Changing approaches to the study of English keyboard music before c.1630

Abstract

The first two chapters are designed to guide the reader to existing literature on early English keyboard music. General histories of keyboard music establish a linear narrative. The focus of most Musica Britannica volumes has been on composer rather than source, a fact reflected in the editorial approach to the music. More recent approaches place emphasis on scribes and users of manuscripts, and on sources and instruments as objects of material culture. Examining networks of connections, both musical and social, can prove illuminating. Liturgical and domestic keyboard practice is differentiated from autonomous keyboard works; the music of the so-called English virginalists involved the elevation of the former to the latter by organists.