DOWLAND: Lachrimae - Norwegian Baroque Orchestra - (SACD)

Editorial Reviews
Album Description

John Dowland (?1563-1826)

Lachrimae

Norsk Barokkorkester
Norwegian Baroque Orchestra
Rolf Lislevand, lute, leader
Randi Stene, Mezzo-soprano

Seven Tears figured in seven Passionate Pavans together with six songs of Tears and Weeping

This title is a Stereo Super Audio CD. As a Hybrid disc, it will play back on all CD players. The SACD layer can be accessed by compatible source components.

Recorded at Uranienborgkirke, Oslo 6 - 10 January 2002

' … though the title doth promise tears, unfit guests in these joyful times, yet no doubt pleasant are the teares which musick weeps, neither are tears shed always in sorrow, but sometimes in joy and gladness. Vouchsafe then your gracious protection to these showers of harmony, lest if you frown on them, they be metamorphosed into true tears.'

John Dowland (?1563-1626) was in many ways the most outstanding musician of Elizabethan England. And his Lachrimae cycle of pavans represents some of the most outstanding music of his time, and, indeed since, the music evoking a profound emotional and spiritual journey. Perhaps uniquely in tune with his time, his art found perfect musical expression in the 'Cult of Melancholy' that ran deeply through 16th-century art, literature and music.

The pavans have their origin in a lute solo that grew into Dowland's best-known and best-loved song, for which Dowland himself probably wrote the words, 'Flow my tears'. Last to emerge was the set of seven pavans instrumental based on the same 24-bar pavan-song. Though the exact date of composition is not known, it first appears on a London copyright register in 1604. In them the lute continues to occupy a central part of the instrumental texture, written with the mastery only a virtuoso of Dowland's stature could have achieved.

Although Dowland published the seven pavans as a continuous set of instrumental music, the pavans are for this recording interspersed with other songs that highlight the different shades of introspection and melancholy Dowland so delighted in. His biographer, Diana Poulton, sees his genius most exemplary in his late songs, most affected by the operatic invention of early 16th-century Italian opera. Of his 'In darkness let me dwell' she cites his 'strange and beautiful melody, rising from the words, with a sense of inevitablity…expressing an emotional intensity unsurpassed in any other song at that time'.

But the seven pavans are likewise music of great originality. They are played on this disc on fretless instruments, and not on the more familiar consort of viols. The justification for this need not go further than the preface to Dowland's own publication of the Lachrimae which specifies that the music can be played on ‘viols or violons’, the latter being unspecified fretless instruments of the violin family. In keeping with common practice for larger musical ensembles until the 19th-century, the instrumental forces in this performance are divided into two groups: one of soloists and a second, larger ‘replenishing’ consort. This formula lends itself particularly well to the formulaic pavans each 24 bars long, and each in three 8-bar phrases, with repetitions.

It is not known where the pavans were written, but they may well have their origin during Dowland’s residence at the court of Christian IV in Denmark between 1598 - 1606, during which time the composer made some 37 visits northwest, to Christiania (Oslo) and to what is now Norway, making a fitting precedent for the contemporary early music performers on this disc to be exploring this repertory. But Dowland, as his ‘Lasso vita mia’ in its Monteverdian style would suggest, was a total European, with roots not only in Elizabethan London and in Scandinavia, but in the new operatic lyricism of his day emerging from the Italian peninsula, that was to change the course of vocal music to follow. Indeed, at a formative time in hi

Tracks:

Intrada XXI - Royal Danish Brass
Intrada V - Royal Danish Brass
1. Paduana/2. Galliard
1. Paduana/2. Galliard
1. Paduana/2. Galliard
Pavana
Fant - Jakob Lindberg
Petrus Fabricius Lutbog: 1. Graff Van Mannsfeldts Dans/2. Polnisch Tantz I/3. Polnisch Tantz II... - Jakob Lindberg
Prld - Jakob Lindberg
A Fant - Jakob Lindberg
Mr. Dowland's Midnight - Jakob Lindberg
The King Of Denmark's Galliard
1. Paduana/2. Galliard
Pasameza
Lachrime Pavan
1. Courente I/2. Courente II/3. Courente III
Intrada I - Royal Danish Brass
Intrada XIX - Royal Danish Brass

DOWLAND: Lachrimae - Norwegian Baroque Orchestra - (SACD)

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IL PENSEROSO

DOWLAND: Lachrimae - Norwegian Baroque Orchestra - (SACD)

Manufacturer: Linn Records
ProductGroup: Music
Binding: Audio CD

Classical | Indie Music | Stores | Music

General | Classical | Styles | Music
ASIN: B0007UZLW0
Release Date: 2005-02-17

Album Description

John Dowland (?1563-1826)

Lachrimae

Norsk Barokkorkester
Norwegian Baroque Orchestra
Rolf Lislevand, lute, leader
Randi Stene, Mezzo-soprano

Seven Tears figured in seven Passionate Pavans together with six songs of Tears and Weeping

This title is a Stereo Super Audio CD. As a Hybrid disc, it will play back on all CD players. The SACD layer can be accessed by compatible source components.

Recorded at Uranienborgkirke, Oslo 6 - 10 January 2002

But the seven pavans are likewise music of great originality. They are played on this disc on fretless instruments, and not on the more familiar consort of viols. The justification for this need not go further than the preface to Dowland's own publication of the Lachrimae which specifies that the music can be played on `viols or violons', the latter being unspecified fretless instruments of the violin family. In keeping with common practice for larger musical ensembles until the 19th-century, the instrumental forces in this performance are divided into two groups: one of soloists and a second, larger `replenishing' consort. This formula lends itself particularly well to the formulaic pavans each 24 bars long, and each in three 8-bar phrases, with repetitions.

It is not known where the pavans were written, but they may well have their origin during Dowland's residence at the court of Christian IV in Denmark between 1598 - 1606, during which time the composer made some 37 visits northwest, to Christiania (Oslo) and to what is now Norway, making a fitting precedent for the contemporary early music performers on this disc to be exploring this repertory. But Dowland, as his `Lasso vita mia' in its Monteverdian style would suggest, was a total European, with roots not only in Elizabethan London and in Scandinavia, but in the new operatic lyricism of his day emerging from the Italian peninsula, that was to change the course of vocal music to follow. Indeed, at a formative time in hi

Customer Reviews:

IL PENSEROSO.......2005-12-25

This cd/sacd is an agreeably individual production in more ways than one. Two resumes are provided, that of the vocal soloist Randi Stene being of much the usual type, but that of the group's leader and lutenist Rolf Lislevand being here there and everywhere in what it tells us, much as its subject seems to be in real life. At a more serious level, the recital is interesting in letting us hear music of this period performed not by the customary consort of viols but by `period' violins violas and cellos. These are organised into the concertino/ripieno arrangement familiar from the later concerto grosso with a small group of soloists and a larger main section, and I would have been interested to know the historical background for this approach. I would also have been happy to be told more than the liner tells me about the authorship of the poems. One is in Italian, but of the five that are in English all that is said is that one is probably by Dowland. Full texts of these are given, but not sung in full where that would have unbalanced the ratio of vocal to instrumental music (only the first stanza each of the songs on tracks 6 and 12 is sung). The contents of track 15 are also not what we are led to believe - it consists of the first song, as on track 2, sung to an accompaniment of the entire group and not just a lute accompaniment as at its first appearance, followed by a shortened version of the music from track 1. However the most startling disclosure, stated twice, is that the composer's life-span ran from a provisional date of birth in 1563 to a final demise at the age of 263 in 1826, just one year before Beethoven.

I am more enthusiastic than I am knowledgeable about this kind of music, so I am particularly pleased to be offered this new approach - the nearest I own to it is two discs of Gibbons played by viol consorts, and the other Dowland in my collection consists of assorted songs plus a truly wonderful LP of lute solos performed by the truly wonderful Julian Bream that is crying out for reissue on cd or sacd, superb though the recorded quality is on vinyl. It seems to me that `conventional' small groups of string instruments, as here or as in string quartets by Mozart and Beethoven, do not blend as perfectly as viols do. This is my candid if raw experience in general, not something specific to the admirable Norsk Barokkorkester, but I am neither able nor inclined to dispute the authority that Lisveland cites for the use of this instrumentation. He is a fine lutenist too, giving us one solo and accompanying the really admirable Randi Stene in the six songs, in which not only her singing but her English, and possibly even her Italian, are beyond criticism.

There is only some 48 minutes of music here, but I like to think that music lovers taking an interest in such a production are not motivated by cost-per-minute. This is a thoughtful and sensitive arrangement of sad music, both the seven instrumental Lachrimae (tears) that the composer issued as a set and the six songs here interspersed, with the short lute solo placed centrally and slightly less sorrowful in tone. The recording, from 2002, is admirable, and I would surmise that the liner-note, which shows signs of being either a translation or the work of someone whose English is excellent but not perfect, is from the hand of Lisveland himself. I do not see it as the purpose of this notice to `sell' either this music or this disc in particular. If your wish is to become accustomed to the musical idiom there are some excellent recitals (such as that going under the title of `Go From My Window') given by viol groups, where the sound is more obviously euphonious and the tone of the music from Gibbons more upbeat. What I do say is that this recital has been put together with integrity and with consistency, that it seems to me extremely well performed, that it is certainly very well recorded, and that it both evokes and responds to some of our darker moods. When I say that I recommend it, that is what I am recommending.

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