In "Parthenia," a collection of pieces for the virginals (an instrument that may be described as the ancestor of the piano), which was published in 1611, it is shewn to what a high point of development the composition of dance music had arrived.
The music was composed by the three most celebrated English musicians then living,
William Byrd, John Bull, and Orlando Gibbons—Tallis had been dead over twenty years.
The pieces are of the most stately kind, in general, and would scarcely realise the modern conception of dance music, but they are beautiful specimens of the art of those days, and cannot but command our admiration.
Of the more lively and frivolous dances the one known as Trenchmore was the most popular.
"Be we young or old ... we must dance Trenchmore over table, chairs and stools."[10]
Selden, in his "Table Talk," "Then all the company dances, lord and groom, lady and kitchen maid, no distinction."
The more one comes to learn of life in the England of those days, the more one becomes convinced that, taken as a whole, life was both happy and joyous. No less an authority than Professor Thorold Rogers, after profound research into the social conditions of the Middle Ages, says they show that a state of happiness and content prevailed.[11]
Dancing was advised, too, as "a goodly regimen against the fever pestilence."
The fact that there is comparatively little of old-time music extant is due to the late invention of music printing and the slow progress of musical notation. "Parthenia" was, as the title page tells, the first music for the virginals ever printed, and yet appeared as late as 1611.