Markets for the Masque

The project is designed to consolidate the success of practice-based research started in 2005, AHRC-funded for its first three years and supported by the University of Southampton since then. It takes the research in two new directions, one championing the performance of masque music to a classical music circuit with the group Theatre of the Ayre, and the other exploring the connections with plucked improvisation across genre boundaries, in collaboration with members of the Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain. Both approaches bring a quasi-theatrical style of presentation and correspondingly adventurous improvisation to mid seventeenth century English vocal music, and beyond it to uncover similar structures in other kinds of music with plucked accompaniment.

This project will take masque music and ways of performing it to new audiences worldwide through the recording of a CD for Linn records, and develop relationships with festivals and venues across the UK (Salisbury, Buxton, Swaledale, St Davids, The Stables Wavendon).