Music of Shakespeare's Time

00:00 Rowland (William Byrd, 1543-1623)
02:32 Alman (Thomas Morley, 1557-1602)
03:56 What if I never speed (John Dowland, 1563-1626)
05:35 Alman (Martin Peerson, c1571-1651)
06:55 If my complaints could passions move (Dowland)
08:54 Piper’s Galliard (John Bull, 1562-1628)
11:20 Amarilli di Julio Romano (Peter Philips, 1561-1628)
14:42 Flow my tears (Dowland)
16:42 Lachrimae antiquae (Dowland; arrangement from Jean Baptiste Besard´s “Thesaurus harmonicus”)
20:37 Margott Laborez (Orlando di Lasso, 1532-1594)
22:47 Wilt thou, unkind, thus leave me? (Dowland)
24:43 The King’s Hunt (Giles Farnaby, c1563-1640)
27:25 Sir Henry Guilforde his Almaine (Dowland)
29:36 John Smith his Almaine (Dowland)
32:12 Can she excuse my wrongs (Dowland)
33:57 The Right Honourable Robert, Earle of Essex, his Galliard (Dowland)
35:55 Sir Thomas Monson, his Galliard (Dowland)
38:52 Lachrimae in 7 passionate pavans (Dowland)
50:32 Go crystal tears (Dowland)

Charlotte Lehmann: soprano / Martin Lill: lute
Luitgard Pohlert: harpsichord, clavichord, chamber organ
The Pohlert Renaissance Instrumental Ensamble

The Age of Queen Elizabeth (1558-1603), which was also the Age of Shakespeare (1564-1616) was one of a high musical culture, which enlightened England intensely and indelibly for half a century. Under Elizabeth a courtly music was born, whose centre of gravity, in the early 17th century, is to be found in Dances, Fancies and Variation forms rather than in a representative courtly style. The major part of the preserved instrumental repertoire belongs to the Lute. With more than 2000 pieces it reaches the threefold of the preserved Virginal pieces. Nevertheless, Virginal music remains the core of the actual heritage of the Elizabethan Age. It boasts astounding variety, and makes use of a variation technique that does not work with the means of polyphony, as in the output for Organ or Harpsichord of Sweelinck and his German disciples, but unfolds a grand and bold keyboard technique of astonishing mastery and virtuosity. Whereas earlier collections contain pieces intended indifferently for the Virginals or the Organ, the later, larger ones (such as the celebrated Fitzwilliam Virginal Book) contain but very few pieces that can be played on the Organ (here: Amarilli di Julio Romano, by Peter Philips). The “Varieti of Lute-Lessons” (1610) are a collection of compositions for the lute, gathered at the time of the instrument’s supreme flowering. John Dowland contributed with some highly significant compositions. He was the greatest in an imposing group of lutenist-composers. As a lutenist of the Danish Royal Court he had the opportunity to spread his works throughout Europe. They were printed in eight very celebrated cities abroad (for instance: Fantasia Lachrimae, Besard, Cologne 1603). Dowland is also rightfully considered to be the great initiator of the English Lute-Song. He is not only the greatest genius amongst the Lute-Song composers, but his position concerning its diffusion and its flowering, both in quantity and quality, was a cardinal one. He is the author of the first printed “Ayres” (B.O.A. I 1597). Owing to their passionate expression, Dowland’s Songs by far surpass the vast amount of similar compositions of the period. It is remarkable, not to say ununderstandable, that it has become a tradition, since the rediscovery of the Ayre, to have those pieces sung by a male voice, though no more than 12 out of 600 Lute-Songs are actually written in a male voice register. But this is not the only reason pleading for the probability of a performance by a female voice; it is rather the greater importance of the feminine element in the domestic culture of lute-playing, and the fact that performance through a male voice causes upheavals in the part-writing which are more or less bearable because the sound of the voice offers a vivid contrast to that of the instrumental accompaniment, but which strictly speaking and according to the choral style of the time are simply impossible. Some of Dowland’s “Ayres” are also extant as danec pieces. The most celebrated example, ‘‘Flow my tears’’, is mentioned very often in the literature of the period under its title as a dance: ‘‘Lachrimae’’. The “Lachrimae”’ are one of the earliest products of emancipated instrumental music. The instrumental element is no more superimposed on a framework of vocal and polyphonic conception in the form of figurations, etc., but begins to determine the composition’s structure up to its innermost self, a fact that can be recognized above all in the presence of harmonic and chromatic audacities. Permeated with the great lutenist-composer’s own brand of melancholy, the ‘Lachrimae or Seven Tears’ are a climax in English music. True to the performing practice of the time, the ‘Lachrimae’ are not played by a full consort of Viols but by a mixed group close to the typical “broken consort” of the Elizabethan period.

HARRY HALBREICH

ORYX (EXP 62)