1563–1626 · Baroque
John Dowland was an English Renaissance composer and lutenist who lived from 1563 to 1626. He wrote mostly for the lute: dance pieces, songs for voice and lute, and consort music. His melancholy songs and the Lachrimae pieces are still performed, and the site has two of his songs for mixed choir.
John Dowland was an English Renaissance composer and lutenist. According to some accounts from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the first syllable of his surname was originally pronounced with the diphthong of the English word know. In the English-speaking world today a different sound has become standard, as in the word now.
Very little is known about Dowland's childhood and youth. The year of his birth, 1563, is taken from his own written statements about his age.
In 1580 Dowland found himself in Paris, in the service of the British ambassador. There he got to know several Catholics. Around 1584 he returned to England and married, and in 1588 he took the degree of Bachelor of Music at Christ Church, Oxford.
In 1594 a post for a lutenist became vacant at the court of Queen Elizabeth, but Dowland did not get it. He claimed that his religion was the reason. Yet Catholic belief did not stop some other prominent musicians of the time from building careers at court.
After this setback Dowland set out for Rome. In 1594 and 1595 he travelled first in Germany, where the Duke of Brunswick and the Landgrave of Hesse were his patrons, and then in Italy, including Padua, Venice and Florence. On the way he called at the German courts of Wolfenbüttel and Kassel. Rome was the goal: there he hoped to meet Luca Marenzio, a celebrated composer and lutenist who had sent him an invitation.
In Florence Dowland was drawn into a circle of English Catholics in exile who were plotting against Queen Elizabeth. He wanted nothing to do with them. He gave up the idea of meeting Marenzio in Rome and set off for home at once, stopping in Nuremberg on the way. He was back in England in the mid-1590s.
The reasons for this decision are explained in a letter to Robert Cecil dated November 1595. Dowland confesses in it to Catholic sympathies, yet affirms his allegiance to the Queen and his dismay at the plots against her that had come to his notice. Several of the conspirators are named. A short account of his European journeys also stands in his address to the reader at the front of the first book of songs.
As early as 1592, six pieces by Dowland appeared in a book of psalms published by Thomas Est, which held the works of ten composers. In 1596 seven of his solo lute pieces were printed without the composer's permission.
In 1597 Dowland's own first collection appeared, The First Booke of Songes or Ayres, with 21 songs for voice and lute. It can be performed by one singer with the lute or by various combinations of singers and instrumentalists. On the title page the author calls himself a Bachelor of Music of both universities. The book ends with a piece for two players on a single lute.
From 1598 Dowland served as lutenist at the court of King Christian IV of Denmark. The pay was generous, 500 daler a year, which made him one of the best-paid servants of the Danish court. The king thought highly of him, but Dowland was not a model servant: he often stayed in England well beyond his leave when he went there on publishing business or for other reasons.
Dowland kept publishing in London while he was away. His second book of songs came out in 1600 while he was in Denmark: the manuscript was sent to his wife, who dealt with the publisher. It holds 22 songs for voice and lute and one instrumental piece. The third and last book of songs appeared in 1603.
The year 1604 brought the collection Lachrimae, or Seaven Teares, which has 21 pieces and begins with seven pavans of tears. Its title page records that the author owned a house in Fetter Lane in London. In 1609 Dowland published in London his own translation from Latin of the treatise Micrologus by Andreas Ornithoparcus, first printed in 1517.
Early in 1612 Dowland was taken on as one of the lutenists of King James I, and he held a court lutenist's place to the end of his days. His final collection, A Pilgrimes Solace, was published that same year. People began calling him Doctor Dowland from 1621, but it is unclear where and how he might have obtained a doctorate. Only a few compositions can be dated to the period after his court appointment.
Dowland died in London. When exactly is not known: the court's final payment to him was made on 20 January 1626, and his burial at St Ann's, Blackfriars, took place on 20 February 1626.
Dowland had a wife and children, yet he was often away from them for long stretches, because she remained in England while he had work on the Continent. Their son Robert, likewise a musician, spent a time in the household of the first Earl of Devonshire and later succeeded his father as lutenist at court. In 1610 Robert published two collections that include his father's works: one with solo lute pieces by his father and others, the other with three songs by his father.
During the twentieth century Dowland's music was reborn. Interest in Renaissance and Baroque culture rose, and classical guitarists gained new repertoire from the lute. The singer-songwriter Frederick Keel was among the first to rescue Dowland from the history books. His two sets of Elizabethan love songs, issued in 1909 and 1913, contain fifteen Dowland pieces in free arrangements for piano and voice.
In 1935 the Australian-born composer Percy Grainger made a piano arrangement of the song Now, O now I needs must part. His songs entered the repertory of the old-music movement, first through Julian Bream and the tenor Peter Pears, later, from the late 1960s, through Christopher Hogwood and David Munrow. In 1976-1980 the Briton Anthony Rooley recorded the complete collection of his works with the ensemble The Consort of Musicke.
The lute was the instrument for which Dowland wrote most. Several books hold solo pieces, mostly dances (grounds, jigs, allemandes, galliards, pavans), and there are over 110 of them. He also left songs for voice and lute, known as ayres, and consort music, some of it with lute. In his instrumental pieces he frequently reworked familiar tunes, such as Une jeune fillette and Susanne un jour, both extremely popular at the time.
The mood of his music is sad and dreamy, even melancholy. Melancholy of this kind was unusual for the period, and Dowland and Anthony Holborne were its pioneers. His music drew on popular consort songs and on the dances of the day, and he also credited the many musicians he met abroad.
Dowland's best-known work is Lachrimae (Latin for tears). It exists in three versions: for lute, as the song Flow my teares (1600), and arranged for consort. In 1604 he published the consort collection Lachrimae or Seaven Teares, made up of 21 pieces. It opens with seven pavans of tears with similar Latin titles, from Lachrimae antiquae to Lachrimae verae.
Dowland wrote mainly secular music. Of his few sacred works the most notable is the collection of songs for soloists and ensembles, A pilgrimes solace (1612). Its psalm settings are brief pieces with a plain, syllabic treatment of the words and one rhythm in all voices, meant for Anglican services. Lute pieces are usually cited by number from Diana Poulton's edition, for example Melancholy Galliard, P25.
Many of Dowland's works survive only in manuscript. His lute music was edited in London in 1974 by Diana Poulton and Basil Lam, in an edition that gives both lute tablature and keyboard notation. The consort music, edited by E. Hunt, came out in London in 1985, and the ayres for four voices, edited by D. Greer, appeared in the Musica Britannica series in 2000.
The site has two songs by Dowland for SATB mixed choir, both at the Intermediate level: Unquiet Thoughts (Ayres and Lute Songs I) and Come Again (Ayres and Lute Songs XVII). Either is a good way to begin getting to know the composer's music.