George Flynn

George Flynn (born 1937) did much of the arranging and adaptation as well as writing parts of the album and playing harpsichord and glockenspiel.

On his own website (which doesn't mention Tabernakel) we learn that he chaired Musicianship and Composition at DePaul University (Chicago) for 25 years, and continues to direct DePaul's professional contemporary performance series, "New Music Depaul" as well as Chicago's "New Music at the Green Mill" series. He has composed over 100 works in all media, including over five hours of piano solo music, the latter performed by international pianists Geoffrey Madge (Derus Simples), Carlo Grante (Glimpses of Our Inner Lives), Fredrik Ullén (Trinity), Winston Choi (American Icon), Heather O'Donnell (Remembering), and Eteri Andjaparidze (Toward the Light) as well as Chicago pianists Stuart Leitch and Frank Abbinanti (Pieces of Night, Kanal). His music is performed internationally, and has appeared on several recordings, including four recent CD's on the Southport Composers label, available on several internet sites and in selected retail outlets. As a pianist, Flynn has performed and recorded new music for many years throughout the US and Europe.

George Flynn received his BA, MA, and DMA degrees from Columbia University, New York City. He has served as visiting lecturer/composer at many music institutions throughout the country and Canada, and has contributed articles to several American publications, including The Musical Quarterly, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra Program Guide, and Christian Century. He is the recipient of awards from many individuals and organizations, among them the Alice B. Ditson Fund, the Martha Baird Rockefeller Fund for Music, Paul Fromm, Illinois Arts Council, the Polish Arts Club, DePaul University, ASCAP and Meet the Composer. Flynn is a member of ASCAP, and is entered in the New Groves Dictionary of Music and Musicians, Baker's Biographical Dictionary, Maurice Hinson's Guide to the Piano Repertory as well as several national and international Who's Who in Music.

Review 3 (Badcat)

Badcat

With Focus at their commercial zenith, 1974 saw guitarist Jan Akkerman given an opportunity to release what was technically his third solo LP -  the Geoffrey Haslam produced Tabernakel.  Long fascinated by the medieval lute Akkerman had previously purchased one of the instruments (he outbid the Museum of Copenhagen to purchase an instrument made by East German craftsman Amon Meinel) and after spending considerable time and energy locating tutorial material and ancient scores, began teaching himself how to play it.  Some of his initial efforts showed themselves on the "Focus III" LP.  Satisfied with his skills on the instrument, in 1974 Akkerman went into a New York studio with a collection of all star musicians including drummer Carmen Appice and bassist player Tim Bogert, spending two weeks recording this LP.  In spite of the rock musician lineup, anyone expecting to hear a collection of Focus-styled progressive moves was probably shocked by this LP.  Working with Columbia University-based professor/harpsichord player George Flynn, Akkerman all but abandoned his rock and progressive roots in favour of an instrumental set heavy on 16th century covers, including works by John Dowland, Anthonie Holbourne, and Francis Pilkington.  Even the handful of Akkerman originals ('Javeh' and 'House of the King' - the latter was previously recorded by Focus) were inspired by Tudor stylings, though the latter boasted an all electric arrangement, including Akkerman's lone electric guitar solo.  That selection also served as one of the standout performances offering up a strange but effective meld of 16th century style and 20th century technology.  Showcasing a multi-section suite, side two's 'Lammy' was more of a hit-or-miss endeavour for my ears, though the sitar solo was pretty darn cool.  So by now you've probably figured out this set isn't going to be for everyone.  I was certainly sceptical the first couple of times I played the set.  That said, this was one of those magical sets that I've put on a CDR in my Sony CD jukebox. Everyone has some 'soundtrack' they rely on to relax and Tabernakel frequently serves as my choice. It may not be rock and roll, but it sure is pretty and makes for one of those fantastic rainy Sunday morning LPs ... The LP was simply too eclectic for American audiences, but in Holland Atlantic actually tapped the LP for a single.

Review 2 (BE)

Bruce Eder

This album - which, despite being third in most discographies, was actually Jan Akkerman's first official solo album - must have been a real shocker to a lot of Focus fans. Rather than working from the flashy, electric guitar side of the group's sound, Akkerman chose to expand on the lute sound that he'd explored on Focus III's "Elspeth of Nottingham". Tabernakel represented Akkerman at his most formalistic, playing almost entirely in a classical idiom on lute and acoustic and electric guitars (with one brief side trip to the bass). The repertoire is drawn largely from 16th century Tudor England, including compositions by John Dowland and Antony Holborne, rearranged by Akkerman and harpsichord virtuoso and scholar George Flynn. He gives one major concession to progressive rock in the form of the fuzz-laden reinterpretation of "House of the King," which misses the flute part from the Focus original but is still worth hearing as a guitar showcase. Tabernakel is otherwise the real article as far as its classicism — the 14-minute-long "Lammy" comes close to being pretentious without quite crossing the line, and all of the album is a fascinating solo departure for the guitarist. What makes this album doubly intriguing is that apart from Flynn, Akkerman's accompanists come entirely from the rock world: Tim Bogert, Carmine Appice and veteran R&B drummer Ray Lucas, none of whom seems to skip a beat in their work here. Recorded at Atlantic Records' studios in New York and released in 1974, when Focus was still near the peak of its fame, Tabernakel sold reasonably well at the time, but had been unavailable from the late '70s until 2002, when Wounded Bird Records reissued it in a good-sounding CD edition.

Review 1 (moi)

This is my own review prepared for itunes:

This album is a work of genius. Not to everyone's taste, yet for the aficianado of progressive rock it rarely gets as good as this. We begin with a beautiful arrangement of a Dowland piece with lute, orchestra and rhythm section. This is followed by the first two of some six well delivered solo lute pieces that punctuate the album. Then it is back to the orchestra and rhythm section for a very fast version of the Focus hit House of the King. More lute follows broken up only by Javeh, a very carefully constructed dark mood piece featuring acoustic guitar and orchestra. The final lengthy piece, Lammy, is again carefully constructed. It is breathtakingly beautiful in places. It features orchestra, choir, bass and drum breaks, Akkerman on electric sitar and guitar and lute again (playing another Holborne piece). The whole ends with an incredibly satisfying Amen, way way over the top and yet full of integrity. Masterful! Recorded in New York in the seventies this album has it all and must be the best of the Akkerman albums to date.

Interview 2

(Only the beginning of this fairly lengthy interview is here, the part where Jan talks about Tabernakel.  For the rest see here)

Interview with Jan Akkerman - from “Radio 538 magazine”, 24-11-1973

(Text and interview by Hans Beckes, 1973; Translation and additional notes by Wouter Bessels, 1999; Final editing by Irene Heinicke, 2000)

“The eldest familiar string-instrument is in fact the lyre, or lira, which is some kind of little harp that was used a couple of thousand years ago. That instrument originated from the “bow and arrow”, by the trembling of the tendon people could hear a tone …. kranggggg…… Musical souls continued experimenting on it and a wide variety arose. Through the harp, the lute came to attention during the Middle Ages. It originates from the Middle East and was played a lot in Arabia and Persia. In Greece they were playing the Githarra and during the crusades, lots of things were transported ‘over here’. A traditional lute didn’t have any frets, which caused the well-known jingling. Since then, the instrument became more and more adjusted to ears in the Western world and around the year 1500, the lute was most popular. After that period, the virginals were introduced and people discovered that playing the lute was much more complicated than playing the virginals. My own lute has 13 strings and in those days they had 32 strings. Tuning such a ‘bitch’ costs me at least half an hour and by then I can play it for ten minutes, after that I can start all over again. So you can imagine that musicians in the past had difficulties with that aspect. That’s the reason for its disappearance, because the use of a keyboard is much easier. That caused the end of the multi-stringed lute. Music written after that period is no longer that important to me, with the exception of Bach and some of those other big guys. I feel myself a bit stranded in modern guitar music, that does not move me any more. But the real medieval lute music, that is what I find extraordinary. It attracts me, especially the melodic aspect. Composers like John Dowland, Anthony Holborne and Thomas Morley are one of a kind in this type of music. They composed and performed a lot at the House of Queen Elizabeth I.”

“Well, I recorded some of my favourite pieces from that time for my album “Tabernakel”. There are some Gailliards on it, which are dances from the Renaissance, at a time of ¾, played in a very joyful way. There’s also a Pavan, a piece at a time of 4/4, done slowly and calmly. “Courant for Mrs. Murcott” is a piece from the 15th century, which was written by order of such a dame. A noble lady, paid a composer lots of money to write a piece especially for her.”

“In return for a possible extra payment, composers gave such compositions titles like “To the most honourable Earl of Derby”, “His Gailliard”, or “The most perfect musician, Thomas Morley, to the Queen’s Sacred Service, her Pavan”.

On the album, the well-known “House of the King” is also found. Why?

“I thought that there were many possibilities in this song, so I revised it for this new album, in a completely different arrangement. In the States, I discovered the electric sitar, which I rented immediately to use it in “House of the King”. It’s a Coral and I was so moved by it that I took one home with me. People who attended our (Focus, WB) recent gigs in Amsterdam and Rotterdam, could have seen me playing it. But during the recording sessions of Tabernakel, I used a genuine sitar as well, which can be heard on the song “Lammy”.

How did you come up with that title?

“Lammy is my wife (Jan divorced her in the early nineties and left Friesland, WB) and I dedicated this to her. It consists of several parts in different moods and the concluding part is called “Last Will and Testament”. With that, I try to express how I want things to be. I’m playing the lute on that part and was accompanied by two flutes, a harpsichord and a string-quartet. It ends with “Amen”, in other words, 'I have said’”.

BOGERT & APPICE

“On some parts of Tabernakel, Bogert and Appice assisted me. It’s absolutely wonderful what those two men are capable of and we worked very nicely with them. They will also perform on my next album, that’s what we planned immediately after the sessions”.

So I assume, that you already made plans to do another album ?

“No, I don’t know a bloody thing about that yet. There probably will be some lute playing on it, but I think I will do some heavier stuff as well next time. Maybe I will do a double album, one record full of one experimental piece, in which I can go completely out of my head and the other one featuring the lute playing”.

Why is Meditations subtitled Javeh?

“Well, that is the biblical name for our Lord. When I wrote it, and that happens to me very often, I had the feeling I wasn’t actually writing it myself. It was on my farm in Friesland, among the animals and flowers, in full spring. The song starts in very frustrated way, because when you look around you, you realise you are in trouble after all, that’s why it’s called Javeh”.

A couple of hours before this interview, I sat in the rehearsal room when Bert Ruiter was playing Jan’s electrical sitar. Bert allowed me to play it as well for some time, which was quite a nice experience. I told that to Jan and I asked him where the strange sound comes from.

“You can compare it with a sound coming from a badly built guitar. As a result of a bad position of the neck, the strings hit the frets, which give a shrilling sound. I have tuned it like the normal sitar, in Dmol, because I want to use it as a normal sitar as well, however with less possibilities. You can slide much more on an ordinary sitar, you can pull the strings much easier which gives the whining sound. This is caused by the bridges on the neck. With an electric sitar, the other strings are disturbing the space to do that”.

For the guitar addicts among the readers, the above means enough, however Jan keeps on talking about that subject. Jan’s lute is made by Theorbe, it has additional bass-strings. A chord in between a line or at the end can be sounded along with a bass-string as a confirmation. The instrument has a deeper, warmer sound compared to an ordinary guitar. Enough about the technical aspects. To my question why the album is titled “Tabernakel (Tabernacle)”, he answers that by using the word “Tabernakel” he means the music , as it appears on that record. The Covenant Ark plays an important part in that, he says, while the lager arrives on the table and we are smoking our umpteenth roll-your-owns he adds:

“During the studio sessions I’ve tried to create such an alliance among the musicians, the big orchestra and the choir…. anybody that came in and who was capable to contribute something, everything was pretty cool out there. It was in the Atlantic Studios in New York. Gene Les Paul, son of the famous Les Paul, was behind the mixing desk and my producer happened to be Geoffrey Haslam from England, who was directed to me by Ahmet Ertegun, the big boss of Atlantic. I was waiting on New York airport soon after my arrival and suddenly someone behind me said, Hello I’m Geoffrey Haslam, your producer….. All of a sudden I saw this very small character with extra small glasses on….I wouldn’t give him a penny actually. Even shabby is not the right word for his looks, haha! Well, when we had finished recording the album, I wasn’t very satisfied with it and then did some controls at the mixing desk, and said ‘this is how I want it to be’. By then, Geoffrey looked at me a bit drowsy and stammered something. There had to be done some cutting in the tapes. Some pieces were cut out and some others were placed instead. I am really used to a lot of things and am able to do something in that field as well, but how he treated those tapes, man, I was shocked! They almost flew over our heads and I thought: There goes your LP, Jan. Well, he made a mess in there for a couple of hours while I did some sweating. Afterwards, we played the tapes. Well, I can tell you that Haslam is a genius, I couldn’t believe what I heard.

Then there was this drop-out from Columbia University. His name is George Flynn. We were planning almost everything in the studio and this so-called electronic composer walked in, someone who was specialised in producing electronic music, a friend of Ahmet's, also a Turk. He heard my music and said: You must ask George if he wants to do something with you, he is a teacher, but recently took a degree in medieval music.

OK, said this character and then took all the demo tapes with him and rushed into a taxi to meet him. Well, George heard the first tape and soon afterwards he joined us in the studio. He saw me working with the New York Philharmonic, because I already started recording the first track. He added a lot of beautiful items to it, he went completely wild. We did the arrangements together, but working on the solo lute-pieces took me almost a year. I owe George a whole lot, we have become friends ever since.

That Ahmet Ertegun is a nice fellow. Thanks to him, I recorded the LP. I didn’t feel like making another solo album at all, but happened to have some time for it and also some materials, so I did it after all. I can’t incorporate the lute-music into Focus. I don’t think that a single should be drawn from Tabernakel. Some people suggested that, but I don’t feel like doing it. (House of the King was released in most parts of the world as a single, backed with Javeh and was a small hit in Holland and the UK, WB)

Composer Laurencini (Fantasy)

Little is known about Laurencini of Rome or Lorenzino called by Robert Dowland son of John "the most famous and divine".

On the album Akkerman plays one solo track by him, a fantasia. It was the first track on the second side of the vinyl album, the ninth track on the CD.

Fanatasy/Fantasia

Wikipedia says that fantasia (from Italian: fantasia; also English: fantasy, fancy, phantasy, German: Fantasie, Phantasie, French: fantaisie) is a musical composition with its roots in the art of improvisation. Because of this, it seldom approximates the textbook rules of any strict musical form (as with the impromptu).

The term was first applied to music during the 16th century, at first to refer to the imaginative musical "idea" rather than to a particular compositional genre. Its earliest use as a title was in German keyboard manuscripts from before 1520, and by 1536 is found in printed tablatures from Spain, Italy, Germany, and France. From the outset, the fantasia had the sense of "the play of imaginative invention", particularly in lute or vihuela composers such as Francesco Canova da Milano and Luis de Milánn. Its form and style consequently ranges from the freely improvisatory to the strictly contrapuntal, and also encompasses more or less standard sectional forms.

In the Baroque and Classical music eras, a fantasia was typically a piece for keyboard instruments with alternating sections of rapid passagework and slower, more melodic passages. From the Baroque period, Bach's Chromatic Fantasia and Fugue, BWV 903, for harpsichord; Great Fantasia and Fugue in G minor, BWV 542, for organ; and Fantasia and Fugue in C minor, BWV 537, for organ are examples. For an example from the Classical period, see Mozart, Fantasia in D minor, K 397 for fortepiano, along with his Fantasia in C minor, K 475. In contemporary music, Busoni's Fantasia contrappuntistica or Corigliano's Fantasia on an ostinato.

The term also referred in the Baroque era (more specifically British Tudor music) to pieces for viols, characteristically - though not always - alternating, in this case rapid fugal sections with slower sections in slow notes and sometimes clashing harmonies. According to the OCDM's entry the instrumental fantasia was closely related in its history and form to the motet. Henry Purcell's fantasias are the last Baroque representatives of the breed, although Walter Willson Cobbett, in the opening decades of the 20th century, attempted to resurrect something of this style via a competition, to which works like John Ireland's and Frank Bridge's Phantasie Trios, Benjamin Britten's Phantasie Quartet (for oboe and strings) and other music owe their existence.

In the Romantic period, two contradictory trends greatly affected the fantasia: one was the decline of formal improvisation as a test of the compositional technique; the other was the move by composers toward freer forms. Chopin's Fantaisie in F minor, Op 49, combines various keyboard textures of the stile brillante with the classical sonata paradigm, resulting in a work of unorthodox but sophisticated form. Schumann's Fantasie in C, Op 17, is a cornerstone of the Romantic piano repertoire. His numerous 'fantasy pieces' are character works on a smaller scale, often bearing descriptive titles.

Composer Thomas Morley (Pavan)

Thomas Morley (1557/58–1602) Wikipedia says was an English composer, theorist, editor and organist of the Renaissance, and the foremost member of the English Madrigal School. He was the most famous composer of secular music in Elizabethan England and an organist at St Paul's Cathedral. He and Robert Johnson are the composers of the only surviving contemporary settings of verse by Shakespeare.

Morley was born in Norwich, East Anglia, the son of a brewer. Most likely he was a singer in the local cathedral from his boyhood, and he became master of choristers there in 1583. However, Morley evidently spent some time away from East Anglia, for he later referred to the great Elizabethan composer of sacred music, William Byrd, as his teacher; while the dates he studied with Byrd are not known, they were most likely in the early 1570s. In 1588 he received his bachelor's degree from Oxford, and shortly thereafter was employed as organist at St Paul's, London. His young son died the following year in 1589.

In 1588 Nicholas Yonge published his Musica transalpina, the collection of Italian madrigals fitted with English texts, which touched off the explosive and colourful vogue for madrigal composition in England. Morley evidently found his compositional direction at this time, and shortly afterwards began publishing his own collections of madrigals (11 in all).

Morley lived for a time in the same parish as Shakespeare, and a connection between the two has been long speculated, though never proven. His famous setting of "It was a lover and his lass" from As You Like It has never been established as having been used in a performance of Shakespeare's play, though the possibility that it was is obvious. Morley was highly placed by the mid-1590s and would have had easy access to the theatrical community; certainly there was then, as there is now, a close connection between prominent actors and musicians.

While Morley attempted to imitate the spirit of Byrd in some of his early sacred works, it was in the form of the madrigal that he made his principal contribution to music history. His work in the genre has remained in the repertory to the present day, and shows a wider variety of emotional colour, form and technique than anything by other composers of the period. Usually his madrigals are light, quick-moving and easily singable, like his well-known "Now is the Month of Maying"; he took the aspects of Italian style that suited his personality and anglicised them. Other composers of the English Madrigal School, for instance Thomas Weelkes and John Wilbye, were to write madrigals in a more serious or sombre vein.

In addition to his madrigals, Morley wrote instrumental music, including keyboard music (some of which has been preserved in the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book), and music for the broken consort, a uniquely English ensemble of two viols, flute, lute, cittern and bandora, notably as published by William Barley in 1599 in The First Booke of Consort Lessons, made by diuers exquisite Authors, for six Instruments to play together, the Treble Lute, the Pandora, the Cittern, the Base-Violl, the Flute & Treble-Violl.

Morley's Plaine and Easie Introduction to Practicall Musicke (published 1597) remained popular for almost 200 years after its author's death, and remains an important reference for information about 16th century composition and performance.

The article also lists Morley's works here.

On the album Akkerman plays just one short Morley track, a solo Pavane (Track 8).

Pavan
Wikipedia says that the pavane, pavan, paven, pavin, pavian, pavine, or pavyn (It pavana, padovana; Ger Paduana) is a slow processional dance common in Europe during the 16th century. A pavane is a slow piece of music which is danced to in pairs. (More here)

Composer Anthony Holborne

Anthony Holborne (c 1545–1602) is described in Wikipedia as a composer of English consort music during the reign of Elizabeth I. He entered Pembroke College, Cambridge in 1562 and was admitted to the Inner Temple Court in 1565. He married Elisabeth Marten on 14 June, 1584. On the title page of both his books he claims to be in the service of Queen Elizabeth. He died of a ‘cold’ in November 1602.

He was held in the highest regard as a composer by his contemporaries. Dowland dedicated the very first song I saw my lady weepe in his Second Booke to Holborne. His patron was the Countess of Pembroke, Mary Sidney. In the 1590s he entered the service of Sir Robert Cecil, the 1st Earl of Salisbury then Secretary for State.

His brother was William Holborne. Six of William's madrigals were included in the Cittarn Schoole. Anthony's first known book was the Cittarn Schoole of 1597, consisting of compositions for the cittern (a Renaissance mandolin). The preface indicates the pieces were composed over a number of years. He writes that the musical compositions are "untimely fruits of my youth, begotten in the cradle and infancy of my slender skill."

The Pavans, Galliards, Almains and other short Aeirs, both grave and light, in five parts, for Viols, Violins, recorders or other Musicall Winde Instruments was published in 1599 and consisted of 65 of his own compositions. It is the largest surviving collection of its kind. Most are of the pavan-galliard combination. Other pieces are of the allemande style. The rest are unclassified.

"The Fairie Round" from this collection was included on the Voyager Golden Record, copies of which were sent into space aboard the Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 space probes in 1977, as a representation of human culture and achievement to any who might find it.
On the album, Akkerman performs two Holborne tracks, one with orchestra as part of the Lammy suite (Last will and Testament) and a Galliard on solo lute (Track 5).

Composer Francis Pilkington (Coranto)

Francis Pilkington 1565-1638 is described in Wikipedia as an English composer, lutenist and singer. He received a B Mus degree from Oxford in 1595. In 1602 he became a singing man at Chester Cathedral and spent the rest of his life serving the cathedral. He became a minor canon in 1612, took holy orders in 1614 and was named precentor of the cathedral in 1623. Although he was a churchman, Pilkington composed largely secular music - ayres, madrigals and lute songs. He died in Chester.

Pilkington compose one track, track 2, Coranto for Mrs [Elizabeth] Murcott, which Akkerman performs solo.

Coranto

A coranto, according to Wikipedia, (or courante or corrente or corant) is used for a family of triple metre dances from the late Renaissance and the Baroque era.

It adds:

Modern usage will sometimes use the different spellings to distinguish types but in the original sources spellings were inconsistent. (In the Partitas of the Clavierübung, Bach use the different spellings courante and corrente to differentiate between the French and Italian styles, respectively.) However, in Dance and the Music of J S Bach by Meredith Little and Natalie Jenne, the courante and corrente are given separate chapters and treated as distinct dances. The courante had the slowest tempo of all French court dances, and was described by Mattheson, Quantz and Rousseau as grave and majestic. In Bach's unaccompanied Partita for Violin No. 2 the first movement (titled Allemanda) begins as if in 3/4 time in a manner one might initially perform and hear as a courante. The second movement is titled corrente and is rather lively. On the other hand, many "courante" movements by Bach are actually correntes as well: in the original engraving of the keyboard Partitas, movements are clearly labelled either "corrente" or "courante", but editors have frequently ignored the distinction. Although an indication of faster tempo appears to exist in Baroque composer Georg Muffat's instructions on Lullian bowing, his reference to the "rapid tempo of courantes" is a confusion in translation. A more literal translation of the text indicates only "the speed of the movement of the notes."

Courante literally means running, and in the later Renaissance the courante was danced with fast running and jumping steps, as described by Thoinot Arbeau.

In Der vollkommene Capellmeister (Hamburg, 1739), Johann Mattheson wrote that, "The motion of a courante is chiefly characterized by the passion or mood of sweet expectation. For there is something heartfelt, something longing and also gratifying, in this melody: clearly music on which hopes are built."

The courante was most commonly used in the baroque period. During this period, there were two types of courante: French and Italian. In a Baroque dance suite, an Italian or French courante typically comes between the allemande and the sarabande, making it the second or third movement. The French type is usually notated in 3/2 or 6/4, occasionally alternating between the two meters; the Italian type, on the other hand, is a significantly faster dance. In the Musicalisches Lexicon (Leipzig, 1732), Johann Gottfried Walther wrote that the rhythm of the courante is "absolutely the most serious one can find."

Composer John Dowland (Galliard)

An article on Dowland (1563-1626) can be found here at Wikipedia.  Dowland was an English Renaissance composer, singer and lutenist. On the album, Akkerman performs three Dowland tracks, one with orchestra and rhythm section and two on solo lute:

1 Britannia (with orchestra) [better known as Fantasia No 7]
3 The Earl of Derby his Galliard [ie the fifth earl, Ferdinando Stanley c 1559-1594]
6 A Galliard [ie the Earl of Essex's, [ie the second earl, Robert Devereux 1565-1601]

Galliard
(Wikipedia) The galliard (gaillarde, in French; gagliarda in Italian) was a form of Renaissance dance and music popular all over Europe in the 16th century. It is mentioned in dance manuals from England, France, Spain, Germany and Italy, among others.
Musical compositions in the galliard form appear to have been written and performed long after the dance fell out of popular use. In musical compositions, the galliard often filled the role of an after dance written in 6, which followed and mimicked another piece (sometimes a pavane) written in 4. The distinctive 6 beats to the phrase can still be heard today in songs such as "God Save the Queen".

Composers

The tracks on the album were composed by Jan Akkerman and George Flynn along with five composers from the Elizabethan age (she reigned 1558-1603) the age of William Shakespeare, who lived 1564-1616.

These are

John Dowland 1563-1626

Francis Pilkington 1565-1638

Anthony Holborne c 1545-1602

Thomas Morley 1556/7-1602

Laurencini of Rome c 1550-1608