Hi Herbert and All, As far as the musical activity exist and can be studied in surviving documents, there were always some kind of distinctions in style and organisation. There were strolling musicians (or as part of the strolling theatre company) and those which had a permanent job at court. In cities the were guilds or fraternities of professionals able to read music from its notation on paper (working for the court, church, city) and those which were playing from memory and improvising (weddings, all kinds of street festivities, etc.). There were real stars among both groups, whose names became known to the history, and thousands of others forgotten.
In former times music performed was relatively modern and very often popular - nobody was digging in the past songs and dances. However you can distinguish between church and secular music and study it as one of the basic distinction between serious and pop, however still it's not exhaustive nor final differentiation - there were several more: soft and loud music, public and private music making, etc. Beside of the serious/liturgical church music, there was always a demand for a lighter music, on all levels of social ladder. I think you can find similar (in general) organisation of musical life in the past as today, just differently shaped. Finally, money had the same power, so the pop stars and the rest of world. If you ask about Dowland's time, I can from my side remind of a book by Jerzy Limon: Gentleman of a Company - English Players in Central and Eastern Europe 1590-1660. CUP 1985, most probably out of print, but there are libraries, of course. Contemporaneous with the time could be the K�nigsberg Manuscript (tablature). Editions Orph�e 1989, with excellent commentaries by A.J. Ness and J.M. Ward. Jerzy -------------------- On Thursday, Dec 11, 2003, at 19:54 Europe/Warsaw, Herbert Ward wrote: > Did musicians of Dowland's time separate themselves the categories > "serious/highbrow" and "popular" which are widely used today?
