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Chapter 9 - Morley's Other Publications

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 October 2014

Tessa Murray
Tessa Murray
Affiliation:
Honorary research fellow at the University of Birmingham
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Summary

Having thoroughly established a market for English madrigals, Thomas Morley started to turn his attention to other genres that might appeal to his customers for recreational music, specifically instrumental ensemble music and the English lute ayre. To these he added a comprehensive self-instruction manual for those who wanted to acquire or improve their musical skills.

Lute ayres

Morley published his First Booke of Ayres or Little Short Songs, comprising twenty-one songs, scored for voice, lute and bass viol, plus two instrumental pieces, in 1600. Three years earlier, in 1597, John Dowland had produced his First Booke of Songes in four parts with lute accompaniment, initiating a new strand of published music suitable for domestic performance. Sales of Dowland's volume were good enough to merit a second edition in 1600, and this may well have persuaded Morley that it was worth trying his hand at writing and publishing his own lute songs. As he explained:

Let it not seeme straunge (courteous Reader) that I thus farre presume to take upon me, in publishing this volume of Lute Ayres, being no professor thereof, but like a blind man groping for my way, have at length happened upon a method: which when I found, my heart burning love to my friends would not consent I might conceale. Two causes mooved me hereunto, the first to satisfie the world of my no idle howers (though both Gods visitation in sicknesse, and troubles in the world, by sutes in Law have kept me busied.) The other cause was to make tryall of my first fruites, which being effected, I will commend to indifferent and no partiall judges.

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Chapter
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Thomas Morley
Elizabethan Music Publisher
 , pp. 146 - 162
Publisher: Boydell & Brewer
Print publication year: 2014

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