Though several of the madrigals by John Wilbye still appear on Renaissance programs, he is rarely the main subject, and the rather smaller output of the English madrigal school, compared to its Italian counterpart, has found a diminished audience over time. Wilbye was not a very prolific composer, at least in terms of what made it out of his patron's home, but he was among the most prominent composers of the style during its relatively brief time of popularity. The bulk of his surviving output comes from two books of ...
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Though several of the madrigals by John Wilbye still appear on Renaissance programs, he is rarely the main subject, and the rather smaller output of the English madrigal school, compared to its Italian counterpart, has found a diminished audience over time. Wilbye was not a very prolific composer, at least in terms of what made it out of his patron's home, but he was among the most prominent composers of the style during its relatively brief time of popularity. The bulk of his surviving output comes from two books of madrigals, from 1598 and 1609, for three to six voices, and I Fagiolini's program contains selections from both volumes and all vocal combinations. The first volume comes from when Wilbye was in his mid-twenties, and the madrigal was still a fairly new phenomenon in the London area, with similarities in his writing to what was being produced and performed at the time. The pieces in the second set, inscribed for voices or viols, are fully mature and even forward-looking harmonically; they...
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