Melodiya presents the digital edition of the first record in the "A Thousand Years of Music" series, which was released in 1965. In this recording, composer and harpsichordist Andrei Volkonsky (1933-2008) performs works by English composers from the turn of the 16th and 17th centuries, who composed music for the virginal, a type of harpsichord. The most famous representatives of the English virginalist school were William Byrd, John Bull, Orlando Gibbons, and Giles Farnaby, whose pieces are included in the album along with four dances by an unknown 16th-century author. The English virginalists were the first to develop keyboard composition techniques, widely using scales, rapid passages, toccata techniques, figurations, and various types of ornamentation, thus creating a brilliant concert style.
