The Glory of Early Music

Early Music has become a blanket term to cover a multiplicity of musical forms, ranging from the primitive to the sophistication of the Renaissance and the complexities of the Baroque, even, at times, extending to anything very much earlier than the present day. The present collection of short instrumental pieces consists largely of music written or conceived before the Baroque, a period generally dated, with simplifying convenience, to the year 1600. In the centuries covered, there was little distinction made between music for voices and music for instruments. While dances would be considered proper only to instruments, other music might be considered and, in the sixteenth century published, as apt for either one or the other, or, indeed, for a mixture of the two.

One of the most popular composers of earlier music must be the versatile and long-lived Anon. Inevitably some music must lack a named composer. This is more obviou