What is "broken consort"

n. (context music English) an instrumental ensemble (also called Morley consort or English consort) that developed in Europe during the Renaissance.

A broken consort in English early Baroque musical terminology refers to ensembles featuring instruments from more than one family, for example a group featuring both string and wind instruments. A consort consisting entirely of instruments of the same family, on the other hand, was referred to as a "whole consort", though this expression is not found until well into the seventeenth century (Boyden 1957, 229). The word "consort", used in this way, is an earlier form of "concert", according to one opinion (Scholes 1970), while other sources hold the reverse: that it comes from the French term concert or its Italian parent term concerto, in its sixteenth-century sense (Boyden 1957, 228). Matthew Locke published pieces for whole and broken consorts of two to six parts as late as 1672 (Scholes 1970).