English melancholy and its Bards. Part 1

music of Renaissance England: John Dowland

Dec 11, 2024

The English, from John Dowland to Radiohead, are the masters of melancholy. One is tempted to attribute this to their gloomy pluvial climes but whatever the reasons, no other nation has imbued the various shades of dolor with so much poignancy, enchantment and grace. And in no other time was the English melancholy so exalted and relished as during the English Renaissance.

The main character of this series. Melencolia I (1514), by Albrecht Dürer, who was not an Englishman.

Elizabethan (1558—1603) and Jacobean (1603—1625) eras in England saw exceptional cultural efflorescence amid relative internal political calm. This was the time of Shakespeare, Marlowe, Bacon, Gibbons, Byrd, Dowland. And it is this period out of all of English musical history that speaks to me most deeply.

I want to go over some of the most notable (to me) music of the English Renaissance, once again opening my musical jewelry box for you to peek into and enjoy. Part 1 is all about John Dowland, Part 2 will be on the English Virginalist School.

Note: links to individual pieces are from youtube, while album links are from Apple Music.

John Dowland (c. 1563–1626), the King of Sorrow, though rumored to have been a jolly man in his lifetime. He wrote numerous pieces for solo lute and for a consort of viols, three Books of Songs as well as other vocal works.

Contrary to what I may have maintained elsewhere, the interplay of text and music is important in the English Renaissance songs and madrigals. I still think one can afford to decouple text from music and to let oneself be enchanted by music alone, without the words getting in the way — especially if they are in a foreign language or else archaisms of a language one does speak. But incorporating a perception of how words are woven into the musical texture and vice versa can certainly enrich the full listening experience.1

In many of Dowland’s madrigals, one cannot help but notice a discrepancy between the heartrending, raw nature of the lyrics and a more detached feel of the music, as if it is sung by higher beings observing human lives from above, without judgement but with compassion. The text may speak of almost unbearable sorrow, but the music maintains an extraordinary poise and control. In Renaissance England melancholy was something both experienced emotionally and contemplated as an intellectual and aesthetic state.

Below is a selection of songs from Dowland’s three songbooks. I love recordings by The Consort of Musicke & Anthony Rooley, with Emma Kirkby as a soprano. Her voice has the crystalline purity and minimal vibrato that are perfect for this setting.

First Booke of Songes (1597)

Unquiet thoughts (lyrics) | Go crystal tears (lyrics) | All ye whom love or fortune hath betrayed (lyrics) | Would my conceit (lyrics)

Second Booke of Songes (1600)

I saw my lady weep (lyrics) | Flow my tears (lyrics) | If floods of tears (lyrics) | White as lilies was her face (lyrics) | Toss not my soul (lyrics)

Third and Last Booke of Songes (1603)

Here’s a playlist with all of these songs.

The lyrics are mostly by anonymous poets, and I encourage you to read through them, though I’d mention once again that many of them are rather soul-crushing.

The madrigals feature characteristic interlocking patterns of voice leading, an ample use of gracefully descending lines, and curtsy-like resolutions. I want to go over some of the songs in more detail below.

Go crystal tears is a brilliant, many-layered composition. It opens with a very soft baritone, followed by a fuller yet still reserved tenor. In the second stanza, full-voiced sopranos enter, joined by the other voices, all rising to a new height and staying there for a while, then tapering off softly to complete the song. There is a charged feeling of arrival when all the voices start singing together. Composition is by necessity also an act of dramaturgy, only a composer’s means are more abstract than those of a playwright.

I saw my lady weep is written as a soprano-baritone duo accompanied by lute. The beloved is beautiful even in her sorrow but may she be warned of the excesses of grieving.

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I saw my lady weep,
And Sorrow proud to be advanced so,
In those fair eyes where all perfections keep,
Her face was full of woe;
But such a woe, believe me, as wins more hearts,
Than Mirth can do with her enticing parts.

Sorrow was there made fair,
And Passion wise, tears a delightful thing,
Silence beyond all speech a wisdom rare,
She made her sighs to sing,
And all things with so sweet a sadness move,
As made my heart at once both grieve and love.

O fairer than aught else,
The world can show, leave off in time to grieve,
Enough, enough, your joyful looks excels,
Tears kills the heart.
O strive not to be excellent in woe,
Which only breeds your beauty's overthrow.

Flow my tears as a poem contains some of the darkest verses ever penned in the English language. Yet it is set to music so graceful, so gentle that one may not be alerted to the enormous weight of it unless one listens closely to the words. This song features the famous descending lacrimae motif, alluding to falling tears. It is further elaborated in the cycle Lachrimae, or Seaven Teares, Figured in Seaven Passionate Pavans (1604), a set of pavans for five viols and a lute.

Other notable vocal works

Mr. Henry Noell’s Lamentation (7 movements) | A Pilgrim’s Solace (21 movements)

Lute works

Is it not strange that sheep’s guts could hail souls out of men’s bodies?2 Indeed, how is it that “a hollow piece of wood and the guts of beasts stirred by the fingers of man”3 can move us so? Renaissance lute sounds softer and gentler than guitar, and this softness puts a distance between the instrument and the listener — again, it is as if it comes from a higher plane, like the voices in Dowland’s madrigals.

Below is just a selection of his lute works, and I won’t link to individual pieces. I recommend listening to the full collection — there isn’t a piece in it that isn’t enchanting and wonderful.

Recommended albums:

Dowland: The Collected Works (Anthony Rooley & The Consort of Musicke) Dowland: Fancyes, Dreams and Spirits, Lute Music, Vol. 1 (Nigel North) | Dowland: Dowland’s Tears, Lute Music, Vol. 2 (Nigel North) | Dowland: Pavans, Galliards, Almains, Lute Music, Vol. 3 (Nigel North) | Dowland: The Queen’s Galliard, Lute Music, Vol. 4 (Nigel North) | Dowland: Complete Lute Works, Vol. 1 | Vol. 2 | Vol. 3 | Vol. 4 (Paul O’Dette) | My favorite Dowland (Paul O’Dette) | Flow My Tears - Songs for Lute, Viol & Voice (Iestyn Davies, Thomas Dunford & Jonathan Manson) | "Crystal Tears" John Dowland and his Contemporaries (Andreas Scholl, Julian Behr & Concerto di Viole)

There’s a poem by Richard Barnfield, Dowland’s contemporary, that speaks to this point:

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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.

William Shakespeare, Much Ado About Nothing, 2.3.57-58

Full quote, by Bishop Joseph Hall (1574-1636): “There may be, for aught we know, infinite inventions of art, the possibility whereof we should hardly believe if they were fore-reported to us. Had we lived in some rude and remote part of the world, and been told that it is possible, only a hollow piece of wood and the guts of beasts stirred by the fingers of man, to make so sweet and melodious a noise, we should have thought it utterly incredible, yet now that we see and hear it ordinarily done, we make it no wonder.”

Banner image: Musician Angel by Rosso Fiorentino (Giovanni Battista Di Jacopo), c. 1520

The Bass Line

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