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 Cobham who was Imbassador for the Quenes majestie." Apprenticeships normally lasted for seven years and ended at age twenty-four, 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 Vniuersities," 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 musicion 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 twenty-nine-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 off of all good fortunes because I am a catholicke at home, for I heard that her majestie 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 a lutenist he was) 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 publications countering expected criticism, which seem only to indicate a lack of confidence. Dowland, however, outstripped them all with his "To the Reader" of A Pilgrimes 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 themselues, to the disparagement of such as haue 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 haue 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 six-course lute—he once dated his birth "but thirty yeeres after" Hans Gerle's Tabulatur of 1533, so he presumably knew that six-course music. Most of his lute solos, as well as his song accompaniments printed in 1597, 1600 and 1603, were written for a seven-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 nine-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." William Barley's new Booke of Tabliture (1596), which contained some Dowland lute solos, stated that the fourth, fifth and sixth 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 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. dämpffg). The new "strong and resonant sound" (der resonansfein starck klinge) was perhaps cultivated with larger concert situations in mind, and for accompanying the voice. The technique was advocated by Besard 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 one hundred or so surviving lute solos include every form used by lutenists of that time. He had the intellectual curiosity to write a Fantasia 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 among his earliest compositions. He had the melodic and harmonic ability to write a hit-tune—Lachrimae— 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 could have taken its title and rising chromatic theme from the final section, "I'll sing my faint farewell," in Thomas Weelkes's 1597 madrigal "Cease sorrows now." There are echoes of Thomas Tallis's organ setting of "Felix namque" at the end of Fantasia. 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, Tarlton'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 suggesting that there was never 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: 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): Musike . . . 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 concent (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 the 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 sweetly; by conformable 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 wholy Musiques, and for her cause onely his: Thus much in memory of his excellence.
