LAWES’S music for viol consort is an impressive testament to his ability to compose flexible and imaginative pieces within a contrapuntal framework, and perhaps best illustrates how he was able to transform traditional genres by applying his own compositional language and style. Thirty-three pieces for viol consort survive by Lawes (16 five-part and 17 six-part). They include fantasias, pavans, aires and (two six-part) In Nomines: many can be ranked with those of Orlando Gibbons, Ferrabosco II and Jenkins as among the best in the repertoire.

Generally speaking, the viol consort fantasia can be seen as having developed along two main paths in early seventeenth-century England. On the one hand the fantasias of Coprario, Thomas Lupo and John Ward were strongly influenced by the Italian madrigal. By the turn of the century these composers were writing what were in effect textless madrigals for consorts of viols. During the first decade or so, however, they began to move away from vocally derived models and were composing more instrumentally conceived fantasias for viols. These composers, especially Coprario, show an affinity for the seconda prattica in their use of dissonance, chromaticisms and madrigalian textures and harmonies: they seem to have exerted the strongest influence on Lawes. The other main path is represented by Gibbons, Ferrabosco II and Jenkins. The bulk of Gibbons’s consort fantasias appear to have been composed by 1620. In them he experimented with triple-time sections and popular melodies, all interwoven within virtuosic counterpoint. Although Ferrabosco was largely unconcerned with madrigalian techniques, his acquaintance with contemporary Italian music is demonstrated by his use of bipartite structures, fantasias built around a single theme, and use of sophisticated contrapuntal devices such as augmentation and diminution. Ferrabosco’s fantasias are generally instrumental in character, and explore a greater range of modulations than his English contemporaries; a common fingerprint is the use of tonic major and minors for structural effect. All of these traits were to exert a strong influence on Jenkins. Gibbons too influenced Jenkins, though the main signs of this are to be found in his three-part pieces, especially in the treatment of themes.