Introduction

Research in the field of keyboard studies, especially when intimately connected with issues of performance, as well as broader historical ones, is often concerned with the immediate working environments and practices of musicians of the past. The keyboard has functioned, and continues to function, as a pedagogical tool, and has served as the 'workbench' of countless musicians over the centuries. Oliveira identifies several features that point to the development of an idiomatic keyboard style, initially surfacing in the ricercari elaborations, and which is developed further in fantasia-type pieces that modern scholars have attributed to Antonio Carreira. The notion of a 'linear' development in keyboard style in England may be reconsidered in the light of what David J. Smith calls a 'virtual' network. John Koster puts under scrutiny the orthodoxy that quarter-comma mean tone temperament is uniformly appropriate for most keyboard music of the sixteenth century both by examining repertoire and interpreting the descriptions of tuning by practicing musicians.