Richard Dering: Motets for One, Two or Three Voices and Basso Continuo

Research output: Book/ReportScholarly edition

Abstract

Richard Dering (c.1580–1630) was one of the first English composers to be influenced by early seventeenth-century Italian concertato techniques and this volume is the first complete edition of his small-scale settings of Latin texts with continuo accompaniment. Like much other sacred music of the period, these pieces were almost certainly designed for intimate devotional observances in small chapels and/or aristocratic chambers. From the number of surviving sources it is clear that many of the items in this volume were especially popular in England after 1625 and had such widely differing performance contexts as the private chapel of Queen Henrietta Maria (Charles I’s Roman Catholic queen) and the residential quarters of Oliver Cromwell. A detailed examination of their manuscript sources has led to the plausible attribution to Dering of a further number of motets, and these together with those others more firmly accredited represent an impressive body of work. A number of incomplete motets have also been completed editorially. Thus we are now in a position to acknowledge more fully Dering’s remarkable contribution to seventeenth-century English music.
Original languageEnglish
Place of PublicationLondon
PublisherStainer & Bell
Number of pages162
Volume87
EditionMusica Britannica
ISBN (Print)978 0 85249 898 9
Publication statusPublished - 2008

Publication series

NameMusica Britannica
PublisherStainer & Bell
Volume87

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