“Harmony to please, varietie to delight, facilitie to invite thee…” In the preface of his collection of songs Pammelia, the excentric Thomas Ravenscroft praises the power of profane music, even more cheerful when sung among good friends! The Consort of Musicke, featuring notably Emma Kirkby and Paul Agnew, offers a nice florilegium of vocal pieces including the hits There Were Three Ravens and Three Country Dances in One.

A remarkable vignette of artificial 17th-century Italian courtly life. ‘Love’ is hunted in eyes, in hair, between breasts, before a hilarious game of ‘tongue-twisters’. Best though are 14 mannered mood-pictures spanning every emotion in intensely detailed word-painting. Truly revelatory.

John Jenkins: yet another seventeenth century English composer who deserves to be more widely known. This delightful CD from The Consort of Musicke directed by Trevor Jones is no dutiful study of a hidden but rather uninspiring corner of English early Baroque consort music; rather, a mosaic – rich in color and shape, carefully crafted and full of surprises. Listen, for instance, to the unpretentious, jaunty and appropriately figurative progress through the Saraband (52, tr.6) and the restrained melancholy of the Fancy-Air (4, tr.7). Jenkins' counterpoint is well-wrought, his instrumental palette fresh and crisp and his melodies catchy without being fey or superficial in any way. He is in excellent hands with the Consort of Musicke… eight string players of the caliber of Monica Huggett and Alison Crum violins; Alan Wilson organ and Anthony Rooley theorbo. If fresh, beautiful, expertly-played English consort music appeals to you, don't hesitate to get this gem of a CD – actually a reissue of a Decca disc from 1983: it's unreservedly recommended.

"Madrigali guerrieri et amorosi" ("Madrigals Warlike and Amorous") is how Claudio Monteverdi titled his eighth and largest book of madrigals–which was actually two volumes in one. The "warlike madrigals" (concerned largely with the "war of love") feature the "agitated style" Monteverdi pioneered: quick, almost nervous writing, lots of rapidly repeated notes, and more syllables than a Gilbert & Sullivan patter song. These works culminate in the famous short quasi-opera Il Combattimento de Tancredi e Clorinda. The "amorous madrigals" are no less ardent, but they are less, well, warlike–that is, more leisurely paced, with plenty of chromaticism, dissonant suspensions, and giddily virtuosic runs to depict the pain and excitement of love.

The superbly consistent quality of the Third Book of songs by John Dowland suggests that the earlier issues, First Book and Second Book also recorded by Anthony Rooley and the Consort of Musicke, were no mere flashes in the pan, but set the tone for the whole series.

The songs of John Dowland are sparkling highlights, not only of Renaissance music, but of Western music in general. His ‘First Booke of Songes’ contains some particularly bright gems.

In 1597 John Dowland (1563-1626) published his first collection of music, The First Book of Songs or Airs of Four Parts with Tableture for the Lute. A groundbreaking work in several respects, not least in that it was the first published collection of English lute songs, it success was immediate, and was reprinted several times. His Second Book of Songs or Airs (1600) shows the increasingly solo nature of the lute-song, as Dowland left the first eight songs as lute solos.

Rooley's group has a strong feeling for the pungency of individual words and their harmonic emphases. He achieves a biting emotional style here, making this collection a compelling one. Even the sonic dimensions match the interpretive approach: Rooley has a close and sharply-etched sound.

For twenty-first century ears accustomed to every type of music imaginable, it can be hard to hear Gesualdo's later madrigals as the shocking and revolutionary pieces they are or imagine the reaction of their original audiences, but sometimes the music is so supremely odd that it inevitably elicits a double-take. This is sometimes the result of Gesualdo's brilliant/cavalier disregard for the late Renaissance conventions of harmony, tonality, and voice leading, but just as often it's the intensity of emotional affect in his response to the texts, which can create music that seems alarmingly disjunct, even schizophrenic, in its mood swings. In any case, Gesualdo is a composer who's most appealing to listeners who like wild rides and lots of aural surprises.

Rarely have I read a sleeve-note that pleads so vehemently in support of the music it introduces as does the one for this collection of works by Henry Lawes. ''I wish this record well,'' writes Anthony rooley, ''for Harry's [Henry's] sake, so that our un-sung genius of song may occupy his rightful place in the halls of Fame, and the late 20th century adopt the same conclusions as his own time''. Certainly you may find it surprising that a composer whose music was praised by such towering contemporaries as Charles I, Milton and Locke should have been neglected so universally by today's champions of early music—surprising, that is, until you hear the music itself.