Keyboard Solos and Duets. Early Keyboard

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.