2026 marks 400 years since the death of the English composer and lutenist John Dowland. In the same year – 1626 – the king of France, Louis XIII founded a group of strings called ‘The 24 Violins of the King’. Taking inspiration from these two events, Vache Baroque will journey both back and forward along the path of English music history. What and who influenced Dowland’s music? How did post-Civil War English composers draw on French instrumental style and set up in their compositions? From dances, lute songs, and fine-woven counterpoint, to sonatas, verse anthems, and dramatic music for the theatre, 17th-century England was a melting pot of musical styles and genres. Granted, these were formed from ‘continental’ ingredients, but the resulting flavour was always unmistakably English. This programme will be presented as two c.45-minute halves, with a c.20-minute interval.

3pm on Saturday 18 July at St. John’s Church, Buxton