The Ancient Dances might be described as compositional études for keyboard (harpsichord, piano, synthesizer) in Elizabethan/Jacobean style, as they summon to mind similar works for lute and virginals written in England during the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries by such composers as John Dowland, Anthony Holborne, William Byrd, and John Bull. It would be more accurate, however, to consider the pieces in the collection--each of which bears the distinctive stamp of Ford's individual creativity--as fresh, musically mature essays about one of the most artistically brilliant eras in Western history.