The Royal Consorts

William Lawes is believed by many to have been the most important English composer of his time. As a musician he was certainly revered and prized by his colleagues in the service of King Charles I. Most of his music was written for entertainments at Court. He was best-known for his inventiveness in chamber music of the kind featured on this CD. Composed in the early 1630s, the Royall Consorts were Lawes’s best-known works in his own lifetime. Susie Napper and Margaret Little, the two gambists of Les Voix humaines, have been compared to the skill of two trapeze artists or the telepathic communion of a pair of jazz saxophonists!