The booklet to this recording of English ballad settings quotes Gertrude Stein's view of sixteenth-century literature as ''no longer just a song but a song of words that were chosen to make a song that would sound like the words they were to sing''. Whether or not this helped or hindered the battalions of English composers who sought professional solace in setting texts over the next three centuries is debatable, but the 'new fashion' at the turn of the seventeenth century for using street tunes as a means to inject greater character and variety into established art forms has never lost its appeal.
There are many strengths to Circa 1500's delightfully conceived compilation, although none cleverer than the way the full range of 'pop' conceits are pitched and paced. Sophisticated treatments of the ballad sit comfortably alongside the more mundane without the danger of the random disparity which can so often make this type of disc a tiresome encyclopedia rather than a concert. Red Byrd are the undisputed masters of 'the Cry', though they pass Weelkes's version to the lead-singer of Circa 1500, Suzie LeBlanc. Her bright tone and immaculate intonation leave the music short on rough-hewn vowels and her quasi-local dialect renders some of the words unintelligible; but supported by a finely balanced viol consort, she gives a most convincing and musical account of a piece from an especially hybrid genre—one which can still seem pretty bizarre to us now even without Weelkes's melancholic undertones.
Pleasing vocal consorts are equalled by Nancy Haddon's attractive and colourful instrumental arrangements: witness the clarity, zest and pleasing timbres in Nutmegs and Ginger and Grimstock (a tune whose ranginess was not lost on Praetorius in Terpsichore). This enjoyable and well-recorded recital should have wide appeal, though there is room for confusion with Circa 1500 on the cover—for those who don't know that it is the name of a group performing music c. 1600.'