The florid songs is preserved in only about two dozen manuscripts of the first half of the 17th century. The songs fall into two main groups, those originally written in a simple form to which ornamental florid passages were added (Thomas Campion, "Come you pretty") and those composed originally in a florid form ("Nothing on earth"). Some were written for Theatrical productions "Care charming sleep" in which case they would have been sung by actors on the stage. In all of these remarkable songs the ornaments are written out, not improvised. A few ornamental signs are employed in the original notation, including a slanting line to indicate a long slide (glissando) usually down a fifth or octave. Equally remarkable are the songs of John Wilson (1595-1674), the most gifted English song writer between John Dowland and Henry Purcell. He was a lutenist and a countertenor as well as a busy theatre composer. Particularly remarkable are the harmonies of his "Beauty which all men admire" employing a stepwise harmonie sequence. Thomas Weelkes beautiful lament "Cease sorrows now" is one of several English pieces to employ extended chromatic scale passages as an expression of grief. The remarkable thing about the "Fantasia" of Hingston is ist instrumentation. Hingston, a composer of organ and viol music (pupil of Gibbons), indicated the instrumentation: cornet, sackbutts and organ.

In the first centuries of western music, indeed until well into the 17th century, instrumentation played a very subsidiary role from the composer's point of view. The musical substance was largely independent of its realization in sound. The performers had abundant possibilities for adapting the works to the circumstances of the moment, naturally within the scope of generally accepted rules, for it was they who first decided what instruments to use, as well as what was to be performed vocally and what instrumentally. The English composers (during the reign of Elizabeth I) were the forst to give explicit instructions themselves as to the instrumentations of their works. A particular predelictions for subtle and ingenious sounds had existed in England from the very earliest time, and gentle instruments like the lute and the viol were especially cultivated here for centuries, more than in any country on the continent. Since every fairly educated person could play an instrument, practical music-making was cultivated in nearly all the citizens' houses: every self-respecting family possessed a chest of viols of all sizes, and lutes hung in the barbers' shops, with which the customers could pass the time while waiting. The compositions for these instruments were intended in the first place for the players themselves; they were performed in small rooms, in which all the finer features of the instruments made themselves fully felt. For this reason the loud and extrovert violin, which had long supplanted the viola da gamba in Italy, was not able to assert itself so quickly in England.
Thus, in the course of a hundred years, there arose here a unique and rich repertoire of music for two to seven viols of all sizes. The "abstract" tone of these instruments, highly expressive in the finest nuances, and their abiliy to blend into a homogeneous whole on the one hand while allowing a clear definition of every line on the other, inspired the composers to their finely written yet boldly constructed fantasias and stylized dance movements. They did not have to write in an "easily understandable" manner, since they were dealing with an extremely sensitive public.
In their form, these fantasias for viols are inspired by the Italian "canzoni di sonare" and the madrigals. In alternations of homophonic and polyphonic sections and slow and quick passages, the seeds of a sonata form in several movements are already sown. Everything happens in the most concentrated, concise form. The newest achievements of Italian music must have been taken up whith tremendous eagerness, but they have been treated in an unmistakably English manner, the English instrumental works of this period sounding far more mature than the youthful and bizarre Italian sonatas of the beginning baroque era.
Coperario (Cooper), an Englishman who spent some years studyng in Italy, Gibbons, Lupo and Ward were among the most famous English composers of their time (Coperario and Gibbons held important posts in the music of the court.) Their works became widely known through a large number of copies. Each of them wrote numerous fantasias for a consort of viols. Matthew Locke was a flamboyant, self-willed personality. His genius was greatly admired by his contemporarye, and he was Composer in Ordinary to the King from 1660 onward. although he travelled widely in Europe, he found no music equal to that of England. In his full-blooded mode of expression he wrote: "...to those who must decry everything produced by their fellow-countrymen... ist must be said... that nowhere have I seen any music that is worthy of being copied by an Englishman... ." In Locke's Suite for Four Violas da Gamba we find a bold Fantasia (in the old sense) as a prelude. The dance movements that follow were not intended for dancing to: the form and the rhythm of the dances have been used as the basis of purely instrumental movements.