page_title: Early music of the British Isles
section_title: English Madrigal School
hierarchical_section_title: Early music of the British Isles / Renaissance c. 1450–c. 1660 / English Madrigal School
caption_attribution_description: English: Title page of Plaine and Easie Introduction to Practicall Musicke (1597) by English composer, organist and musicologist Thomas Morley (1557 or 1558 – 1602).
context_page_description: Early music of the British Isles, from the earliest recorded times until the beginnings of the Baroque in the 17th century, was a diverse and rich culture, including sacred and secular music and ranging from the popular to the elite. Each of the major nations of England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales retained unique forms of music and of instrumentation, but British music was highly influenced by continental developments, while British composers made an important contribution to many of the major movements in early music in Europe, including the polyphony of the Ars Nova and laid some of the foundations of later national and international classical music. Musicians from the British Isles also developed some distinctive forms of music, including Celtic chant, the Contenance Angloise, the rota, polyphonic votive antiphons and the carol in the medieval era and English madrigals, lute ayres and masques in the Renaissance era, which would lead to the development of English language opera at the height of the Baroque in the 18th century.
context_section_description: The English Madrigal School was the brief but intense flowering of the musical madrigal in England, mostly from 1588 to 1627. Based on the Italian musical form and patronised by Elizabeth I after the highly popular Musica transalpina by Nicholas Yonge in 1588. English madrigals were a cappella, predominantly light in style, and generally began as either copies or direct translations of Italian models, mostly set for three to six verses. The most influential composers of madrigals in England whose work has survived were Thomas Morley, Thomas Weelkes and John Wilbye. One of the more notable compilations of English madrigals was The Triumphs of Oriana, a collection of madrigals compiled by Thomas Morley and devoted to Elizabeth I. Madrigals continued to be composed in England through the 1620s, but stopped in the early 1630s as they began to seem obsolete as new forms of music began to emerge from the continent.
caption: Title page of Morley's Plaine and Easie Introduction to Practicall Musicke (1597)
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