Just two weeks until our next concert, where we'll be teaming up with Cambridge Renaissance Voices for Monteverdi's 1610 Vespers.
You can catch it at Great Malvern Priory, Saturday 30 May, 7.30pm.
Sacred music written like opera, with the opening fanfare pinched straight from Orfeo and a closing Ave Maris Stella that makes the case for Venice as much as the Virgin — it still throws up questions 400 years later.
We're pairing it with Gabrieli, so you get the full St Mark's effect, in Great Malvern.
🎟️ Tickets and info via Cambridge Renaissance Voices: cambridgerenaissancevoices.org.uk
Jenkins' Fantasia-Suite No. 4 sits right at the meeting point of two musical worlds: the viol consort tradition fading behind it, the bright Italianate sound of the Restoration ahead.
It's music caught beautifully in between, and all the more fascinating for it.
You can hear the full Fantasia-Suite on our new album, Fiddlers Three.
History tends to remember the powerful men.
But the manuscript books of twelve-year-old girls tell their own story.
Elizabeth Cromwell's guitar book, begun in the 1650s, is one of the few surviving sources of repertoire for the five-string guitar; the instrument of choice for gentlewomen of the period, before the published collections of Corbetta and Matteis brought the guitar to a wider audience.
Her book is private document that has outlasted the politics of its time and become an important source for music from Restoration England.
🎶 From 2 Pieces for Guitar by Elizabeth Cromwell.
More from her collection on our album, Fiddlers Three.
There's a quiet thrill in a manuscript that raises more questions than it answers.
Lambert Pietkin's Sonata in D minor survives in just one collection (Thanks to Lowe, professor at Oxford Music School) and the manuscript itself tells an intriguing story.
The original may have been written for a larger ensemble, yet the parts are copied out for three treble instruments, suggesting someone arranged it specifically for the three-violin lineup of Charles II's Private Musick.
Was it performed at court? We may never know for certain. What we do know is that it hasn't been recorded before now.
Listen to our full performance on our new album Fiddlers Three.
Henry Purcell wrote two works in 1678 that could hardly be more different and epitomise the development of English music at the Restoration court.
The Pavan in G minor is an act of deliberate looking-back: austere, tender, and rooted in the old viol consort tradition that was rapidly fading from fashion. It feels like a farewell. The Three Parts upon a Ground, by contrast, is all brilliance and forward momentum, a fashionable French chaconne crackling with contrapuntal energy.
Together they reveal a composer of extraordinary range, still only nineteen years old.
Listen to them both on our new album, Fiddlers Three.
Head to the link in our bio to listen now.
Now available! Suite in D minor for violin in scordatura tuning. This free sheet music download is part of the 'Fiddlers Three' project by Musical & Amicable Society. Check out their site to read more about the project and listen to the album.
Not every composer on Fiddlers Three was a household name, even in their own time.
Bartholomew Isaack, a contemporary of Purcell and probably a fellow chorister at the Chapel Royal, left behind a modest output of songs and anthems, and one remarkable Ground in A minor.
It's a piece that confirms something important: by the late seventeenth century, three violins and continuo had moved beyond the rarefied world of the royal court and into the wider musical conversation.
A combination born in the king's private chambers had found its way into the world.
🎶 Ground in A minor by Bartholomew Isaack from our album Fiddlers Three. Listen here: http://tunelink.to/vXNKT
One of the questions we're most often asked is: what pitch do you tune to and why?
For Fiddlers Three the answer came from the instruments themselves. Most surviving seventeenth-century consort organs (the kind used in domestic settings rather than grand cathedrals) sit between modern pitch and a semitone above it. So we tuned to match ours, settling on A=440.
It's a deliberate departure from the A=415 'Baroque pitch' commonly used for this repertoire today, and one rooted in historical practicality rather than convention. The musicians of Charles II's Private Musick would have tuned to whatever the organ demanded and so did we.
More photos! Thank you @musicalamicable for a wonderful sellout concert of Bach. Each Brandenburg was so characterful and beautifully played👏🎶
What a fantastic finale to our 2025-6 season in our collaboration with Worcester Concert Club - many thanks to all support this year lovely audience 🙏
Thank you @musicalamicable for a wonderful sellout concert of Bach. Each Brandenburg was so characterful and beautifully played👏🎶
What a fantastic finale to our 2025-6 season in our collaboration with Worcester Concert Club - many thanks to all support this year lovely audience 🙏
⭐ New @continuofoundation -supported CD release!
Discover an astonishingly varied cross-section of music associated with Charles II’s ‘Private Musick’ in the latest release from Musical & Amicable Society (@musicalamicable ), out now on @barncottagerecords 💿
Listen now and hear from director Martin Perkins on their quest to achieve historical performing conditions as closely as possible 👉 link in bio
Three concerts this weekend, with three very different programmes:
Mendelssohn: Elijah at St Mary's Priory Church, Abergavenny | Saturday 18 April, 7:30pm, with @gwentbach , conductor Roger Langford
Handel: Samson at @SouthwellMinster , Nottinghamshire | Saturday 18 April, 7:30pm, with @SouthwellChoralSociety , conductor Marcus Farnsworth
Bach: Brandenburg Concerti 3–6 at Henry Sandon Hall, Worcester with @worcsearly & Worcester Concert Club | Sunday 19 April, 3:30pm (online tickets SOLD OUT, limited tickets on the door)
🎶 Bonus Music: 'Mr Bannister's Division' by John Bannister
