Anthony Rooley

Anthony Rooley's entry into music began with classical guitar studies under Hector Quine at the Royal Academy of Music. Characterizing himself as a "misfit" in that youthful performance environment, he independently mastered the lute and prepared transcriptions drawn from the academy's holdings. Following graduation, while serving on the RAM faculty, he established the Consort of Musicke together with James Tyler, a performer on lute and viol. From its founding in 1969 the ensemble presented secular works of the late Renaissance and early Baroque through instrumental forces, at times adding only a single voice. A 1978 grant from the British Arts Council, together with a Decca recording contract, led Rooley and the Consort of Musicke to concentrate for an extended period on the madrigal repertory. His recordings give particular attention to seventeenth-century composers of limited renown, among them John Coprario, Sigismondo d'India, Henry Lawes, Biagio Marini, Barbara Strozzi, Giaches de Wert, and John Ward, frequently presenting complete published collections in full. These discs have appeared on l'Oiseau-Lyre, Harmonia Mundi, Hyperion, Virgin, and ASV, as well as on his own Musica Oscura label. The ensembles directed by Rooley move freely between all-vocal and instrumentally accompanied scorings and have been noted for their "bold elasticity of dynamics and phrasing" along with an evident theatricality. In concert the musicians heighten this dimension through gesture and choreography. The dramatic character of the performances stems from his engagement with the philosophy of the time; citing Marsilio Ficino and further sixteenth-century authorities, Rooley pursues an "Orphic" realization of music capable of placing the listener's soul, by way of the senses, directly in the presence of the Divine.