“Being Design’d as a Concert Intermix’d with the Play”

For about fifty years from the 1660s plays put on in the London theatres were routinely provided with sets of instrumental music, consisting of two groups of preliminary music, an overture and “act tunes” played between the acts. In the early eighteenth century these sets of theatre airs were replaced by Italian and Italianate sonatas and concertos. This article examines how and when the transition occurred; how, when and where instrumental music was used in plays; where the musicians were placed in the theatres; and how they related to the other types of entr’acte entertainments, vocal music and dances.