Twelve Good Musicians: From John Bull to Henry Purcell

A sequence of twelve illustrated lectures presents concise biographies and critical sketches of prominent English musicians spanning the late sixteenth to the seventeenth century. Each chapter examines a composer’s career, institutional posts, and surviving works while mapping stylistic developments such as the flourishing madrigal and masque, the transition from viol to violin, and changing court and church patronage. The essays combine documentary evidence, musical examples, and contemporaneous commentary to show personal trajectories and the evolution of national musical practices culminating in Purcell.