Consort song

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Consort song was a distinctive English song style from the late 1500s to the early 1600s. It could be sung by one voice or by several voices with instruments, usually viols, and most pieces were in five parts (some early examples had four). It is a key part of a native English musical tradition that stood against Italian madrigals and lute songs. Later, the term also referred to four-voice songs played with a six-instrument consort, as seen in William Leighton’s 1614 Teares or Lamentacions of a Sorrowfull Soule. Thurston Dart popularized this modern sense of the term, and William Byrd is credited with developing consort songs and using them to set everyday English poetry.