These are some of the most popular duets from the Renaissance era. If
you like to sing or play with other people, these are a good place to
start exploring the world of Renaissance Polyphony. Morley was famous
not only as a composer and performer, but also as a music teacher. He
wrote the Music for Dummies of his day. (A Plaine and Easie
Introduction to Musicke)
For recorder players, almost all of them fit well on C instruments, in
most cases two equal instruments (either sopranos or tenors); or in
a few cases a soprano and a lower instrument, either Alto or Tenor.
They are available in 2
spiral-bound partbooks from the Serpent Publications
store. at lulu.com. Both music and words have been set in
large, easy-to-read type.
Here's a sample page:
Or, you can download the pdf
files (3155792 bytes),
the ABC files (32724 bytes),
the MIDI files (33066 bytes),
or the TeX, eps,
and lilypond sources (1057353 bytes).
Here's the Preface, where I explain
why I'm interested in doing this.
Here's the Foreword which John Tyson was kind
enough to write for it.
Here are the editorial notes that explain what I did.
And here's what I think is the plot.
For individual pieces, and the table of contents, see the
book page.