Keyboard Solos and Duets

by Nicholas Carleton, John Amner and John Tomkins.
Six pieces from Musica Britannica Volume 96. Edited by Alan Brown.

Complementary to K49, this collection is a unique offering of music by John Amner, Nicholas Carleton and John Tomkins that is the only surviving keyboard music by the respective composers. In addition to a pair of duets, in themselves an unusual feature from the period, there are two lengthy sets of variations, Amner’s being a rare example of those on a metrical psalm or hymn-tune (possibly by Tallis in this case), John Tomkins’s being more conventionally modelled on the variation sets of William Byrd. Nicholas Carleton’s ‘A verse of 4 parts’ and ‘Upon the sharp’ include several examples of unusual chromatic notation and wide-ranging tonal schemes.