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This month, Pegasus Early Music’s John Dowland Festival observes the 400th anniversary of the passing of one of England’s greatest composers. Is it odd to celebrate a great composer’s death? Not when the composer’s music still speaks so strongly after four centuries.
On Sunday afternoon, several singers and instrumentalists will perform a bouquet of Dowland’s songs (with some new surprises), and a Feb. 22 recital presents his wonderfully varied music for solo lute played by the Eastman School of Music’s Paul O’Dette. (He just won his third Grammy, as a conductor on a recording of music by Georg Philipp Telemann).
We know a few things about Dowland’s life: He was born in 1563 and died in February 1626; he had a wife (about whom we know even less) and son; during the reigns of Elizabeth and James I he worked in France, Italy, Germany, Denmark, and eventually back to England, where he became one of James’ private musicians.
Dowland’s fame was considerable, but the man himself remains mostly a mystery. There are no surviving portraits of him, and Dowland’s doings within various European courts are obscure and possibly shady. With his access to power as a court musician, he may have been a spy for the British in France, and a double agent in Denmark and England.
He was also one of the most popular composers of his time. Dowland’s “First Book of Songes” was reprinted four times, and its successors were equally popular. He was a smart businessman too, rearranging his most popular songs for the most salable combinations: solo lute, lute duets, vocal ensembles, and instrumental ensembles.
He was something of an Elizabethan Bob Dylan, writing songs that caught the temper of the times and appealed to a wide public, then and now. His songs have in fact been interpreted by such modern pop stars as Sting and Elvis Costello.
You’ll also hear new music inspired by Dowland on Sunday’s program. Pegasus musicians will premiere several new songs composed for the occasion by bass-baritone Jonathan Woody, who will also participate in the concert. Woody’s songs take their texts from the biblical Song of Songs; his music, scored for lute and viola da gamba, has an Elizabethan flavor, but in the words of Deborah Fox, the artistic director of Pegasus, Woody “also takes a few contemporary liberties.”
Perennially restless and dissatisfied, Dowland once described himself as “Semper Dowland, semper Dolens”: “Always Dowland, always doleful.” His most popular song was titled “Lachrymae” or “Tears”—and images of melancholy, weeping, and lovesickness recur in many of his songs: “Come heavy sleep”; “Sorrow, stay”; “Flow my tears”; “In darkness let me dwell”; and so on.
But Dowland’s music is not always dolorous, says O’Dette, an enthusiastic and vastly experienced guide to Dowland’s music. He first encountered it as a high school guitar student, and was so impressed that O’Dette traded the guitar for the lute so he could perform the music properly. He gave his first all-Dowland recital in 1979, has recorded all of his lute music, and performed it in concert throughout the world.
“It’s easy to stereotype Dowland as a melancholy composer, but the Elizabethans also made a cult of melancholy, so he was fitting in with his times,” he says.
“He was a multi-faceted composer,” O’Dette adds. “Much of his music comes from dark places, but on the other hand he had an impish, witty side.”
O’Dette’s recital program aims to present “the entire scope of Dowland’s music,” he says. The composer’s travels exposed him to different musical trends throughout Europe, which he adopted for his own music.
“Some pieces are very well known, a few are completely unknown,” he notes, adding that new Dowland pieces are still being discovered, in many different forms and styles.
Dowland’s large output ranges from lighthearted, danceable variations on popular tunes to serious contrapuntal music. His five fantasias for lute are among the masterpieces of music for this instrument.
Though a lutenist herself who’ll perform on Sunday, Fox admits that she has not played very much of Dowland’s considerable output.
“It’s way too hard!” she jokes, adding, “Dowland must have been an incredible virtuoso. He had a real understanding of the instrument: His music is all over the lute, and is full of thick chords—you have to grab handfuls of notes. But his writing is always idiomatic and full of really good counterpoint.”
She agrees with O’Dette on the variety to be found in John Dowland’s music, comparing his songs and shorter pieces to the miniature portraits that were popular keepsakes at this time.
“The portraits are tiny, really just tokens,” Fox says. “But they are perfectly detailed, and their colors are still so clear and bright.
“That is how I think of Dowland’s songs—each one is a jewel.”
Pegasus Early Music presents “John Dowland Mini-Festival” at Downtown United Presbyterian Church, 121 North Fitzhugh St. Part 1, “Songs Old and New,” Sunday, Feb. 8 at 4 p.m. Part 2, “Many Moods of Dowland,” with Paul O’Dette, lute, Sunday, Feb. 22 at 4 p.m. Tickets at pegasusearlymusic.org or at the door.
David Raymond is a Rochester Beacon contributing writer.
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