Introduction -- The maker : Giovanni Giacomo Gastoldi, 1591 -- The jackdaw : Thomas Morley, 1595 and 1602 -- The scholar : Thomas Weelkes, 1598, 1600 and 1608 -- Satellites : Cavendish, Greaves, Holborne, Jones, Pilkington, Vautor, Youll -- The opportunist : John Amner, 1615 -- The wit : Thomas Tomkins, 1622 -- The apprentice: John Hilton the Younger, 1627 -- Afterword

The ballett is a light vocal form well-known and well-loved by many madrigal singers, and yet this is the first work to embrace the subject in its totality. Dr Lionel Pike investigates the evolution of the ballett in England from its late sixteenth-century origins in Vecchi and Gastoldi. The book provides a comprehensive analysis of a large number of balletts, with each individual work treated in chronological order, leading to the sense of an 'evolution' of the form. Morley, Weelkes, Tomkins and Hilton, etc., are examined.