era, consort music was absorbed into chamber music.

Definitions and forms

The earliest documented example of the English word 'consort' in a musical sense is in George Gascoigne's The Princelye Pleasures (1576). Only from the mid-17th century has there been a clear distinction made between a whole', or 'closed' consort, that is, all instruments of the same family (for example, a set of viols played together) and a mixed', or 'broken' consort,

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