Did John Coprario take the credit for someone else's work when he, under his own name, made transcriptions of more than fifty Italian madrigals for a viol consort? Such an accusation would rest on incorrect premises, because something resembling copyright was unknown in the early seventeenth century and for a long time thereafter; the use of musical material from someone else was rather regarded as a respectful examination of ideas that were so promising that one wanted to think further about them.
In transcribing these Italian madrigals, Coprario not only extended an established tradition, but also transcended it. In his madrigal fantasies, he did not simply omit the text, as was customary in the 16th century, but went even further in the polyphonic setting and enriched it with instrumental possibilities that the voices alone could not match. He also rearranged certain parts, so that the original vocal work was not always immediately recognizable. Coprario was not only one of the first to give ensemble music an instrumental identity, he was also no musical parrot, but a brilliant parodist.
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