Abstract:
This study has offered an overview of the performance issues relevant to singers
of the solo secular declamatory songs of mid-seventeenth-century England. This
expansive repertoire has been largely unpublished in the twentieth century. Evidence
suggests that the full expressive potential of these songs may only be realized in
performance, through the application of performance and interpretive techniques
commonly understood by performers of mid-seventeenth-century England. These
techniques include the application of significant ornamental embellishments in an early
seventeenth-century Italian style, and a rhetorical approach to the dramatic interpretation
and presentation of the songs in a declamatory style.
