s “Browning”.
Byrd’s Lullaby: consort songs of love, death and sleep
Newe Vialles with Helen Charlston, mezzo-soprano (four viols plus singer)
The consort song, which originated in the theatre songs of the late 16th century, was a uniquely English genre, setting sacred an secular poetry to the accompaniment of a consort of viols. Perhaps because of its dramatic roots, it was associated particularly with texts of invocation, memorial, and lullaby. Newe Vialles, along with Helen Charlston (winner of the 2018 Handel Singing Competition) present a programme of profound and intimate consort songs from the late Elizabethan era. Includes songs by William Byrd, alongside consort music by Byrd, Tallis and Gibbons.
This programme can also be performed as The Dark is my Delight – consort music and songs for Hallowe’en.
The Music from the Shirley Partbooks
The Newe Vialles’ inaugural programme: consort music in 3, 4, 5 and 6 parts, based on a selection of music copied by the young William Lawes into a set of partbooks intended for the Shirley family of Leicestershire and now held in the British Library. The Shirley Partbooks offer a fascinating glimpse into the tastes of a music-loving family during the reign of Charles I – a form of musical commonplace book, such collections show what Lawes’ contemporaries considered to be the ‘greatest hits’ of the golden age of consort music. Pieces stretching as far back as the mid-16th century (such as Sandrin’s Douce Memoir), textless Italian madrigals by Monteverdi, Vecchi and Marenzio, and Jacobean fantasias by William White, John Ward, Alfonso Ferrabosco II and Lawes’ teacher, Coprario, are combined with Lawes’ own experiements in the new baroque dance forms, culminating in the composer’s own great G-minor ‘sett’ of ‘ffantasie’ and ‘Inomine’. This programme is at once a microcosmic look at the development of the viol consort, an exploration of some of the greatest instrumental works of the early 17th century, a rare chance to hear Italian madrigals performed by viols (as they so often were in 17th century England), and an insight into the music that inspired Lawes’ own rhythmic and harmonic daring.
This programme can be performed in variants for four, five and six viols
