Richard Dering's Few-Voice 'Concertato' Motets

Abstract

Richard Dering ( c .1580–1630) was one of the first English composers to be influenced by early seventeenth-century Italian concertato techniques. This article focuses on the Latin motets for one to three voices and basso continuo (the subject of a forthcoming volume in the series Musica Britannica). The motets were especially popular in England after 1625 and had such widely differing performance contexts as the private chapel of Queen Henrietta Maria (Charles I’s Roman Catholic queen) and the chambers of Oliver Cromwell. The musical heritage of the motets is explored—locating them in relation to early seventeenth-century Roman and Venetian music in particular—and, following an examination of the sources of Dering’s motets, a number of additions to the accepted canon is proposed. The article concludes with an examination of the dissemination and publication of the motets.