John Dowland (1563 – February 20, 1626) was an English composer, singer, and lutenist. He is best known today for his melancholy songs such as "Come, heavy sleep" (the basis for Benjamin Britten's Nocturnal), "Come again", "Flow my tears", "I saw my Lady weepe" and "In darkness let me dwell", but his instrumental music has undergone a major revival, and has been a source of repertoire for classical guitarists during the twentieth century. Events February 1 - Sarsa Dengel succeeds his father Menas as Emperor of Ethiopia February 18 - The Duke of Guise is assassinated while besieging Orléans March - Peace of Amboise. ... February 20 is the 51st day of the year in the Gregorian Calendar. ... Events September 30 - Nurhaci, chieftain of the Jurchens and founder of the Qing Dynasty dies and is succeeded by his son Hong Taiji. ... Motto: (French for God and my right) Anthem: God Save the King/Queen Capital London (de facto) Largest city London Official language(s) English (de facto) Unification    - by Athelstan AD 927  Area    - Total 130,395 km² (1st in UK)   50,346 sq mi  Population    - 2006 est. ... A composer is a person who writes music. ... A medieval era lute. ... [[ For other uses, see Song (disambiguation). ... Edward Benjamin Britten, Baron Britten, OM CH (November 22, 1913 Lowestoft, Suffolk - December 4, 1976 Aldeburgh, Suffolk) was a British composer, conductor, and pianist. ... Come Again, sweet love doth now invite. ... Flow my tears is a lute song (specifically, an ayre) by the accomplished lutenist and composer John Dowland. ... I saw my lady weepe is a lute song from Second Booke of Songes or Ayres , by Renaissance lutenist and composer John Dowland. ... A classical guitar, also called a Spanish guitar, is a musical instrument from the family of musical instruments called chordophones. ...

Life

Very little is known of Dowland's early life, but it is generally thought he was born in London. It is known that he went to Paris in 1580 where he was in service to the ambassador to the French court. He became a Roman Catholic at this time, which he claimed led to his not being offered a post at Elizabeth I's Protestant court. However, his conversion was not publicized, and being Catholic did not prevent some other important musicians to have a court career in England. This article is about the capital of England and the United Kingdom. ... Events March 1 - Michel de Montaigne signs the preface to his most significant work, Essays. ... The Roman Catholic Church, most often spoken of simply as the Catholic Church, is the largest Christian church, with over one billion members. ... Elizabeth I (7 September 1533 – 24 March 1603) was Queen of England, Queen of France (in name only), and Queen of Ireland from 17 November 1558 until her death. ... Protestantism is a general grouping of denominations within Christianity. ...

He worked instead for many years at the court of Christian IV of Denmark. He returned to England in 1606 and in 1612 secured a post as one of James I's lutenists. Interestingly there are no compositions dating from the moment of his royal appointment until his death in London in 1626. The coronation of King Christian IV, painted by Otto Bache, 1887. ... Events January 27 - The trial of Guy Fawkes and other conspirators begins ending in their execution on January 31 May 17 - Supporters of Vasili Shusky invade the Kremlin and kill Premier Dmitri December 26 - Shakespeares King Lear performed in court Storm buries a village of St Ismails near... Events January 20 - Mathias becomes Holy Roman Emperor. ... James VI and I (James Stuart) (June 19, 1566 – March 27, 1625) was King of Scots, King of England, and King of Ireland. ...

Most of Dowland's music is for his own instrument, the lute. It includes several books of solo lute works, lute songs (for one voice and lute), part-songs with lute accompaniment, and several pieces for viol consort with lute. The poet Richard Barnfield wrote that Dowland's "heavenly touch upon the lute doth ravish human sense." A medieval era lute. ... The lute song was a generic form of music in the late Renaissance and very early Baroque eras, generally consisting of a singer accompanying himself on a lute, though they must have been often performed by a singer and a separate lutenist. ... Various sizes of viol, from Michael Praetorius Syntagma musicum (1618) The viol (also called viola da gamba) is any one of a family of bowed, fretted stringed musical instruments developed in the 1400s and used primarily in the Renaissance and Baroque periods. ... Richard Barnfield (1574-1627), English poet, was born at Norbury, Staffordshire, and baptized on June 13, 1574. ...

One of his better known works is the lute song "Flow My Tears", the first verse of which runs:

Flow, my teares, fall from youre springs,

Exiled for ever, let mee mourn

Where night's black bird hir sad infamy sings,

There let mee live forlorn.

He later wrote what is probably his best known instrumental work, Lachrimae or Seaven Teares Figured in Seaven Passionate Pavans, a set of seven for five viols and lute, each based on "Flow My Tears." It became one of the best known pieces of consort music in his own time. His pavane "Lachrymae antiquae" was also one of the big hits of the seventeenth century. The pavane is a processional dance common in Europe during the 16th century, whether named from an origin in Padua (padovano), from Sanskrit meaning wind, or from the stately sweep of a ladys train likened to a peacocks tail. ...

Dowland's music often displays the melancholia that was so fashionable in music at that time. He wrote a consort piece with the punning title Semper Dowland, semper dolens (always Dowland, always doleful), which may be said to sum up much of his work. Melancholia (Greek μελανχολια) is a mood of non-specific depression. ...

Dowland's song, Come Heavy Sleepe, the Image of True Death, was the inspiration for Benjamin Britten's Nocturnal after John Dowland for guitar, written in 1964 for the guitarist Julian Bream. This work consists of eight variations, all based on musical themes drawn from the song or its lute accompaniment, finally resolving into a guitar setting of the song itself. Edward Benjamin Britten, Baron Britten, OM CH (November 22, 1913 Lowestoft, Suffolk - December 4, 1976 Aldeburgh, Suffolk) was a British composer, conductor, and pianist. ... Julian Bream (born July 15, 1933) is a British guitarist and lutenist. ...

In popular culture

The science fiction author Philip K. Dick (1928-1982) was a fan of Dowland's and his lute music is a recurring theme in Dick's fiction. Dick sometimes assumed the pen-name Jack Dowland. Dick also based the title of the novel Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said on one of Dowland's best-known compositions. In his novels, Dick theorized that in a future America Dowland songs would be covered by a pop singer named Linda Fox (a thinly disguised stand-in for Linda Ronstadt). Science fiction is a form of speculative fiction principally dealing with the impact of imagined science and technology, or both, upon society and persons as individuals. ... Philip Kindred Dick (December 16, 1928 – March 2, 1982) was an American writer, mostly known for his works of science fiction; additional to forty-four books currently in print, Dick wrote several short stories and minor works published in pulp magazines. ... Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said is a Philip K. Dick novel in which Jason Taverner, who is a Six (a genetically improved superhuman) as well as a singer and television star, lives in a future American police state. ... Linda Maria Ronstadt (born July 15, 1946) is a Grammy-winning, multi-platinum American singer most closely associated with the folk rock and country rock genres prevalent in the 1970s. ...

In the 1996 movie Sense and Sensibility, Marianne (Kate Winslet) sings "Weep you no more sad fountains" when Colonel Brandon (Alan Rickman) first sees her.

The 1999 ECM New Series recording In Darkness Let Me Dwell features new interpretations of Dowland songs performed by tenor John Potter, lutenist Stephen Stubbs, and baroque violinist Maya Homburger in collaboration with English jazz musicians John Surman and Barry Guy. John Douglas Surman (born on 30 August 1944 in Tavistock, England), is a jazz saxophone, clarinet and synthesizer player. ... Barry Guy (born 1947 in London) is a British composer and performer on the double bass. ...

Elvis Costello included a recording (with Fretwork and the Composers Ensemble) of Dowland's "Can she excuse my wrongs" as a bonus track on the 2006 re-release of his The Juliet Letters. Declan Patrick MacManus (born August 25, 1954, in London), better known by his stage name, Elvis Costello, is an English musician, singer, and songwriter of Irish ancestry. ... Fretwork is a consort of viols based in England, United Kingdom. ... The Juliet Letters is a 1993 album by Elvis Costello and The Brodsky Quartet. ...

In October 2006, Sting, who has been described as a fan of Dowland's ^[1], released an album featuring Dowland's songs titled Songs from the Labyrinth, on Deutsche Grammophon, in collaboration with Edin Karamazov on lute and archlute. They described their treatment of Dowland's work in a Great Performances appearance, saying that Dowland's music was the "skeleton" of their performances, but that the music "evolved" as they became more confident.^[2] For professional wrestler Steve Borden, see Sting (wrestler). ... Songs From The Labyrinth is an album of recordings of the music of John Dowland by Sting and Bosnian lutenist Edin Karamazov. ... Logo Deutsche Grammophon is a German record label. ... Edin Karamazov is a Bosnian musician-lutenist (born in 1965 in Zenica, Bosnia). ... A medieval era lute. ... An Archlute by Matteo Sellas, Venice, 17th century The archlute (Italian arciliuto, German Erzlaute, Russian Архилютня) a European plucked string instrument was developed around 1600 as a compromise between the very large theorbo, the size and re-entrant tuning of which made for difficuties in the performance of solo music, and... Great Performances was a television series devoted to the performing arts which ran on the US television station PBS from 1972. ...

Other interpretations of Dowland's songs have been recorded by Windham Hill artist, Lisa Lynne, (for her CD, "Maiden's Prayer") and Lise Winne (for her "Wing'd With Hopes, New Interpretations of Renaissance Songs" CD). Lisa Lynne is a Celtic harpist and composer and New Age recording artist residing in Los Angeles, California. ...

The band Die Verbannten Kinder Evas have recorded albums featuring some of the lyrics of John Dowland. To meet Wikipedias quality standards, this article or section may require cleanup, suggested by its AFD discussion. ...

Notes

Richard Barnfield, Dowland's contemporary, refers to the lutenist in poem VIII of The Passionate Pilgrim (1598): Great Performances was a television series devoted to the performing arts which ran on the US television station PBS from 1972. ...

Bibliography

• A History of the Lute from Antiquity to the Renaissance by Douglas Alton Smith, published by the Lute Society of America (2002). ISBN 0-9714071-0-X
• The Lute in Britain: A History of the Instrument and its Music by Matthew Spring, published by Oxford University Press (2001).

External links

• Free scores by John Dowland in the Choral Public Domain Library (ChoralWiki)
• Free scores by John Dowland in the Werner Icking Music Archive
• Works by John Dowland at Project Gutenberg
• Listen to free recordings of Madrigals and an Elizabethan song from Umeå Akademiska Kör
• Listen to a free recording of Awake sweet love thou art return’d from coronostro.com