AYRES AND SUITES: HARMONICALLY DETERMINED FORM
The other main genre of consort music was the “ayre,” a general term no longer meaning a song, but rather any sort of dance-style composition. (Its etymology was chiefly by way of the solo accompanied song or “lute ayre,” which in the hands of great virtuoso John Dowland usually took the form of a pavane or galliard with two or three repeated strains.) The later composers of consort music tended to write their pieces in “setts” that began with one or two numbers in the more elaborate fancy form and concluded more lightly with an ayre or two. The ayre by William Lawes, whose ending is shown in Ex. 3-9, is the final item in what the key signature of two flats already identifies as an unusually serious set: on the way to it there are two lengthy fantasies and an “Inominy,” all in what we would call the key of C minor. (In the seventeenth century minor keys with flats generally carried “Dorian” signatures, that is, with one less flat than their modern counterparts; flatting of the sixth degree was usually done at sight, by applying already ancient rules of chromatic adjustment.)
- Citation (MLA):
- Richard Taruskin. "Chapter 3 Courts Resplendent, Overthrown, Restored." The Oxford History of Western Music. Oxford University Press. New York, USA. n.d. Web. 15 Mar. 2025. <https://www.oxfordwesternmusic.com/view/Volume2/actrade-9780195384826-div1-03008.xml>.
- Citation (APA):
- Taruskin, R. (n.d.). Chapter 3 Courts Resplendent, Overthrown, Restored. In Oxford University Press, Music In The Seventeenth And Eighteenth Centuries. New York, USA. Retrieved 15 Mar. 2025, from https://www.oxfordwesternmusic.com/view/Volume2/actrade-9780195384826-div1-03008.xml
- Citation (Chicago):
- Richard Taruskin. "Chapter 3 Courts Resplendent, Overthrown, Restored." In Music In The Seventeenth And Eighteenth Centuries, Oxford University Press. (New York, USA, n.d.). Retrieved 15 Mar. 2025, from https://www.oxfordwesternmusic.com/view/Volume2/actrade-9780195384826-div1-03008.xml
