John Dowland was a composer, singer and lutenist. His printed songs numbered 87 of which 84 appeared in 4 volumes. His finest songs are Awake, Sweet Love; Come again Sweet Love; Fine Knacks for Ladies; Flow my Tears; Flow not so fast, ye Fountains; In Darkness let me Dwell; Sweet, stay awhile; Weep ye no more, sad Fountains; Welcome black night.
John Dowland (1563 – February 20, 1626) was an English, possibly Irish-born composer, singer, and lutenist. He is best known today for his melancholy songs such as "Come, heavy sleep" (the basis for Benjamin Britten's Nocturnal), "Come again", "Flow my tears", and "I saw my Lady weepe", but his instrumental music has undergone a major revival as a source for classical guitar repertoire during the twentieth century.
Born: Nothing is known of Dowland's youth; even his date and place of birth are uncertain. But supposedly 1563 in London, England.
Died: Feburary 20, 1626 in London, England.
Period: Renaissance (1450-1599).
Country: England.
Genres: Chamber, Vocal.
Melancholy was all the rage in Elizabethan England, and John Dowland was the most stylish composer of his time. "Semper Dowland, semper dolens" was his motto, and much of his music is indeed exquisitely dolorous. Although he was a talented singer, Dowland mainly followed a dual career as a composer and lutenist. He was the period's most renowned and significant composer of lute solos, and especially ayres (also called lute songs), and a gifted writer of consort music.
Nothing is known of Dowland's youth; even his date and place of birth are uncertain. It is clear, though, that in 1580 he went to Paris in the service of the ambassador to the French court. Dowland converted to Catholicism during this time, and later claimed that this excluded him from employment at the Protestant court of Elizabeth I in 1594 (actually, the court was cutting costs and left the position unfilled for five years). In 1598, Dowland became lutenist to Christian IV of Denmark, but he was dismissed for unsatisfactory conduct in 1606. Between 1609 and 1612 he entered the service of Theophilus, Lord Howard de Walden, and finally in 1612, he was appointed one of the "musicians for the lutes" to James I of England.
Dowland managed to respect tradition while absorbing the trends he encountered on the Continent. Dominating Dowland's output is a form called the lute song or ayre. It was peculiar to English music, and was systematized somewhat by the 1597 publication of Dowland's First Booke of Songes or Ayres. These early songs are simple strophic settings, often in dance forms, with an almost complete absence of chromaticism. Continental influences come to the fore in such later songs as In darkness let me dwell (1610) and Lasso vita mia (1612), full of declamation, chromaticism, and dissonance.
Dowland also wrote a significant amount of instrumental music, much of it for solo lute and some for consort. There are some ninety works for solo lute; many are dances, often with highly embellished variations. Even here the Continental influence shows; such chromatic fantasies as Forlorne Hope fancye and Farewell are far more intense than the lute music of any other English (or, for that matter, Continental) composer of the time. Among the consort works, Dowland's Lachrimae, or Seaven Teares Figured in Seaven Passionate Pavans (1604), became one of the most celebrated compositions of the late Renaissance.
He became a Catholic while serving the English ambassador in Paris (1580-84) and in 1588 graduated BMusat Oxford. In 1592 he played the lute to the queen, then travelled in Europe, visiting the courts of Brunswick, Kassel, Nuremberg and cities in Italy, where he met Marenzio. He was back in London in 1597, then became a lutenist at the Danish court (1598-1603, 1605-6). On his return he served Lord Walden (1609-12) and eventually achieved his ambition, the post of court lutenist, in 1612. He had been awarded a doctorate by 1621 and played at James I's funeral in 1625. He was succeeded by his son Robert (c 1591-1641), also known for the lute collections he edited.
The British composer and lute virtuoso John Dowland (1562-1626) was the leading English lutanist composer of his time. A sensitive, original melodist, he found his forte in pensive song-soliloquys.
John Dowland was born in December 1562 near Dublin. Nothing is known of his early training. From about 1580 until sometime before July 1584 he served as a musician to Sir Henry Cobham, the English ambassador in Paris, and his successor, Sir Edward Stafford. In 1588 Dowland received his bachelor of arts degree at Christ Church, Oxford. Unable to obtain employment in England, possibly because he had been converted to Roman Catholicism in Paris, he visited the courts of Brunswick and Hesse and then traveled to Venice and Florence.
In 1597 Dowland received a degree from Cambridge. He still could find no employment in England, so he took a position at the court of Christian IV of Denmark, whom he served from 1598 until 1607. Apparently released for unsatisfactory service, he returned to England, where it seems that his renunciation of Catholicism opened doors formerly closed to him. He entered the service of Lord Walden. At last, in 1612, he was appointed a King's Musician for the Lutes at the court of James I. He held this position until his death in 1626 and was succeeded by his son, Robert.
Dowland's reputation as a composer rests chiefly on his four books of lute songs. These works may be performed as solo ayres with lute accompaniment or as part songs for four voices. In either arrangement the chief melodic interest lies in the top voice, a feature that gives the songs considerable historical significance.
The four song collections show Dowland's mastery of a new musical idiom, with a harmonic directness that cuts through the old polyphonic complexities. His handling of the lyrics was very sensitive, and he had a remarkable gift for beautiful and expressive melody. Such songs as "Come again, sweet love" and "Lady if you so spite me" exhibit his skill in the merry vein. A diametrically opposite character is to be found in the pathetic melancholy songs for which he is better known. The most expressive of these, such as "Sorrow stay," "I saw my lady weep," and "Flow my tears," relate in literary content as in melodic substance to Dowland's instrumental collection, Lachrimae, or Seaven Teares Figured in Seaven Passionate Pavans (1605). The gently descending "Lachrimae" motive established its own tradition and was imitated not only by Dowland's contemporaries, but also by composers in the late 17th century.
Educated at Oxford, he was refused a court position in 1594 and, believing his adoptive Catholicism had been the cause, he left for the continent. There he traveled extensively and took a position at the Danish court. In 1612, when his compositions had made him famous, he was finally appointed lutenist to the English court. He published three collections of songs, including about 90 works for solo lute and some 80 lute songs, including "Come again, sweet love does now endite," " Flow my tears," and "Weep you no more, sad fountains." His Lachrimae is a collection for viol-and-lute ensemble.
John Dowland (1563 – February 20, 1626) was an English composer, singer, and lutenist. He is best known today for his melancholy songs such as "Come, heavy sleep" (the basis for Benjamin Britten's Nocturnal), "Come again", "Flow my tears", "I saw my Lady weepe" and "In darkness let me dwell", but his instrumental music has undergone a major revival, and has been a source of repertoire for classical guitarists during the twentieth century.
He worked instead for many years at the court of Christian IV of Denmark. He returned to England in 1606 and in 1612 secured a post as one of James I's lutenists. Interestingly there are no compositions dating from the moment of his royal appointment until his death in London in 1626. While the date of his burial is recorded, the exact date of his death is not known.
Most of Dowland's music is for his own instrument, the lute. It includes several books of solo lute works, lute songs (for one voice and lute), part-songs with lute accompaniment, and several pieces for viol consort with lute. The poet Richard Barnfield wrote that Dowland's "heavenly touch upon the lute doth ravish human sense."
One of his better known works is the lute song "Flow My Tears", the first verse of which runs:
Flow, my teares, fall from youre springs,
Exiled for ever, let mee mourn
Where night's black bird hir sad infamy sings,
There let mee live forlorn.
He later wrote what is probably his best known instrumental work, Lachrimae or Seaven Teares Figured in Seaven Passionate Pavans, a set of seven for five viols and lute, each based on "Flow My Tears." It became one of the best known pieces of consort music in his own time. His pavane "Lachrymae antiquae" was also one of the big hits of the seventeenth century.
Dowland's music often displays the melancholia that was so fashionable in music at that time. He wrote a consort piece with the punning title Semper Dowland, semper dolens (always Dowland, always doleful), which may be said to sum up much of his work.
Dowland's song, Come Heavy Sleepe, the Image of True Death, was the inspiration for Benjamin Britten's Nocturnal after John Dowland for guitar, written in 1964 for the guitarist Julian Bream. This work consists of eight variations, all based on musical themes drawn from the song or its lute accompaniment, finally resolving into a guitar setting of the song itself.
The science fiction author Philip K. Dick (1928-1982) was a fan of Dowland's and his lute music is a recurring theme in Dick's fiction. Dick sometimes assumed the pen-name Jack Dowland. Dick also based the title of the novel Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said on one of Dowland's best-known compositions. In his novels, Dick envisioned a future America in which Dowland songs would be covered by a pop singer named Linda Fox (a thinly disguised proxy for Linda Ronstadt).
In the 1996 movie Sense and Sensibility, Marianne (Kate Winslet) sings "Weep you no more sad fountains" when Colonel Brandon (Alan Rickman) first sees her.
The 1999 ECM New Series recording In Darkness Let Me Dwell features new interpretations of Dowland songs performed by tenor John Potter, lutenist Stephen Stubbs, and baroque violinist Maya Homburger in collaboration with English jazz musicians John Surman and Barry Guy.
Elvis Costello included a recording (with Fretwork and the Composers Ensemble) of Dowland's "Can she excuse my wrongs" as a bonus track on the 2006 re-release of his The Juliet Letters.
In October 2006, Sting, who has been described as a fan of Dowland's, released an album featuring Dowland's songs titled Songs from the Labyrinth, on Deutsche Grammophon, in collaboration with Edin Karamazov on lute and archlute. They described their treatment of Dowland's work in a Great Performances appearance, saying that Dowland's music was the "skeleton" of their performances, but that the music "evolved" as they became more confident. To give some idea of the tone and intrigues of life in late Elizabethan England, Sting also recites throughout the album portions of a 1593 letter written by Dowland to Sir Robert Cecil. The letter documents Dowland's travels to various points of western Europe, then breaks into an abrupt denial of charges whispered against Dowland by unknown persons of treason. He most likely was suspected of this for traveling to the courts of various Catholic monarchs and accepting payment from them greater than what a musician of the time would normally have received for performing.
Other interpretations of Dowland's songs have been recorded by Windham Hill artist, Lisa Lynne, (for her CD, "Maiden's Prayer") and Lise Winne (for her "Wing'd With Hopes, New Interpretations of Renaissance Songs" CD).
Several bands, such as Die Verbannten Kinder Evas, Aesma Daeva and Qntal have recorded albums featuring lyrics by John Dowland.
Rose Tremain's 1999 novel Music and Silence is set at the court of Christian IV of Denmark some years after Dowland's departure and contains several references to the composer's music and temperament: in the opening chapter, Christian remarks that "the man was all ambition and hatred, yet his ayres were as delicate as rain".
Richard Barnfield, Dowland's contemporary, refers to the lutenist in poem VIII of The Passionate Pilgrim (1598):
“If music and sweet poetry agree,
As they must needs, the sister and the brother,
Then must the love be great 'twixt thee and me,
Because thou lovest the one, and I the other.
Dowland to thee is dear, whose heavenly touch
Upon the lute doth ravish human sense;
Spenser to me, whose deep conceit is such
As, passing all conceit, needs no defence.
Thou lovest to hear the sweet melodious sound
That Phoebus' lute, the queen of music, makes;
And I in deep delight am chiefly drown'd
When as himself to singing he betakes.
One god is god of both, as poets feign;
One knight loves both, and both in thee remain.”
John Dowland, of English or possibly Irish origin, was born in 1563, probably in London. He was a lutenist of distinction but failed, allegedly because he was a Catholic, to win a position in the royal service, seeking his fortune abroad at Kassel and later, in 1598, at the court of Christian IV of Denmark. He was forced by debt to return to England in 1606 and eventually won appointment as one of the King's Lutes in 1612. He performed during the funeral ceremonies of King James I and himself died the following year. Dowland was the composer, in particular, of one of the best known songs of the period, Flow my teares, music much imitated, epitomising the fashionable humour of the day, melancholy. Dowland himself provided an apt pun on his own name - Dowland, semper dolens (Dowland, always grieving) - although he had a reputation as a cheerful man, yet professionally embittered by his long failure to find employment at court.
Dowland was above all the composer of lute-songs, publishing his first collection of airs in 1597, followed by a second in 1600 and a third in 1603. He left over eighty secular songs and these include Come again: sweet love doth now endite, Fine knacks for ladies and Flow my teares, among many others of moving intensity.
For the lute itself Dowland wrote Fantasias, and dance-movements, including Pavanes, Galliards, Almains and Jigs. Other Instrumental Music The best known of Dowland's instrumental compositions is his famous Lachrimae or Seaven Teares, for five viols and lute. This work includes a series of dance-movements, chiefly Galliards, and solemn Pavanes, using the theme familiar from the lute-song Flow my teares.
(1563-1626). During his lifetime John Dowland was one of the few English composers whose fame spread throughout Europe.
Born in 1563 John Dowland was almost exactly contemporary with Sweelinck and Shakespeare. Of his origins and early beginnings as a musician nothing is known. As an adoloscent he was 'servant' to the ambassadors of England to the court of France, spending over four years in Paris between 1580 and 1586.
During this stay - which must have greatly contributed to raising his social status and orienting his musical evolution - Dowland was converted to Catholicism under the influence of the English emigrants.
Back in England, he got married and in 1588 was admitted to his degree of Bachelor of Music from Christ Church, Oxford, on the same day as Thomas Morley.
His increasing renown as composer and performer, however, did not win him Elizabeth's confidence; so in 1594, after vainly seeking a post as court lutenist, he left for a long journey which was to take him to Rome with the intention of taking lessons with the famed Luca Marenzio.
The following year he boasted the title of Bacheler of Musick in both the Vniuersities, i.e. , Oxford and Cambridge, the first to have delivered this degree right from the late XVth century ; he also published his first book of Ayres for voice and lute, thus initiating a genre in which England was to excell for a quarter of a century. Six editions in succession testify to the renown then enjoyed by the composer.
In 1608, after spending one third of his life abroad, he returned to his native land, only to find - not without bitterness - that the court was indifferent to his music.
He then applied himself to translating the Micrologus, an alredy ancient treatise by the German theorist Andreas Ornithoparcu, collaborated on the editions of the Varietie of Lute-Lessons and of the Musicall Banquet brought out by his son Robert in 1610.
In 1612 he published a fourth and last collection of works for voice and lute, under the significant title : A Pilgrimes Solace. A much belated and meagre consolation indeed was his appointment this year as one of the King's Lutes. At the age of fifty, " being now gray and like the Swan, but singing towards his end ", he wore out his last creative forces in the composing of some short devotional works.
We know nothing of John Dowland's early life beyond the statements, made in his publications, that he was born in 1563 and studied the 'ingenuous profession of Musicke' from childhood. It used to be thought that he was Irish, but the antiquarian Thomas Fuller thought that he was born in Westminster, and he may have been related to the Dowlands recorded in the parish of St Martin in the Fields. It is likely that he was apprenticed to a professional lutenist, presumably under the patronage of Sir Henry Cobham, whom he accompanied to Paris in 1580. We know virtually nothing of his activities before 1594, when he applied for a court post as a lutenist. He was unsuccessful, probably because at some stage he had become a Catholic, and shortly afterwards he left England for Italy by way of the Brunswick and Kassel courts. He was evidently at the Kassel court in 1596, and returned home some time that winter. The courtier Henry Noel wrote to Dowland on December 1, that Elizabeth had 'wished divers tymes your return', though once again no appointment was forthcoming and Noel died in February 1597.
While he was in London, Dowland published his first collection of music, The First Booke of Songes or Ayres of Foure Partes with Tableture for the Lute (1597). It was an outstanding success - it was reprinted at least four times - and broke new ground in several respects. It was the first published collection of English lute songs, and was the first publication to use the ingenious 'table layout', which allowed for performance in many different ways. At that time, vocal ensemble music was usually published in sets of small part-books, but Dowland used a single large volume with all the parts for each piece distributed around the sides of a single opening. The songs can be performed by a single individual singing the tune and playing the tablature accompaniment, as a four-part song with or without lute, or with viols replacing or doubling some or all of the voices. The collection was also novel in that the compositional devices associated with the madrigal were conspicuous by their absence. All the songs are strophic, most of them use dance rhythms and patterns, and some of them are arrangements of existing lute dances. Madrigal-like word painting and counterpoint are more in evidence in Dowland's later song books, published in 1600, 1603 and 1612. A few songs in the 1612 volume, A Pilgrimes Solace, also show that he had become aware of the new declamatory style of his Italian contemporaries.\\
Dowland seems to have remained in England at least until February 1598, when the Landgrave of Hesse invited him to return to Kassel, though by the following November he had taken up a post at the Danish court. He remained there until 1606, apart from a year spent in England in 1603-04, when he took the opportunity to publish Lachrimae,his only collection of consort music. Lachrimae also broke new ground in that it was the only set of five-part dance music to use the table layout, the only one to be equipped with a tablature lute part, and the only one to feature a variation suite of seven pavans. These dances are linked by the four-note descending motif heard at the beginning of Lachrimae Antiquaeand by a subtle web of thematic and harmonic inter-relationships. Dowland dedicated Lachrimae to the queen, Anne of Denmark, stating that the collection was begun in her native land and finished in England; to some extent it represents the practice and repertory of expatriate Englishmen at the Danish court, including the composers William Brade and Daniel Norcombe.
When Lachrimaeappeared Dowland was one of the most famous lutenists in Europe, though he was known largely by repute: hardly any of his solo lute music was published in reliable editions. He also continued to be denied a post at the English court, even after James 1, the brother-in-law of his Danish employer, had come to the throne. By the time he finally achieved his ambition, in 1612, he had begun to be eclipsed by changing fashion. In A Pilgrimes Solacehe complained of his neglect, of criticism from younger lutenists, and of Tobias Hume's claim that the lyra viol could 'with ease yeelde full, various and devisefull Musicke as the Lute'. He also seems virtually to have stopped composing: only a handful of pieces can be dated after 1612, and most of his lute music is cast in forms that were rapidly becoming outmoded at the Jacobean court, such as the fantasy, the pavan and the galliard. Yet he continued to be honored by his contemporaries, and was apparently awarded a university doctorate towards the end of his life. He died in London in the spring of 1626.
The importance of Dowland, and the significance of his song books, cannot be underestimated. Nor can his popularity and recognition during his lifetime, which was at odds with his own perception of it--or perhaps he merely had an objective view of his own stature. To some extent it may have been the presence of a number of already popular instrumental pieces with 'ditties framed' that helped to make Dowland's First Booke of Songes or Ayressuch a success--enough to warrant further editions in 1600, 1603, 1606 and 1613. It includes Sir John Souch's Galliard('My thoughts are winged with hopes'), Captain Piper's Galliard('If my complaints could passions move'), the Earl of Essex's Galliard('Can she excuse my wrongs'), the Frog Galliard('Now, O now, I needs must part'), and 'Awake sweet love' which is also known as an instrumental piece. But significantly, pride of place is given to the song 'Unquiet thoughts'. Dowland's obsessive melancholy thus appears from the outset and is never far away in any of the song books. Sleep and death are sought to provide a longed-for release from earthly cares, and although this was very much an affectation of the time it was one which clearly excited an acutely personal response in him. Death, of course, has a sexual connotation too--but even when this is absent or heavily overlaid, his treatment of the idea frequently has an erotic intensity. In 'Come heavy sleep' we are wrenched from the key of G major by an impassioned plea which breaks through all restraints of counterpoint.
Increasingly the soloistic nature of the lutesong is asserted. Beginning with his Second Booke of Songs or Ayres(1600) Dowland left certain songs as solos--the first eight--though the bass part remains texted and the table of contents describes them as 'Songs to two voices'. But the underlay suggests that this part is instrumental rather than vocal in conception. The title page does indeed stipulate that these songs are to be performed 'with the Violl do Gamba' supporting the lute; more over, the repetition of the words of the opening line of 'I saw my lady weep' three times in the bass can only be regarded as foreign to the essential -nature of the song, forced on the music as some sort of compromise.
In this book the 'semper dolens' side of Dowland-passionate, melancholy, resigned--appears still more clearly. The prevailing mood is established at the outset. Following 'I saw my lady weep' comes the famous Lacbrimae Pavane'Flow my tears', then 'Sorrow, sorrow stay', No other song book can ever have begun with three such songs. In 'Sorrow, sorrow stay' counterpoint and the sustained vocal line give way to declamation and chords at the words 'pity, pity, pity' and 'no hope, no help', a throwback to the idiom of the Elizabethan choirboy playsongs in moments of anguish (and to Dowland's own 'Come, heavy sleep') and a foretaste of the electrifying outburst towards the end of 'In darkness let me dwell.' But generally the lute accompaniment of these expressive songs is a continuous web of polyphony, sometimes participating thematically with the voice but more often content to unwind in long lines drawn out by suspensions and prolonged by avoidance of direct cadences, superbly subtle in harmonic and rhythmic nuance.
In the latter part of the book the mood lightens a little in such songs as the exquisite 'Shall I sue, shall I seek for grace', but the only one that is completely carefree is 'Fine knacks for ladies'. The more extrovert side of Dowland is revealed in his Third and Last Booke of Songs or Aires(1603). Here and there gay chanson rhythms and a general lack of complication bring other composers to mind; Rosseter, for example in 'What if I never speed', Jones in 'Fie on this feigning'. And while only Dowland could have written 'Weep you no more sad fountains', the collection as a whole is less emotionally indulgent than the earlier books. Yet restraint, far from inhibiting force of expression is able to sublimate it, raising it to a higher level where it can outlast the heat of the moment. One song in particular has this sublime quality'Time stands still', a rapt contemplation of feminine beauty seen in eternity. Nothing is allowed to disturb the mood of breathless wonder. The harmonic materials are of the simplest, the melody itself does not exceed a fifth in range, yet the song is as affecting as anything Dowland wrote.
Despite the title of the third book, Dowland's last lutesong publication was A Pilgrimes Solace(1612). The tone of its preface suggests a disappointed man resentful of intrigues--real or imagined--against him, and envious of the recognition given to younger men while he still lacked a court appointment. He wrote:
I againe found strange entertainment since my returne [from Denmark]; especially by the opposition of two sorts of people that shroude themselves under the title of Musitians. The first are some simple Cantors, or vocall singers, who though they seeme excellent in their blinde Divisionmaking, are meerely ignorant, even in the first elements of Musicke ... yet doe these fellowes give their verdict of me behinde my backe, and say, what I doe is after the old manner ... The second are young-men, professors of the Lute, who vaunt themselves, to the disparagement of such as have beene before their time, (wherein I my self am a party) that there never was the like of them ...
As if to defy those who criticized him for being old fashioned, many of the songs in this book are retrospective in style. The links with the consort song are unmistakable, especially in the sequence of religious pieces (nos. 12-17), and there are three songs (nos. 9-11) which actually have an obbligato treble-viol part in consort with the voice (lying beneath the viol), lute and bass viol. Needless to say the expressive idiom of these songs, 'Go nightly cares', 'From silent night' and 'Lasso! vita mia' differ from the consort song of his youth, but the basic constituents--'first singing part' and polyphonic accompaniment--remain the same. Nor is the technique of contrapuntal continuity vastly different. However, there are distinctly modern features in some of the songs in this book too. The declamatory element is more pronounced, not so much in the 'Mille, mille' repetitions of 'Lasso! vita mia', which are illustrative rather thin expressive (and anyway the presence of consort parts precludes free declamatory treatment) but in 'Welcome black night' and 'Cease these false sports' where we may perceive a new orientation. The fact that these were probably written for a masque celebrating the wedding of Theophilus, Lord Walden (Dowland's patron) to Lady Elizabeth Home in March 1612 is significant. Here declamation begins to oust melody, and continuo homophony all but replaces polyphony in the accompaniment.
The finest example of Dowland's 'old manner' is not to be found in any of his own publications, but among the three songs he contributed to his son's Musicall Banquet(1610). 'In darkness let me dwell', though probably written in 1606 or soon after, recalls the style of 'I saw my lady weep' in the restless counterpoint of its accompaniment and the long sustained vocal phrases. But the emotional intensity is even greater, and at the climax it bursts out uncontrollably. Dowland has discovered the limitation of the polyphonic style. The pathetic repetition of the first line at the end of the song, and the final cadence, which, being phrygian, gives no promise of rest or ease, confirm this as one of the most profoundly moving songs ever written. It typifies Dowland at his best; the brooding melancholy and the conservative technique pushed as far as it will go to achieve an intensity of expression unequalled in England until Purcell.
Let's hope Bobby McFerrin never has a chance to hop into a time machine and zip back 400 years to cheer up John Dowland.
``Don't worry, be happy'' is the last thing we'd want Dowland to hear. If he'd followed that advice, the world would have been deprived of some exquisitely sorrowful music.
However sad Dowland's most famous music may be, it's moving rather than depressing. And Dowland certainly didn't limit himself to pieces in a dolorous mood. But melancholy was the mode in Elizabethan England, and Dowland was the most stylish composer of his time.
Dowland followed a dual career as a composer and lutenist. A lutenist is a player of the lute, a resonant pear-shaped instrument having several pairs of gut strings; it's played like a guitar. The lute was to English music around the year 1600 what the guitar is to popular music today. And in Dowland's time, there was hardly any difference between popular and classical instrumental music.
The young Dowland converted to Catholicism during a visit to Paris in 1580. He later claimed that this was the politically incorrect move that excluded him from employment at the Protestant court of Elizabeth I. (Remember that Elizabeth's father, Henry VIII, resented incursions on his earthly authority from the Vatican and broke with the Catholic Church, establishing the Church ofEngland.)
Today Aug 14
Dowland played before Elizabeth in 1592, but he was not favored with a royal appointment during Elizabeth's reign. Well, that's not quite true; he did secure a royal appointment, but it was as court lutenist to King Christian IV of Denmark.
Dowland remained bitter about being snubbed by the English court, even though the Danes paid him much more than the English would have. But the real reason Dowland was passed over for the post of lutenist when it opened in 1594 had nothing to do with religion. The court was simply cutting its budget, and the position Dowland wanted went unfilled for five years.
He finally obtained an appointment at the English court in 1612, but this didn't seem to improve his outlook - not, at least, to judge from his music. To be fair, most of Dowland's compositions predate his new job, which kept him busy as a lute player.
Dowland's works are often introspective, melancholy, and discordant by the standards of the time. He was apparently a sour character subject to lapses of common sense. He lost one job because he'd run up too many debts, and he hardly ingratiated himself with English officialdom when he wrote a couple of pieces in honor of the pirate Digorie Piper.
Nevertheless, his fame as a composer quickly spread across Europe, and his name and at least a few of his works have remained well-known for nearly four centuries.
Dowland, as Bach and Brahms would later, developed a unique compositional voice without being in any way a trailblazer. He did arrange pieces for unusual combinations of instruments, but the pieces themselves did not shape Elizabethan culture. Rather, they reflected the tastes of the time, which ran to elegant melancholy. Dominating Dowland's output is a form called the lute song, also known more generally as the ayre, because any instrument that can play chords - not just the lute - could accompany the singer.
The ayre is peculiar to English music, and was systematized somewhat by the 1597 publication of Dowland's ``First Booke of Songes or Ayres.'' Three more Dowland collections would follow, as would several by other composers, adding up to about 600 ayres that have survived to this day.
Lute songs were usually settings of outstanding poetic texts. Composers picked up any old drivel for their multi-voice madrigals, but they preferred quality material for their solo-voice ayres. The moods and form of the music closely followed those of the poetry.
The pieces were generally short, and assigned the greatest importance to the vocal part. The lute usually had to make do with a fairly simple accompaniment of chords, although Dowland's music for both voice and accompanist is more elaborate than that of his contemporaries.
Dowland also wrote a significant amount of instrumental music, some of it for solo lute and some for consort.
``Consort'' is the term used for an ensemble of voices or instruments (or both) between about 1570 and 1720. After Dowland's time, there came to be a distinction between ``whole'' consorts and ``broken'' consorts. A whole consort consisted of instruments of a single type - either all strings or all winds. A broken consort mixed instruments.
A typical broken consort in Dowland's time - but remember it wasn't yet called ``broken'' - revolved around the viol (rhymes with ``dial'') family. These were bowed instruments similar to violins, violas and cellos, but they were held between the knees or upright on the player's leg.
The most common broken consort consisted of a treble viol and a bass viol, the highest and lowest members of the family; a recorder, a flutelike instrument held vertically like an oboe; a lute; a cittern, sort of a Renaissance banjo with metal strings; and a bandora, an overgrown cittern, about the size of the modern guitar.
Long, complex symphonies and string quartets were things of the future. Consorts played shorter pieces, often inspired by dancing even if nobody could dance to the finished product. Their brevity did not make them simple; the melodies were often quite elaborate.
Most of Dowland's instrumental pieces are pavans, galliards and almans. The pavan is now most often seen in its French spelling, pavane, which is accented on the second syllable. It's a slow processional dance in duple time, and probably originated in Italy.
A pavan was frequently found in the company of a quicker dance, usually the galliard. This, Dowland's favorite (despite its happy character), also originated in Italy. It evolved into a grave and sober sort of piece by the end of the 17th century, but originally the galliard was a lively five-step dance in a rhythm based on either a count of three, or multiples of two. When paired, pavans and galliards often shared melodies with each other, like lovers sharing germs.
The alman, now usually given a French spelling, allemande, supposedly originated in Germany. Its tempo was moderate, between that of the mournful pavan and the sprightly galliard. Like the pavan, the alman was in duple time. Composers other than Dowland (notably Bach) often coupled it with a faster triple-time dance called a courante. So again, we have a slow-fast pairing, the pieces frequently sharing themes.
Dowland's most famous instrumental collection is (in modernized spelling) ``Lachrimae, or Seven Tears.'' It begins with a series of seven ``passionate pavans'' based on a four-note theme, and each pavan is an apt illustration of the word ``lachrymose.'' They are arranged for five viols and lute, quite a solemn sonority.
Then come 14 more pieces, most of them lively galliards that Dowland had already published as songs or lute solos. Among them is the galliard for the notorious pirate captain Piper.
Dowland listening suggestions
There's a fine recording of ``Lachrimae'' by lutenist Jakob Lindberg and the Dowland Consort on a BIS CD. Lindberg's friend and sometime collaborator Paul O'Dette has recorded several of Dowland's solo lute pieces on the Astrée label.
For the songs, choices abound. Anthony Rooley and the Consort of Musicke have done all of the ``First Booke'' on a L'Oiseau-Lyre disc. Wider-ranging single-disc collections are offered by Emma Kirkby and Rooley on Virgin, Nigel Rogers and O'Dette on the same label, and Alfred Deller and Robert Spencer on Harmonia Mundi France.
Very little is known of Dowland's early life, but it is generally thought he was born in London or possibly Dublin. It is known that he went to Paris in 1580 where he was in service to the ambassador to the French court. He became a Roman Catholic at this time, which he claimed led to his not being offered a post at Elizabeth I's Protestant court. (However, he had told nobody of his conversion.) He worked instead for many years at the court of Christian IV of Denmark. He returned to England in 1606 and in 1612 secured a post as one of James I's lutenists. He died in London.
Most of Dowland's music is for his own instrument, the lute. It includes several books of solo lute works, lute songs (for one voice and lute), part-songs with lute accompaniment, and several pieces for viol consort with lute. The poet Richard Barnfield wrote that Dowland's "heavenly touch upon the lute doth ravish human sense."
He later wrote what is probably his best known instrumental work, Lachrimae or Seaven Teares Figured in Seaven Passionate Pavans, a set of seven for five viols and lute, each based on "Flow My Tears." It became one of the best known pieces of consort music in his own time. His pavane "Lachrymae antiquae" was also one of the big hits of the seventeenth century.
Dowland's music often displays the melancholia that was so fashionable in music at that time. He wrote a consort piece with the punning title Semper Dowland, semper dolens (always Dowland, always doleful), which may be said to sum up much of his work.
Dowland's song, Come Heavy Sleepe, the Image of True Death, was the inspiration for Benjamin Britten's Nocturnal after John Dowland for guitar, written in 1964 for the guitarist Julian Bream. This work consists of eight variations, all based on musical themes drawn from the song or its lute accompaniment, finally resolving into a guitar setting of the song itself.
(1563-1626).During his lifetime John Dowland was one of the few English composers whose fame spread throughout Europe .
Born in 1563 John Dowland was almost exactly contemporary with Sweelinck and Shakespeare. Of his origins and early beginnings as a musician nothing is known. As an adoloscent he was 'servant' to the ambassadors of England to the court of France, spending over four years in Paris between 1580 and 1586.
During this stay - which must have greatly contributed to raising his social status and orienting his musical evolution - Dowland was converted to Catholicism under the influence of the English emigrants.
Back in England, he got married and in 1588 was admitted to his degree of Bachelor of Music from Christ Church, Oxford, on the same day as Thomas Morley.
His increasing renown as composer and performer, however, did not win him Elizabeth's confidence; so in 1594, after vainly seeking a post as court lutenist, he left for a long journey which was to take him to Rome with the intention of taking lessons with the famed Luca Marenzio.
The following year he boasted the title of Bacheler of Musick in both the Vniuersities, i.e. , Oxford and Cambridge, the first to have delivered this degree right from the late XVth century ; he also published his first book of Ayres for voice and lute, thus initiating a genre in which England was to excell for a quarter of a century. Six editions in succession testify to the renown then enjoyed by the composer.
In 1608, after spending one third of his life abroad, he returned to his native land, only to find - not without bitterness - that the court was indifferent to his music.
He then applied himself to translating the Micrologus, an alredy ancient treatise by the German theorist Andreas Ornithoparcu, collaborated on the editions of the Varietie of Lute-Lessons and of the Musicall Banquet brought out by his son Robert in 1610.
In 1612 he published a fourth and last collection of works for voice and lute, under the significant title : A Pilgrimes Solace. A much belated and meagre consolation indeed was his appointment this year as one of the King's Lutes. At the age of fifty, " being now gray and like the Swan, but singing towards his end ", he wore out his last creative forces in the composing of some short devotional works.
John Dowland represents one of the few examples of a great composer whose present day reputation is based on a relatively restricted range of works. His output is founded almost entirely on works written for his own instrument, the lute. Even many of his songs and consort pieces started life as lute compositions and it was as a lutenist that Dowland became famous throughout Europe.
John Dowland (1563 – February 20, 1626) was an English, possibly Irish-born composer, singer, and lutenist. He is best known today for his melancholy songs such as "Come, heavy sleep" (the basis for Benjamin Britten's Nocturnal), "Come again", "Flow my tears", and "I saw my Lady weepe", but his instrumental music has undergone a major revival as a source for classical guitar repertoire during the twentieth century.
Born: Nothing is known of Dowland's youth; even his date and place of birth are uncertain. But supposedly 1563 in London, England.
Died: Feburary 20, 1626 in London, England.
Period: Renaissance (1450-1599).
Country: England.
Genres: Chamber, Vocal.
Melancholy was all the rage in Elizabethan England, and John Dowland was the most stylish composer of his time. "Semper Dowland, semper dolens" was his motto, and much of his music is indeed exquisitely dolorous. Although he was a talented singer, Dowland mainly followed a dual career as a composer and lutenist. He was the period's most renowned and significant composer of lute solos, and especially ayres (also called lute songs), and a gifted writer of consort music.
Nothing is known of Dowland's youth; even his date and place of birth are uncertain. It is clear, though, that in 1580 he went to Paris in the service of the ambassador to the French court. Dowland converted to Catholicism during this time, and later claimed that this excluded him from employment at the Protestant court of Elizabeth I in 1594 (actually, the court was cutting costs and left the position unfilled for five years). In 1598, Dowland became lutenist to Christian IV of Denmark, but he was dismissed for unsatisfactory conduct in 1606. Between 1609 and 1612 he entered the service of Theophilus, Lord Howard de Walden, and finally in 1612, he was appointed one of the "musicians for the lutes" to James I of England.
Dowland managed to respect tradition while absorbing the trends he encountered on the Continent. Dominating Dowland's output is a form called the lute song or ayre. It was peculiar to English music, and was systematized somewhat by the 1597 publication of Dowland's First Booke of Songes or Ayres. These early songs are simple strophic settings, often in dance forms, with an almost complete absence of chromaticism. Continental influences come to the fore in such later songs as In darkness let me dwell (1610) and Lasso vita mia (1612), full of declamation, chromaticism, and dissonance.
Dowland also wrote a significant amount of instrumental music, much of it for solo lute and some for consort. There are some ninety works for solo lute; many are dances, often with highly embellished variations. Even here the Continental influence shows; such chromatic fantasies as Forlorne Hope fancye and Farewell are far more intense than the lute music of any other English (or, for that matter, Continental) composer of the time. Among the consort works, Dowland's Lachrimae, or Seaven Teares Figured in Seaven Passionate Pavans (1604), became one of the most celebrated compositions of the late Renaissance.
He became a Catholic while serving the English ambassador in Paris (1580-84) and in 1588 graduated BMusat Oxford. In 1592 he played the lute to the queen, then travelled in Europe, visiting the courts of Brunswick, Kassel, Nuremberg and cities in Italy, where he met Marenzio. He was back in London in 1597, then became a lutenist at the Danish court (1598-1603, 1605-6). On his return he served Lord Walden (1609-12) and eventually achieved his ambition, the post of court lutenist, in 1612. He had been awarded a doctorate by 1621 and played at James I's funeral in 1625. He was succeeded by his son Robert (c 1591-1641), also known for the lute collections he edited.
The British composer and lute virtuoso John Dowland (1562-1626) was the leading English lutanist composer of his time. A sensitive, original melodist, he found his forte in pensive song-soliloquys.
John Dowland was born in December 1562 near Dublin. Nothing is known of his early training. From about 1580 until sometime before July 1584 he served as a musician to Sir Henry Cobham, the English ambassador in Paris, and his successor, Sir Edward Stafford. In 1588 Dowland received his bachelor of arts degree at Christ Church, Oxford. Unable to obtain employment in England, possibly because he had been converted to Roman Catholicism in Paris, he visited the courts of Brunswick and Hesse and then traveled to Venice and Florence.
In 1597 Dowland received a degree from Cambridge. He still could find no employment in England, so he took a position at the court of Christian IV of Denmark, whom he served from 1598 until 1607. Apparently released for unsatisfactory service, he returned to England, where it seems that his renunciation of Catholicism opened doors formerly closed to him. He entered the service of Lord Walden. At last, in 1612, he was appointed a King's Musician for the Lutes at the court of James I. He held this position until his death in 1626 and was succeeded by his son, Robert.
Dowland's reputation as a composer rests chiefly on his four books of lute songs. These works may be performed as solo ayres with lute accompaniment or as part songs for four voices. In either arrangement the chief melodic interest lies in the top voice, a feature that gives the songs considerable historical significance.
The four song collections show Dowland's mastery of a new musical idiom, with a harmonic directness that cuts through the old polyphonic complexities. His handling of the lyrics was very sensitive, and he had a remarkable gift for beautiful and expressive melody. Such songs as "Come again, sweet love" and "Lady if you so spite me" exhibit his skill in the merry vein. A diametrically opposite character is to be found in the pathetic melancholy songs for which he is better known. The most expressive of these, such as "Sorrow stay," "I saw my lady weep," and "Flow my tears," relate in literary content as in melodic substance to Dowland's instrumental collection, Lachrimae, or Seaven Teares Figured in Seaven Passionate Pavans (1605). The gently descending "Lachrimae" motive established its own tradition and was imitated not only by Dowland's contemporaries, but also by composers in the late 17th century.
Educated at Oxford, he was refused a court position in 1594 and, believing his adoptive Catholicism had been the cause, he left for the continent. There he traveled extensively and took a position at the Danish court. In 1612, when his compositions had made him famous, he was finally appointed lutenist to the English court. He published three collections of songs, including about 90 works for solo lute and some 80 lute songs, including "Come again, sweet love does now endite," " Flow my tears," and "Weep you no more, sad fountains." His Lachrimae is a collection for viol-and-lute ensemble.
John Dowland (1563 – February 20, 1626) was an English composer, singer, and lutenist. He is best known today for his melancholy songs such as "Come, heavy sleep" (the basis for Benjamin Britten's Nocturnal), "Come again", "Flow my tears", "I saw my Lady weepe" and "In darkness let me dwell", but his instrumental music has undergone a major revival, and has been a source of repertoire for classical guitarists during the twentieth century.
He worked instead for many years at the court of Christian IV of Denmark. He returned to England in 1606 and in 1612 secured a post as one of James I's lutenists. Interestingly there are no compositions dating from the moment of his royal appointment until his death in London in 1626. While the date of his burial is recorded, the exact date of his death is not known.
Most of Dowland's music is for his own instrument, the lute. It includes several books of solo lute works, lute songs (for one voice and lute), part-songs with lute accompaniment, and several pieces for viol consort with lute. The poet Richard Barnfield wrote that Dowland's "heavenly touch upon the lute doth ravish human sense."
One of his better known works is the lute song "Flow My Tears", the first verse of which runs:
Flow, my teares, fall from youre springs,
Exiled for ever, let mee mourn
Where night's black bird hir sad infamy sings,
There let mee live forlorn.
He later wrote what is probably his best known instrumental work, Lachrimae or Seaven Teares Figured in Seaven Passionate Pavans, a set of seven for five viols and lute, each based on "Flow My Tears." It became one of the best known pieces of consort music in his own time. His pavane "Lachrymae antiquae" was also one of the big hits of the seventeenth century.
Dowland's music often displays the melancholia that was so fashionable in music at that time. He wrote a consort piece with the punning title Semper Dowland, semper dolens (always Dowland, always doleful), which may be said to sum up much of his work.
Dowland's song, Come Heavy Sleepe, the Image of True Death, was the inspiration for Benjamin Britten's Nocturnal after John Dowland for guitar, written in 1964 for the guitarist Julian Bream. This work consists of eight variations, all based on musical themes drawn from the song or its lute accompaniment, finally resolving into a guitar setting of the song itself.
The science fiction author Philip K. Dick (1928-1982) was a fan of Dowland's and his lute music is a recurring theme in Dick's fiction. Dick sometimes assumed the pen-name Jack Dowland. Dick also based the title of the novel Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said on one of Dowland's best-known compositions. In his novels, Dick envisioned a future America in which Dowland songs would be covered by a pop singer named Linda Fox (a thinly disguised proxy for Linda Ronstadt).
In the 1996 movie Sense and Sensibility, Marianne (Kate Winslet) sings "Weep you no more sad fountains" when Colonel Brandon (Alan Rickman) first sees her.
The 1999 ECM New Series recording In Darkness Let Me Dwell features new interpretations of Dowland songs performed by tenor John Potter, lutenist Stephen Stubbs, and baroque violinist Maya Homburger in collaboration with English jazz musicians John Surman and Barry Guy.
Elvis Costello included a recording (with Fretwork and the Composers Ensemble) of Dowland's "Can she excuse my wrongs" as a bonus track on the 2006 re-release of his The Juliet Letters.
In October 2006, Sting, who has been described as a fan of Dowland's, released an album featuring Dowland's songs titled Songs from the Labyrinth, on Deutsche Grammophon, in collaboration with Edin Karamazov on lute and archlute. They described their treatment of Dowland's work in a Great Performances appearance, saying that Dowland's music was the "skeleton" of their performances, but that the music "evolved" as they became more confident. To give some idea of the tone and intrigues of life in late Elizabethan England, Sting also recites throughout the album portions of a 1593 letter written by Dowland to Sir Robert Cecil. The letter documents Dowland's travels to various points of western Europe, then breaks into an abrupt denial of charges whispered against Dowland by unknown persons of treason. He most likely was suspected of this for traveling to the courts of various Catholic monarchs and accepting payment from them greater than what a musician of the time would normally have received for performing.
Other interpretations of Dowland's songs have been recorded by Windham Hill artist, Lisa Lynne, (for her CD, "Maiden's Prayer") and Lise Winne (for her "Wing'd With Hopes, New Interpretations of Renaissance Songs" CD).
Several bands, such as Die Verbannten Kinder Evas, Aesma Daeva and Qntal have recorded albums featuring lyrics by John Dowland.
Rose Tremain's 1999 novel Music and Silence is set at the court of Christian IV of Denmark some years after Dowland's departure and contains several references to the composer's music and temperament: in the opening chapter, Christian remarks that "the man was all ambition and hatred, yet his ayres were as delicate as rain".
Richard Barnfield, Dowland's contemporary, refers to the lutenist in poem VIII of The Passionate Pilgrim (1598):
“If music and sweet poetry agree,
As they must needs, the sister and the brother,
Then must the love be great 'twixt thee and me,
Because thou lovest the one, and I the other.
Dowland to thee is dear, whose heavenly touch
Upon the lute doth ravish human sense;
Spenser to me, whose deep conceit is such
As, passing all conceit, needs no defence.
Thou lovest to hear the sweet melodious sound
That Phoebus' lute, the queen of music, makes;
And I in deep delight am chiefly drown'd
When as himself to singing he betakes.
One god is god of both, as poets feign;
One knight loves both, and both in thee remain.”
John Dowland, of English or possibly Irish origin, was born in 1563, probably in London. He was a lutenist of distinction but failed, allegedly because he was a Catholic, to win a position in the royal service, seeking his fortune abroad at Kassel and later, in 1598, at the court of Christian IV of Denmark. He was forced by debt to return to England in 1606 and eventually won appointment as one of the King's Lutes in 1612. He performed during the funeral ceremonies of King James I and himself died the following year. Dowland was the composer, in particular, of one of the best known songs of the period, Flow my teares, music much imitated, epitomising the fashionable humour of the day, melancholy. Dowland himself provided an apt pun on his own name - Dowland, semper dolens (Dowland, always grieving) - although he had a reputation as a cheerful man, yet professionally embittered by his long failure to find employment at court.
Dowland was above all the composer of lute-songs, publishing his first collection of airs in 1597, followed by a second in 1600 and a third in 1603. He left over eighty secular songs and these include Come again: sweet love doth now endite, Fine knacks for ladies and Flow my teares, among many others of moving intensity.
For the lute itself Dowland wrote Fantasias, and dance-movements, including Pavanes, Galliards, Almains and Jigs. Other Instrumental Music The best known of Dowland's instrumental compositions is his famous Lachrimae or Seaven Teares, for five viols and lute. This work includes a series of dance-movements, chiefly Galliards, and solemn Pavanes, using the theme familiar from the lute-song Flow my teares.
(1563-1626). During his lifetime John Dowland was one of the few English composers whose fame spread throughout Europe.
Born in 1563 John Dowland was almost exactly contemporary with Sweelinck and Shakespeare. Of his origins and early beginnings as a musician nothing is known. As an adoloscent he was 'servant' to the ambassadors of England to the court of France, spending over four years in Paris between 1580 and 1586.
During this stay - which must have greatly contributed to raising his social status and orienting his musical evolution - Dowland was converted to Catholicism under the influence of the English emigrants.
Back in England, he got married and in 1588 was admitted to his degree of Bachelor of Music from Christ Church, Oxford, on the same day as Thomas Morley.
His increasing renown as composer and performer, however, did not win him Elizabeth's confidence; so in 1594, after vainly seeking a post as court lutenist, he left for a long journey which was to take him to Rome with the intention of taking lessons with the famed Luca Marenzio.
The following year he boasted the title of Bacheler of Musick in both the Vniuersities, i.e. , Oxford and Cambridge, the first to have delivered this degree right from the late XVth century ; he also published his first book of Ayres for voice and lute, thus initiating a genre in which England was to excell for a quarter of a century. Six editions in succession testify to the renown then enjoyed by the composer.
In 1608, after spending one third of his life abroad, he returned to his native land, only to find - not without bitterness - that the court was indifferent to his music.
He then applied himself to translating the Micrologus, an alredy ancient treatise by the German theorist Andreas Ornithoparcu, collaborated on the editions of the Varietie of Lute-Lessons and of the Musicall Banquet brought out by his son Robert in 1610.
In 1612 he published a fourth and last collection of works for voice and lute, under the significant title : A Pilgrimes Solace. A much belated and meagre consolation indeed was his appointment this year as one of the King's Lutes. At the age of fifty, " being now gray and like the Swan, but singing towards his end ", he wore out his last creative forces in the composing of some short devotional works.
We know nothing of John Dowland's early life beyond the statements, made in his publications, that he was born in 1563 and studied the 'ingenuous profession of Musicke' from childhood. It used to be thought that he was Irish, but the antiquarian Thomas Fuller thought that he was born in Westminster, and he may have been related to the Dowlands recorded in the parish of St Martin in the Fields. It is likely that he was apprenticed to a professional lutenist, presumably under the patronage of Sir Henry Cobham, whom he accompanied to Paris in 1580. We know virtually nothing of his activities before 1594, when he applied for a court post as a lutenist. He was unsuccessful, probably because at some stage he had become a Catholic, and shortly afterwards he left England for Italy by way of the Brunswick and Kassel courts. He was evidently at the Kassel court in 1596, and returned home some time that winter. The courtier Henry Noel wrote to Dowland on December 1, that Elizabeth had 'wished divers tymes your return', though once again no appointment was forthcoming and Noel died in February 1597.
While he was in London, Dowland published his first collection of music, The First Booke of Songes or Ayres of Foure Partes with Tableture for the Lute (1597). It was an outstanding success - it was reprinted at least four times - and broke new ground in several respects. It was the first published collection of English lute songs, and was the first publication to use the ingenious 'table layout', which allowed for performance in many different ways. At that time, vocal ensemble music was usually published in sets of small part-books, but Dowland used a single large volume with all the parts for each piece distributed around the sides of a single opening. The songs can be performed by a single individual singing the tune and playing the tablature accompaniment, as a four-part song with or without lute, or with viols replacing or doubling some or all of the voices. The collection was also novel in that the compositional devices associated with the madrigal were conspicuous by their absence. All the songs are strophic, most of them use dance rhythms and patterns, and some of them are arrangements of existing lute dances. Madrigal-like word painting and counterpoint are more in evidence in Dowland's later song books, published in 1600, 1603 and 1612. A few songs in the 1612 volume, A Pilgrimes Solace, also show that he had become aware of the new declamatory style of his Italian contemporaries.\\
Dowland seems to have remained in England at least until February 1598, when the Landgrave of Hesse invited him to return to Kassel, though by the following November he had taken up a post at the Danish court. He remained there until 1606, apart from a year spent in England in 1603-04, when he took the opportunity to publish Lachrimae,his only collection of consort music. Lachrimae also broke new ground in that it was the only set of five-part dance music to use the table layout, the only one to be equipped with a tablature lute part, and the only one to feature a variation suite of seven pavans. These dances are linked by the four-note descending motif heard at the beginning of Lachrimae Antiquaeand by a subtle web of thematic and harmonic inter-relationships. Dowland dedicated Lachrimae to the queen, Anne of Denmark, stating that the collection was begun in her native land and finished in England; to some extent it represents the practice and repertory of expatriate Englishmen at the Danish court, including the composers William Brade and Daniel Norcombe.
When Lachrimaeappeared Dowland was one of the most famous lutenists in Europe, though he was known largely by repute: hardly any of his solo lute music was published in reliable editions. He also continued to be denied a post at the English court, even after James 1, the brother-in-law of his Danish employer, had come to the throne. By the time he finally achieved his ambition, in 1612, he had begun to be eclipsed by changing fashion. In A Pilgrimes Solacehe complained of his neglect, of criticism from younger lutenists, and of Tobias Hume's claim that the lyra viol could 'with ease yeelde full, various and devisefull Musicke as the Lute'. He also seems virtually to have stopped composing: only a handful of pieces can be dated after 1612, and most of his lute music is cast in forms that were rapidly becoming outmoded at the Jacobean court, such as the fantasy, the pavan and the galliard. Yet he continued to be honored by his contemporaries, and was apparently awarded a university doctorate towards the end of his life. He died in London in the spring of 1626.
The importance of Dowland, and the significance of his song books, cannot be underestimated. Nor can his popularity and recognition during his lifetime, which was at odds with his own perception of it--or perhaps he merely had an objective view of his own stature. To some extent it may have been the presence of a number of already popular instrumental pieces with 'ditties framed' that helped to make Dowland's First Booke of Songes or Ayressuch a success--enough to warrant further editions in 1600, 1603, 1606 and 1613. It includes Sir John Souch's Galliard('My thoughts are winged with hopes'), Captain Piper's Galliard('If my complaints could passions move'), the Earl of Essex's Galliard('Can she excuse my wrongs'), the Frog Galliard('Now, O now, I needs must part'), and 'Awake sweet love' which is also known as an instrumental piece. But significantly, pride of place is given to the song 'Unquiet thoughts'. Dowland's obsessive melancholy thus appears from the outset and is never far away in any of the song books. Sleep and death are sought to provide a longed-for release from earthly cares, and although this was very much an affectation of the time it was one which clearly excited an acutely personal response in him. Death, of course, has a sexual connotation too--but even when this is absent or heavily overlaid, his treatment of the idea frequently has an erotic intensity. In 'Come heavy sleep' we are wrenched from the key of G major by an impassioned plea which breaks through all restraints of counterpoint.
Increasingly the soloistic nature of the lutesong is asserted. Beginning with his Second Booke of Songs or Ayres(1600) Dowland left certain songs as solos--the first eight--though the bass part remains texted and the table of contents describes them as 'Songs to two voices'. But the underlay suggests that this part is instrumental rather than vocal in conception. The title page does indeed stipulate that these songs are to be performed 'with the Violl do Gamba' supporting the lute; more over, the repetition of the words of the opening line of 'I saw my lady weep' three times in the bass can only be regarded as foreign to the essential -nature of the song, forced on the music as some sort of compromise.
In this book the 'semper dolens' side of Dowland-passionate, melancholy, resigned--appears still more clearly. The prevailing mood is established at the outset. Following 'I saw my lady weep' comes the famous Lacbrimae Pavane'Flow my tears', then 'Sorrow, sorrow stay', No other song book can ever have begun with three such songs. In 'Sorrow, sorrow stay' counterpoint and the sustained vocal line give way to declamation and chords at the words 'pity, pity, pity' and 'no hope, no help', a throwback to the idiom of the Elizabethan choirboy playsongs in moments of anguish (and to Dowland's own 'Come, heavy sleep') and a foretaste of the electrifying outburst towards the end of 'In darkness let me dwell.' But generally the lute accompaniment of these expressive songs is a continuous web of polyphony, sometimes participating thematically with the voice but more often content to unwind in long lines drawn out by suspensions and prolonged by avoidance of direct cadences, superbly subtle in harmonic and rhythmic nuance.
In the latter part of the book the mood lightens a little in such songs as the exquisite 'Shall I sue, shall I seek for grace', but the only one that is completely carefree is 'Fine knacks for ladies'. The more extrovert side of Dowland is revealed in his Third and Last Booke of Songs or Aires(1603). Here and there gay chanson rhythms and a general lack of complication bring other composers to mind; Rosseter, for example in 'What if I never speed', Jones in 'Fie on this feigning'. And while only Dowland could have written 'Weep you no more sad fountains', the collection as a whole is less emotionally indulgent than the earlier books. Yet restraint, far from inhibiting force of expression is able to sublimate it, raising it to a higher level where it can outlast the heat of the moment. One song in particular has this sublime quality'Time stands still', a rapt contemplation of feminine beauty seen in eternity. Nothing is allowed to disturb the mood of breathless wonder. The harmonic materials are of the simplest, the melody itself does not exceed a fifth in range, yet the song is as affecting as anything Dowland wrote.
Despite the title of the third book, Dowland's last lutesong publication was A Pilgrimes Solace(1612). The tone of its preface suggests a disappointed man resentful of intrigues--real or imagined--against him, and envious of the recognition given to younger men while he still lacked a court appointment. He wrote:
I againe found strange entertainment since my returne [from Denmark]; especially by the opposition of two sorts of people that shroude themselves under the title of Musitians. The first are some simple Cantors, or vocall singers, who though they seeme excellent in their blinde Divisionmaking, are meerely ignorant, even in the first elements of Musicke ... yet doe these fellowes give their verdict of me behinde my backe, and say, what I doe is after the old manner ... The second are young-men, professors of the Lute, who vaunt themselves, to the disparagement of such as have beene before their time, (wherein I my self am a party) that there never was the like of them ...
As if to defy those who criticized him for being old fashioned, many of the songs in this book are retrospective in style. The links with the consort song are unmistakable, especially in the sequence of religious pieces (nos. 12-17), and there are three songs (nos. 9-11) which actually have an obbligato treble-viol part in consort with the voice (lying beneath the viol), lute and bass viol. Needless to say the expressive idiom of these songs, 'Go nightly cares', 'From silent night' and 'Lasso! vita mia' differ from the consort song of his youth, but the basic constituents--'first singing part' and polyphonic accompaniment--remain the same. Nor is the technique of contrapuntal continuity vastly different. However, there are distinctly modern features in some of the songs in this book too. The declamatory element is more pronounced, not so much in the 'Mille, mille' repetitions of 'Lasso! vita mia', which are illustrative rather thin expressive (and anyway the presence of consort parts precludes free declamatory treatment) but in 'Welcome black night' and 'Cease these false sports' where we may perceive a new orientation. The fact that these were probably written for a masque celebrating the wedding of Theophilus, Lord Walden (Dowland's patron) to Lady Elizabeth Home in March 1612 is significant. Here declamation begins to oust melody, and continuo homophony all but replaces polyphony in the accompaniment.
The finest example of Dowland's 'old manner' is not to be found in any of his own publications, but among the three songs he contributed to his son's Musicall Banquet(1610). 'In darkness let me dwell', though probably written in 1606 or soon after, recalls the style of 'I saw my lady weep' in the restless counterpoint of its accompaniment and the long sustained vocal phrases. But the emotional intensity is even greater, and at the climax it bursts out uncontrollably. Dowland has discovered the limitation of the polyphonic style. The pathetic repetition of the first line at the end of the song, and the final cadence, which, being phrygian, gives no promise of rest or ease, confirm this as one of the most profoundly moving songs ever written. It typifies Dowland at his best; the brooding melancholy and the conservative technique pushed as far as it will go to achieve an intensity of expression unequalled in England until Purcell.
Let's hope Bobby McFerrin never has a chance to hop into a time machine and zip back 400 years to cheer up John Dowland.
``Don't worry, be happy'' is the last thing we'd want Dowland to hear. If he'd followed that advice, the world would have been deprived of some exquisitely sorrowful music.
However sad Dowland's most famous music may be, it's moving rather than depressing. And Dowland certainly didn't limit himself to pieces in a dolorous mood. But melancholy was the mode in Elizabethan England, and Dowland was the most stylish composer of his time.
Dowland followed a dual career as a composer and lutenist. A lutenist is a player of the lute, a resonant pear-shaped instrument having several pairs of gut strings; it's played like a guitar. The lute was to English music around the year 1600 what the guitar is to popular music today. And in Dowland's time, there was hardly any difference between popular and classical instrumental music.
The young Dowland converted to Catholicism during a visit to Paris in 1580. He later claimed that this was the politically incorrect move that excluded him from employment at the Protestant court of Elizabeth I. (Remember that Elizabeth's father, Henry VIII, resented incursions on his earthly authority from the Vatican and broke with the Catholic Church, establishing the Church ofEngland.)
Today Aug 14
Dowland played before Elizabeth in 1592, but he was not favored with a royal appointment during Elizabeth's reign. Well, that's not quite true; he did secure a royal appointment, but it was as court lutenist to King Christian IV of Denmark.
Dowland remained bitter about being snubbed by the English court, even though the Danes paid him much more than the English would have. But the real reason Dowland was passed over for the post of lutenist when it opened in 1594 had nothing to do with religion. The court was simply cutting its budget, and the position Dowland wanted went unfilled for five years.
He finally obtained an appointment at the English court in 1612, but this didn't seem to improve his outlook - not, at least, to judge from his music. To be fair, most of Dowland's compositions predate his new job, which kept him busy as a lute player.
Dowland's works are often introspective, melancholy, and discordant by the standards of the time. He was apparently a sour character subject to lapses of common sense. He lost one job because he'd run up too many debts, and he hardly ingratiated himself with English officialdom when he wrote a couple of pieces in honor of the pirate Digorie Piper.
Nevertheless, his fame as a composer quickly spread across Europe, and his name and at least a few of his works have remained well-known for nearly four centuries.
Dowland, as Bach and Brahms would later, developed a unique compositional voice without being in any way a trailblazer. He did arrange pieces for unusual combinations of instruments, but the pieces themselves did not shape Elizabethan culture. Rather, they reflected the tastes of the time, which ran to elegant melancholy. Dominating Dowland's output is a form called the lute song, also known more generally as the ayre, because any instrument that can play chords - not just the lute - could accompany the singer.
The ayre is peculiar to English music, and was systematized somewhat by the 1597 publication of Dowland's ``First Booke of Songes or Ayres.'' Three more Dowland collections would follow, as would several by other composers, adding up to about 600 ayres that have survived to this day.
Lute songs were usually settings of outstanding poetic texts. Composers picked up any old drivel for their multi-voice madrigals, but they preferred quality material for their solo-voice ayres. The moods and form of the music closely followed those of the poetry.
The pieces were generally short, and assigned the greatest importance to the vocal part. The lute usually had to make do with a fairly simple accompaniment of chords, although Dowland's music for both voice and accompanist is more elaborate than that of his contemporaries.
Dowland also wrote a significant amount of instrumental music, some of it for solo lute and some for consort.
``Consort'' is the term used for an ensemble of voices or instruments (or both) between about 1570 and 1720. After Dowland's time, there came to be a distinction between ``whole'' consorts and ``broken'' consorts. A whole consort consisted of instruments of a single type - either all strings or all winds. A broken consort mixed instruments.
A typical broken consort in Dowland's time - but remember it wasn't yet called ``broken'' - revolved around the viol (rhymes with ``dial'') family. These were bowed instruments similar to violins, violas and cellos, but they were held between the knees or upright on the player's leg.
The most common broken consort consisted of a treble viol and a bass viol, the highest and lowest members of the family; a recorder, a flutelike instrument held vertically like an oboe; a lute; a cittern, sort of a Renaissance banjo with metal strings; and a bandora, an overgrown cittern, about the size of the modern guitar.
Long, complex symphonies and string quartets were things of the future. Consorts played shorter pieces, often inspired by dancing even if nobody could dance to the finished product. Their brevity did not make them simple; the melodies were often quite elaborate.
Most of Dowland's instrumental pieces are pavans, galliards and almans. The pavan is now most often seen in its French spelling, pavane, which is accented on the second syllable. It's a slow processional dance in duple time, and probably originated in Italy.
A pavan was frequently found in the company of a quicker dance, usually the galliard. This, Dowland's favorite (despite its happy character), also originated in Italy. It evolved into a grave and sober sort of piece by the end of the 17th century, but originally the galliard was a lively five-step dance in a rhythm based on either a count of three, or multiples of two. When paired, pavans and galliards often shared melodies with each other, like lovers sharing germs.
The alman, now usually given a French spelling, allemande, supposedly originated in Germany. Its tempo was moderate, between that of the mournful pavan and the sprightly galliard. Like the pavan, the alman was in duple time. Composers other than Dowland (notably Bach) often coupled it with a faster triple-time dance called a courante. So again, we have a slow-fast pairing, the pieces frequently sharing themes.
Dowland's most famous instrumental collection is (in modernized spelling) ``Lachrimae, or Seven Tears.'' It begins with a series of seven ``passionate pavans'' based on a four-note theme, and each pavan is an apt illustration of the word ``lachrymose.'' They are arranged for five viols and lute, quite a solemn sonority.
Then come 14 more pieces, most of them lively galliards that Dowland had already published as songs or lute solos. Among them is the galliard for the notorious pirate captain Piper.
Dowland listening suggestions
There's a fine recording of ``Lachrimae'' by lutenist Jakob Lindberg and the Dowland Consort on a BIS CD. Lindberg's friend and sometime collaborator Paul O'Dette has recorded several of Dowland's solo lute pieces on the Astrée label.
For the songs, choices abound. Anthony Rooley and the Consort of Musicke have done all of the ``First Booke'' on a L'Oiseau-Lyre disc. Wider-ranging single-disc collections are offered by Emma Kirkby and Rooley on Virgin, Nigel Rogers and O'Dette on the same label, and Alfred Deller and Robert Spencer on Harmonia Mundi France.
Very little is known of Dowland's early life, but it is generally thought he was born in London or possibly Dublin. It is known that he went to Paris in 1580 where he was in service to the ambassador to the French court. He became a Roman Catholic at this time, which he claimed led to his not being offered a post at Elizabeth I's Protestant court. (However, he had told nobody of his conversion.) He worked instead for many years at the court of Christian IV of Denmark. He returned to England in 1606 and in 1612 secured a post as one of James I's lutenists. He died in London.
Most of Dowland's music is for his own instrument, the lute. It includes several books of solo lute works, lute songs (for one voice and lute), part-songs with lute accompaniment, and several pieces for viol consort with lute. The poet Richard Barnfield wrote that Dowland's "heavenly touch upon the lute doth ravish human sense."
He later wrote what is probably his best known instrumental work, Lachrimae or Seaven Teares Figured in Seaven Passionate Pavans, a set of seven for five viols and lute, each based on "Flow My Tears." It became one of the best known pieces of consort music in his own time. His pavane "Lachrymae antiquae" was also one of the big hits of the seventeenth century.
Dowland's music often displays the melancholia that was so fashionable in music at that time. He wrote a consort piece with the punning title Semper Dowland, semper dolens (always Dowland, always doleful), which may be said to sum up much of his work.
Dowland's song, Come Heavy Sleepe, the Image of True Death, was the inspiration for Benjamin Britten's Nocturnal after John Dowland for guitar, written in 1964 for the guitarist Julian Bream. This work consists of eight variations, all based on musical themes drawn from the song or its lute accompaniment, finally resolving into a guitar setting of the song itself.
(1563-1626).During his lifetime John Dowland was one of the few English composers whose fame spread throughout Europe .
Born in 1563 John Dowland was almost exactly contemporary with Sweelinck and Shakespeare. Of his origins and early beginnings as a musician nothing is known. As an adoloscent he was 'servant' to the ambassadors of England to the court of France, spending over four years in Paris between 1580 and 1586.
During this stay - which must have greatly contributed to raising his social status and orienting his musical evolution - Dowland was converted to Catholicism under the influence of the English emigrants.
Back in England, he got married and in 1588 was admitted to his degree of Bachelor of Music from Christ Church, Oxford, on the same day as Thomas Morley.
His increasing renown as composer and performer, however, did not win him Elizabeth's confidence; so in 1594, after vainly seeking a post as court lutenist, he left for a long journey which was to take him to Rome with the intention of taking lessons with the famed Luca Marenzio.
The following year he boasted the title of Bacheler of Musick in both the Vniuersities, i.e. , Oxford and Cambridge, the first to have delivered this degree right from the late XVth century ; he also published his first book of Ayres for voice and lute, thus initiating a genre in which England was to excell for a quarter of a century. Six editions in succession testify to the renown then enjoyed by the composer.
In 1608, after spending one third of his life abroad, he returned to his native land, only to find - not without bitterness - that the court was indifferent to his music.
He then applied himself to translating the Micrologus, an alredy ancient treatise by the German theorist Andreas Ornithoparcu, collaborated on the editions of the Varietie of Lute-Lessons and of the Musicall Banquet brought out by his son Robert in 1610.
In 1612 he published a fourth and last collection of works for voice and lute, under the significant title : A Pilgrimes Solace. A much belated and meagre consolation indeed was his appointment this year as one of the King's Lutes. At the age of fifty, " being now gray and like the Swan, but singing towards his end ", he wore out his last creative forces in the composing of some short devotional works.
John Dowland represents one of the few examples of a great composer whose present day reputation is based on a relatively restricted range of works. His output is founded almost entirely on works written for his own instrument, the lute. Even many of his songs and consort pieces started life as lute compositions and it was as a lutenist that Dowland became famous throughout Europe.
2 comments:
Great thanks, indeed !
Very interesting !
Well, if you want to find the real pictures of John Dowland go to two of my modest videos :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Ne3wgueerU
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3TTocJYk0Yc
Just hope an article on the subject will soon be written.
Very best wishes,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Ne3wgueerU
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3TTocJYk0Yc
Great thanks, indeed !
Very best wishes,
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