Perchance to dreame of a time when music could be heard again in public! The composers who endured Puritan England during the civil war and interregnum are relatively unknown despite a rich production of fabulous but secret music that took place behind closed doors!

Music between friends for private enjoyment was acceptable in Cromwell’s England. Viol consorts or art songs might be enjoyed as an after-dinner entertainment at a private party of the bourgeoisie or aristocrats; thus the proliferation of spectacular chamber music, the only musical expression condoned during an otherwise dour era.

It was an honour for poets such as John Milton, Thomas Carew, Abraham Cowley and Robert Herrick to be “heard” as well as read, in this 17th-century form of “rap”! Poets would publicize the fact that popular  composers had set their poems to music producing songs with brilliant lyrics to move audiences to tears and laughter!

Meanwhile, Christopher Simpson, William Lawes and John Jenkins perfected the art of virtuoso viol playing with brilliantly elaborate divisions, often improvised by themselves, that could be described as a form of musical acrobatics!

This highly entertaining programme depicts, with the help of poets and composers, a story of love found and lost, from the joy of first love to the bitterness of a lover’s disdain, interspersed with virtuoso viol music that boast the extremes of viol technique!