Broken consort

In English early Baroque music, a broken consort is an ensemble featuring instruments from more than one family, for example a group featuring both string and wind instruments. A consort consisting entirely of instruments of the same family, on the other hand, was referred to as a "whole consort", though this expression is not found until well into the seventeenth century.^[1] The word "consort", used in this way, is an earlier form of "concert", according to one opinion,^[2] while other sources hold the reverse: that it comes from the French term concert or its Italian parent term concerto, in its sixteenth-century sense.^[3] Matthew Locke published pieces for whole and broken consorts of two to six parts as late as 1672.^[2]