‘A good voice… [is a] gift… so rare there is not one among a thousand that hath it’, wrote William Byrd in 1588. This didn’t put off singers wishing to try their luck: songbooks became hugely popular around the turn of the 17th century, most notably John Dowland’s groundbreaking First Booke of Songs or Ayres (1597).
This was music for performers to make their own. These works have a strongly operatic flavour, blending poetry and music to create intensely expressive drama that goes straight to the listener’s heart. Highlights include Purcell’s masterpiece In guilty night, which is held in the Academy’s Spencer Collection.

DOWLAND Awake, sweet love; My thoughts are wing’d with hopes; Sorrow, stay; Now, o now, I needs must part
CAMPION Oft I have sigh’d
COLEMAN Did you not once, Lucinda, vow
PURCELL See where she sits; Upon a quiet conscience; With sick and famish’d eyes; In guilty night (Saul and the Witch of Endor); Here the deities approve
BLOW Ground in D minor; Help, Father Abraham!
MATTEIS Aria amorosa; Ground after the Scotch humour