The music
We aren't purists. Nor scholars. We want to play music people enjoy.
Our repertoire comes mostly from around 1500 to 1650, a period when music printing and social conditions had created a musical middle class. We like to think of Samuel Pepys, who played the lute and the viol. It's a mix of old and new: songs of courtly love – plus a few contemporary arrangements of old songs – and some dance tunes of the same period. ​
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That was the 'Greensleeves' period, good tunes matched with songs about men mooning over women (nothing changed there, then!). Occasionally we find a song from the woman's point of view – but it's still written by a man; women composers seem to have been few and nearly invisible.
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Purely instrumental music started up during this period, music for music's sake, no singers and no dancers; composers enjoyed twining the lines around each other like a bunch of eels, an equal music where no one voice was top monkey. The days of an SATB chorus, where the sopranos had the tune and the other voices supplied a harmony, were yet to come.
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When you went dancing the band probably played from memory, spicing up the tunes as they went, like a jazz band or a ceilidh band today. The dances that have survived were the ones that were written down and used as vehicles for art music, just like Handel's minuets or Bach's sarabandes; you can dance to those, but the arrangements are really meant for listening to, not for dancing.
The instruments
Viols
We think the most important of our instruments is the viol, aka viola da gamba. How to say that? Pronounce 'viol' as vie-oll, like 'trial' or the beginning of 'violet', but pronounce 'viola da gamba' like 'the orchestral instrument, vee-oh-la. Same word but came into English by different routes.
The viol is not related to the violin!
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Most viols have 6 strings tuned very much like a guitar, and they have frets, very much like a guitar ... In fact, let's face it, the viol practically is a guitar, except it's played with a bow. Viols use old-fashioned wooden tuning pegs instead of the modern machine-head pegs favoured by guitarists; is that because the wooden ones are lighter and don't disturb the balance, or is it maybe because early musicians are very, very conservative?
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Flutes and recorders
Everyone knows the standard orchestral flute that we sometimes use. Sometime in the future we might be able to add an earlier style, one without keys. That might seem odd, but the sound is different and so is what you can do with them. Besides, they look good :)
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Everyone knows about school recorders, too, usually little squeaky things. When we use a recorder it's a bigger size, usually the one known as a 'tenor'.
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The wind-synthesizer
What, an electronic instrument in an early music group? Well, why not. We did warn you that we aren't purists. You blow into this gadget, the same as you blow into a clarinet, and it has switches for the fingers corresponding to the holes and keys on a clarinet or a sax. It can loosely imitate various standard instruments, and we use it sometimes to imitate an early trombone or sometimes to imitate a clarinet. (We have to admit that the imitation is a flavour rather than a 100% reproduction.)
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We like it because it gives a different timbre from the other things we play and it has a huge range, so it can go deep or high very easily.
A viol, or viola da gamba. Six strings, tuned almost like a guitar; frets; no spike (unlike the modern cello). The string tension is much lower than a modern-day violin, giving a quiet, intimate sound, good for contemplative music with complex, twining lines rather than dramatic operatic music or high-speed dance tunes. Sometimes viols were highly ornamented, like this one by Merion David Attwood. Image permission to be requested