This programme brings together a remarkable constellation of musical voices from around 1600, refracted through our nation’s rich archival holdings at the National Library of Scotland. In the hands of Sean Shibe and the Dunedin Consort, these sources are not treated just as static historical documents, but as living artefacts—repositories of performance, adaptation, and cultural exchange with the capacity to speak and move with a profoundly modern relevance. What emerges is a sound-world at once intimate and cosmopolitan, rooted in Scotland yet alive to currents flowing across Europe. 

At the heart of the programme lies the repertory for viol consort, exemplified by the music of Christopher Simpson. His Twenty Ayres for Two Trebles and Two Basses reflect a distinctly English cultivation of ensemble playing: poised, rhetorically expressive, and grounded in contrapuntal clarity. The suites in C and B-flat major heard here demonstrate Simpson’s sensitivity to dance forms—courantes, sarabandes, and their doubles—while also offering a framework within which performers could exercise tasteful ornamentation and variation. Such music invites a collaborative intimacy, perfectly suited to the combination of violins, viola da gamba, and lute assembled for this performance. 

Yet this is not solely an English story. The presence of French composers such as François Dufaut and Marin Marais points to the pervasive influence of French taste in Scotland in the later seventeenth century. Dufaut’s lute music, with its refined harmonic language and idiomatic textures, exemplifies the instrument’s capacity for both introspection and brilliance. Marais, meanwhile, elevates the viola da gamba to new expressive heights, his works combining technical sophistication with an almost vocal lyricism. These pieces remind us that Scotland’s musical culture did not develop in isolation, but was enriched by imported styles and the mobility of musicians and manuscripts alike. 

Central to the programme’s conception is the exploration of Scottish sources, particularly manuscripts such as the Panmure Manuscript and related collections associated with the Bowie, MacFarlane, and Rowallan families. These compilations preserve a vibrant mixture of traditional tunes, courtly dances, and arrangements of popular melodies. Titles such as The Baggpipe Tune, Wellcome home my Bonny Love, and Lady Lothian’s Lilt evoke a social world in which music circulated fluidly between oral and written traditions, between domestic recreation and more formalised performance. 

The juxtaposition of these Scottish materials with continental repertory highlights a key theme of the programme: adaptation. Tunes were rarely fixed; instead, they were reshaped according to local taste, available instruments, and the creative impulses of performers. This process is particularly evident in the Scottish reception of John Dowland’s Lachrimae, or Seaven Teares. Dowland’s Lachrimae Pavan—one of the most famous pieces of the early seventeenth century—became a touchstone for composers across Europe. The version preserved in Scottish sources offers a distinctive reinterpretation, inflected by local stylistic preferences and performance practices. In this context, the piece becomes not only a work of art but also a vehicle for cultural translation. 

The lute plays a pivotal role in mediating these diverse idioms. As both a solo and continuo instrument, it bridges the worlds of dance, song, and consort music. In Shibe’s hands, the lute becomes a guide through the programme’s shifting textures and affects, from the intricate polyphony of Simpson’s ayres to the more improvisatory character of traditional tunes. Its presence also underscores the instrument’s ubiquity in early modern Europe, where it functioned as a symbol of refinement and a practical tool for accompaniment alike. 

The programme concludes with music by Jean-Baptiste Lully, drawn from Le Bourgeois gentilhomme. Lully’s theatrical works epitomise the grandeur and wit of the French court under Louis XIV, combining dance, drama, and music in a seamlessly integrated whole. The selected airs and dances—ranging from the ceremonial Marche pour la Cérémonie des Turcs to the exuberant Chaconne des Scaramouches—bring a sense of spectacle to the programme, while also reinforcing its central concern with the interplay of national styles. 

Taken as a whole, this sequence of pieces reveals a musical landscape defined by movement: of people, of ideas, and of repertory. Scotland, often perceived as peripheral in narratives of early modern music, emerges here as a dynamic participant in a broader European network. Manuscripts preserved in Edinburgh bear witness to a culture that was at once receptive and inventive, capable of absorbing external influences while maintaining a distinctive identity. 

In revisiting these sources, Shibe and the Dunedin Consort do more than reconstruct a historical soundscape; they invite us to hear the past as something fluid and contingent. The music’s apparent diversity—its shifts between courtly elegance and rustic vitality, between written composition and oral tradition—is precisely what binds it together. It is a repertoire that thrives on transformation, and in performance it continues to evolve, echoing the voracious, richly varied musical world from which it first emerged. 

Dr James Cook
ECA Director of Research
Senior Lecturer in Early Music, Reid School of Music, University of Edinburgh