The surprise feature of this collection, and of the Fourth Book of Ayres, is the setting of two ”Italian Ayres”. The texts of these songs are from Petrarch, and are in fact sonnets. The Petrarchan sonnet like the English, consists of 14 lines, but is composed of two quatrains and a sestet. Jones has set only the first quatrain in “Ite caldi sospiri”and the two quatrains in “S’Amor non è”.(The remaining lines of the texts are given in an appendix.)

The exquisite setting of “Ite caldi sospiri” ...