John Dowland’s lute music - the background

... Dowland to thee is deare; whose heauenly tuch
Vpon the Lute, doeth rauish humaine sense: ...

Richard Barnfield, 1598

What is it about the lute music of John Dowland that makes it the finest of his generation, right across Europe? Everything - the tunefulness, the range of forms, the touching harmony and the sheer invention, not forgetting the sensitivity of his playing, as recorded by Richard Barnfield above. And what was the power-house of this unique ability? His seriousness of intent, based on his training, which appears to have been conventional but exceptionally thorough.

He said himself (in his Songes of 1597) that "From my childhoode I have euer aymed at... the ingenuous profession of Musicke" At the age of seventeen (normal to begin an apprenticeship) he was "in france servant to Sir henry Cobhan who was Imba(ssador) for the Quenes ma(jes)tie" Apprenticeships normally lasted for seven years and ended at age 24, and although we have no proof of Dowland staying in France beyond 1584 it is quite possible that he remained with Sir Henry Brooke Cobham until 1587. The next year he took his Mus.B. degree at Oxford University, followed by another at Cambridge - "Batcheler of musicke in both the Vniversities" - as he boasted on the title-page of his first publication. We know of no other musician of the time taking degrees in both Oxford and Cambridge - a first indication of obsessional thoroughness. This was followed in 1595 by "excellent masters" in Germany. He named the lutenist Gregorio Howet of Antwerp and the singer and instrumentalist Alessandro Orologio, who the following year printed a book of three-voice canzonets with lute, perhaps providing a model for Dowland’s own trend-setting lute songs of 1597. Dowland then travelled on to Italy for "familiar conference" with Zarlino’s pupil, Giovanni Croce of St. Mark’s Venice, after which he "Intended to go (to) Rome to study with a famous musician named Luca marenzio" What a musical training, extending into his thirties, and what a breadth of musical influence he tapped - not only that of lutenists!

Although we appear to know the main events of his professional career we will probably never fathom the personality which must have had aspects his contemporaries found difficult. How could he have been so tactless as a mere 29-year-old to complain publicly to Queen Elizabeth "I have plaide so long with my fingers, that I have beaten out of play al my good fortune"? As one would expect, the Queen was not blackmailed into giving him royal employment. And two years later, when he "becam an humble sutor ... thincking my self most worthiest" for the vacant position of royal lutenist, he was not appointed. Despite having "many goode & honorable frendes that spake for me" he saw that he "was like to goe without it, & that any myght hav preferment but I". He "gest that my Relygion was my hinderance ... I hav bin thrust of(f) of all good fortunes because I am a catholicke at home, for I h(e)ard that her ma(jes)tie beinge spake to for me, saied I was a man to serve any princ in the world, but I was an obstinat papist".

There must have been more to the Queen’s disinclination to employ Dowland than his Catholicism (to which he had been converted as a teen-ager in Paris). After all, the Queen had no problems with William Byrd despite his militant Catholicism which caused many brushes with the law. Dowland claimed not to understand the Mass, which, if he means the Latin language, was not true: in 1609 he published a translation of a Latin music theory book. That the 1594 vacancy was held open for four years, until after Dowland secured employment abroad, suggests that the Queen had very good reason for not wanting this man (however brilliant he was as a lutenist) near her person, and a royal musician was physically very close to the sovereign.

Some composers of the time, Robert Jones in particular, wrote prefaces to their publication countering expected criticism, which seem only to indicate a lack of confidence, Dowland, however, outstripped them all with his "To the Reader" of A Pilgrim’s Solace, 1612. To bolster his injured pride he listed eight foreign cities where his music had been published, "(yea and some of them also authorized vnder the Emperours royall priuiledge,)" and lambasted the young "professors of the Lute, who vaunt themselves, to the disparagement of such as have beene before their time, (wherein I my selfe am a party) that there neuer was the like of them ... here are ... diuers strangers from beyond the seas, which auerre before our owne faces, that we have no true methode of application or fingering of the Lute".

Despite this accusation of conservatism Dowland seems to have kept abreast of developments in playing techniques of the time and of the lutes which he played. One assumes he started playing on a 6-course lute - he once dated his birth "but thirty yeeres after" Hans Gerle’s Tabulatur of 1533, so he presumably knew that 6-course music. Most of his lute solos, as well as his song accompaniments printed in 1597, 1600 and 1603, were written for a 7-course lute, but from 1604 (Lachrimae) to the end of his life (the Board lute Book to which he contributed in the 1620s) Dowland seems to have played a 9-course lute.

In his "Other necessary obseruations belonging to the lute" Dowland recommended tuning the two strings of each course in unison, "yet it hath beene a generall custome (although not so much vsed anywhere as here in England) to set a small and a great string together {that is, to string the bass courses in octaves} but amongst learned Musitions that custome is left, as irregular to the rules of Musicke". Barley’s new Booke of Tabliture 1596, which contained some Dowland lute solos, stated that the 4th, 5th and 6th courses should be strung in octaves, so we can presume that Dowland started playing the lute with octaves on those three courses, later changing to unisons.

As for right-hand technique, Johann Stobaeus (1580-1646) recorded that Dowland (and Howet, who may well have suggested the idea to Dowland) changed from playing "thumb in" to "thumb out" ("ausswertz nit einwertz"). This new technique produced a "clearer, crisper, brighter sound" ("Klinget reiner, scherffer u. heller"), instead of "sounding very dull and muffled" ("klinget gar faull u. dämpffig"). The new "strong and resonant sound" ("der resonans fein starck klinge") was perhaps cultivated with larger concert situations in mind, and for accompanying the voice. The technique was advocated by Bésard in his tutor of 1603, and Dowland must have adopted it by 1610 when he included his translation in Varietie of Lute-lessons.

Dowland’s 100 or so surviving lute solos include every form used by lutenists of that time. He had the intellectual curiosity to write a Fantasia (Poulton 4) on the In Nomine theme, and the up-to-the-minute facility (rather like a Master of the Queen’s Music) to mark, perhaps, the return of Captain Thomas Candish from his circumnavigation of the globe in 1588 - certainly the two-strain form places this galliard (Poulton 21) among his earliest compositions. He had the melodic and harmonic ability to write a hit-tune - Lachrimae (Poulton 15) - which touched a nerve throughout Europe and became the most popular composition of his day.

Like many great composers, Dowland constantly borrowed from and parodied others: his Farewell Fancy (Poulton 3) could have taken its title and rising chromatic theme from the final section "I’ll sing my faint farewell" in Thomas Weelke’s 1597 madrigal "Cease sorrows now". There are echoes of Tallis’s organ setting of "Felix namque" at the end of Fantasia (Poulton 1). Of his songs, "Would my conceit" borrows from Marenzio’s "Ahi dispietata morte", and "Come, heavy sleep" from Caccini’s "Vedro’l mio sol". His fanciful titles still catch the imagination - Mistress Winter’s Jump, My Lady Hunsdon’s Puff, Semper Dowland semper dolens, Mrs. White’s Thing, Tarleton’s Resurrection.

One incidental spin-off of the contrafacta songs - Lachrimae/Flow my tears, Essex’ Galliard/Can she excuse, and others - is that the poem, which was added after the instrumental composition, gives us an indication of Dowland’s phrasing. For example, many galliards should have the accent on the second beat of the first bar, not the first, reflecting that they begin half way through a hemiola. "Can she excuse..." follows the stress of a normal iambic pentameter, which indicates the musical accent.

Dowland was born into an improvising tradition, and it is likely that when he played he did not have a piece of music in front of him - most of the surviving manuscripts were written down by or for amateurs, not for professionals. A number of Dowland’s compositions survive in differing stages of development and complexity (see Poulton 9, 40, 42, 44) suggesting that there never was a definitive version. For the dance music (pavans, galliards, almains, etc.) divisions were sometimes copied down, sometimes not, but a professional of the time would always have improvised them. If the original sources lack them, Paul O’Dette has supplied his own for this recording.

One friend and neighbour living alongside Dowland in Fetter Lane was particularly helpful in furthering his career: Henry Peacham, who shamed the establishment into giving him royal employment in 1612 (Minerva Britanna, p. 74):

So since (old frend) thy yeares haue made thee white,

And thou for others, hast consum’d thy spring.

How few regard thee, whom thou didst delight,

And farre, and neere, came once to heare thee sing:

Ingratefull times, and worthles age of ours,

That lets vs pine, when it hath cropt our flowers.

Surely it was this poem which prompted Dowland’s appointment as Lutenist to the King’s Majesty in October that year. His apparently difficult personality needed all the help it could get. Peacham again (The Compleat Gentleman 1622, p. 198): "Of my good friend M.Doct.Dowland, in regard hee had slipt many opportunities in aduancing his fortunes, and a rare Lutenist as any of our Nation, beside one of our greatest Masters of Musicke for composing". Two years before, Peacham, yet again, published an epigram (Thalia’s Banquet, sig. C8v) dedicated to "Maister Doctor Dowland", thus dating his doctorate - probably from Oxford University - one year earlier than has previously been thought:

Your word, Hinc illae lachrimae, beneath,

A Venice Lute within a laurell wreath.

A final summing-up of Dowland’s outstanding achievement comes from the pen of another writer and poet, the medical doctor Thomas Lodge, in 1621 (A Learned Summary, p.264):

Musicke ... rauisheth the minde much more by melody, than either Bacchus by the taste of Wine, or Venus, by the itching pleasures of Lust. This makes me admire Doctor Dowland, an ornament of Oxford ... whose Musicall consent (by reason of the aeriall nature thereof) being put in motion, moueth the body, and by purified aire, inciteth the aeriall spirit of the soule, and motion of the body: by affect, it attempteth both the sence and soule together; by signification, it acteth on the minde: to conclude, by the very motion of the subtill aire, it pierceth vehemently and by contemplation sucketh swetly; by comfortable qualitie it infuseth a wondrous delight; by the nature thereof both spirituall and materiall, it rauisheth the whole vnto it selfe, and maketh a man to be wholly Musiques, and for her cause onely his: Thus much in memory of his excellence.

Robert Spencer

(From a CD by harmonia mundi FRANCE #907161 "John Dowland Complete Lute Works, vol. 2, Paul O’Dette, lute")

John Dowland’s career spans an era of considerable experimentation and transition in musical style, lute construction and playing technique. The early Elizabethan pavans and galliards, with their clear, short phrases, transparent textures and straightforward ornamented repeats, were succeeded by longer, more complex works with freer, more rhapsodic ornamentation utilizing richer textures. The classic diminution style (running passages) of the Renaissance was gradually combined with the new French practice of "style brisé" or breaking chords. The lowest register of the lute was also increasingly explored, and more bass strings were added.

Many of the works in the present program, including Dowland’s First Galliard, Captain Candish’s Galliard, Captain Piper’s Pavan j Galliard, Dowland’s Galliard, Mignarda, and Mounsieur’s Almaine were written early in Dowland’s career, during the 1580s. As Robert Spencer has pointed out, these pieces were written for a six-course lute (six pairs of strings), the instrument Dowland undoubtedly learn to play on, with the lowest three pairs of strings tuned in octaves. His first pieces for seven-course lute do not appear until the 1590s. Today, Dowland’s music is nearly always played on a seven- or eight-course instrument with the basses tuned in unisons, following his remark in the Varietie of Lute-lessons of 1610 that the use of octaves was "irregular to the rules of Musicke". However, this new type of stringing almost certainly developed after he adopted the seven-course lute, since this is the period in which the fantasias were written, and it is in this type of music that octaves create the most serious problems of voice-leading. Indeed, the six-course music benefits enormously from the use of octave stringing which produces a richness later provided for by additional bass strings. To the casual listener, such questions of stringing may seem esoteric, but they are a vital part of the music’s character.

It has been suggested that only the few lute solos published or signed by Dowland can be attributed to him with certainty, since works copied by others with his name attached may be arrangements by other lutenists. It is true that surviving versions of many pieces not be exactly as Dowland conceived them, but works contained in manuscripts compiled by acquaintances, such as Matthew Holmes (Precentor and Singingman at Christ Church, Oxford, from 1588 to 1597) must be close to the "original versions", if indeed such things ever existed. Ornamentation was largely an improvisational rather than a compositional art, so it would be surprising if Dowland did not ornament his works differently on different occasions. Many of his pieces, including Lachrimae, Can she excuse, Piper’s Galliard, John Smith’s Almaine and Mounsieur’s Almaine, exist in different versions in sources that come from Dowland’s circle. Some of the differences are undoubtedly due to alterations made by other lutenists, while others are the result of the fluid, improvisational nature of instrumental music at this time. Dowland complained about the copies of his music in William Barley’s New Booke of Tablature of 1596, but that collection is a special case because of its great number of inaccuracies. Even the existence of an autograph copy is not a guarantee of the most convincing version. My Lady Hunnsdon’s Puffe survives in Dowland’s hand in the Folger Dowland Ms., but is a pedantic setting which has the appearance of a teaching exercise, and is not as compelling as the copy by Matthew Holmes in a manuscript bearing the composer’s autograph on another page.

Three of the works in this program cannot definitively be attributed to Dowland, but are likely to have been composed by him. Suzanna Galliard, a simple, but ingenious triple-time reworking of Orlando di Lasso’s famous chanson Suzanne un jour, was later published by Dowland with elaborate ornamentation as The Lord Viscount Lisle, his Galliard. I have added embellishments to the repeat of each strain, basing them on the consort setting printed by Füllsack and Hildebrand in 1607. As I went to Walsingham, a setting of the famous ballad tune as a galliard, is attributed to Gregory Huwet in several sources, but to Dowland in the Königsberg Manuscript (c. 1595-1620) now in Vilnius, Lithuania. The earliest source of this piece is English, and predates Dowland’s trip to Germany when he met Huwet for the first time, making it likely that Dowland composed the piece but that Huwet played it often enough to have it attributed to him. The Walsingham tune is rarely found on the continent, while a consort setting of this galliard appears in a cluster of Dowland works in the Cambridge consort manuscripts. The second strain quotes from the song Shall I sue, while the third borrows a passage from Dowland’s First Galliard and includes a sequence from his Galliard to Lachrimae. Sir henry Guilford’s Almaine was published without attribution in Robert Dowland’s Varietie of Lute-lessons of 1610. The writing is strongly reminiscent of John Dowland, and if he did not compose the piece it is certainly in his style. Robert was born the same year Henry Guilforde was knighted (1591), so he was a friend to both Queen Elizabeth and, later, King James.

Mounsieur’s Almaine, appears anonymously in another of Holme’s manuscripts, but it was recently discovered in an Italian source attributed to Dowland. It is a fine set of variation on the popular tune, in the elegant style of Dowland’s other variation sets, eschewing the overtly virtuosic approach of many of his contemporaries. On the other hand, Aloe features rapid running passages in the bass accompanying the simple melody. This technique is commonly found in keyboard music of the time: it shows Dowland borrowing and adapting ideas from other idioms to make exciting new textures on the lute.

Dowland’s borrowing of ideas is particularly evident in the present program. The fantasias borrow numerous passages from the organ works of Thomas Tallis, especially his brilliant setting of Felix namque. It is surely no coincidence this work survives in an arrangement for lute in one of Matthew Holmes’ manuscripts, a source which also contains several of Dowland’s fantasias. Farwell is based on the "in nomine" theme, used by numerous composers of viol and keyboard fantasias, such as Parsons, Tye and Byrd, but not utilized by other lute composers. The use of a cantus firmus in the final section of a pavan, as in Solus cum sola, seems to have originated with Peter Philips’ famous Pavan of 1580 or, possibly, Nicholas Stroger’s In nomine Pavin. The last section of Dowland’s First Galliard also makes use of this technique, doubling the cantus firmus in octaves for clarity. Some scholars have suggested My Lady Hunnsdon’s Puffe is an arrangement of an Italian Balletto, since it exists in several Italian sources with various Italian titles. These sources all date from after 1600, however, while several of the Dowland sources are earlier. In any case, the piece is so typical of Dowland that it was almost certainly written by him and then adapted by Italian lutenists.

Finally, the famous Lachrimae theme was probably inspired by Luca Marenzio’s madrigal Parto da voi mio sole, and possibly also Rivi, fontane, e fiumi. Dowland was a great admirer of his music and borrowed numerous passages from him in other works. He set off for Rome specifically to meet Marenzio, but was thwarted by an unexpected encounter with Catholic expatriates in Florence, raising suspicion he was involved in a plot against the Queen. It would be ironic if Elizabethan England’s most celebrated melody turns out to have been created by a Catholic from Rome! The present version of Lachrimae is one of the earliest, but also one of the most beautiful. It has been largely ignored by lutenists today because the key, A minor, is more awkward than the well-known version in G minor. On the other hand, A minor is the key of the song setting Flow my tears, the consort version in Lachrimae, or Seaven Teares, and Marenzio’s aforementioned madrigals. It is possible that Dowland’s failure to meet Marenzio contributed to his overall sense of melancholy and despair. But the darkness, which pervaded his character, makes his music all the more gripping. As one eighteen-century lutenist wrote, "Anglia Dulandi lacrymis moveatur" - "May England be moved by Dowland’s tears".

Paul O’Dette

(From a CD by harmonia mundi FRANCE #907161 "John Dowland Complete Lute Works, vol. 2, Paul O’Dette, lute")

(Contribution by Alvare Henrique <violaoc@terra.com.br>)