Let's hope Bobby McFerrin never has a chance to hop into a time machine and zip back 400 years to cheer up John Dowland.
``Don't worry, be happy'' is the last thing we'd want Dowland to hear. If he'd followed that advice, the world would have been deprived of some exquisitely sorrowful music.
However sad Dowland's most famous music may be, it's moving rather than depressing. And Dowland certainly didn't limit himself to pieces in a dolorous mood. But melancholy was the mode in Elizabethan England, and Dowland was the most stylish composer of his time.
Dowland followed a dual career as a composer and lutenist. A lutenist is a player of the lute, a resonant pear-shaped instrument having several pairs of gut strings; it's played like a guitar. The lute was to English music around the year 1600 what the guitar is to popular music today. And in Dowland's time, there was hardly any difference between popular and classical instrumental music.
The young Dowland converted to Catholicism during a visit to Paris in 1580. He later claimed that this was the politically incorrect move that excluded him from employment at the Protestant court of Elizabeth I. (Remember that Elizabeth's father, Henry VIII, resented incursions on his earthly authority from the Vatican and broke with the Catholic Church, establishing the Church ofEngland.)
Dowland played before Elizabeth in 1592, but he was not favored with a royal appointment during Elizabeth's reign. Well, that's not quite true; he did secure a royal appointment, but it was as court lutenist to King Christian IV of Denmark.
Dowland remained bitter about being snubbed by the English court, even though the Danes paid him much more than the English would have. But the real reason Dowland was passed over for the post of lutenist when it opened in 1594 had nothing to do with religion. The court was simply cutting its budget, and the position Dowland wanted went unfilled for five years.
He finally obtained an appointment at the English court in 1612, but this didn't seem to improve his outlook - not, at least, to judge from his music. To be fair, most of Dowland's compositions predate his new job, which kept him busy as a lute player.
Dowland's works are often introspective, melancholy, and discordant by the standards of the time. He was apparently a sour character subject to lapses of common sense. He lost one job because he'd run up too many debts, and he hardly ingratiated himself with English officialdom when he wrote a couple of pieces in honor of the pirate Digorie Piper.
Nevertheless, his fame as a composer quickly spread across Europe, and his name and at least a few of his works have remained well-known for nearly four centuries.
Dowland, as Bach and Brahms would later, developed a unique compositional voice without being in any way a trailblazer. He did arrange pieces for unusual combinations of instruments, but the pieces themselves did not shape Elizabethan culture. Rather, they reflected the tastes of the time, which ran to elegant melancholy. Dominating Dowland's output is a form called the lute song, also known more generally as the ayre, because any instrument that can play chords - not just the lute - could accompany the singer.
The ayre is peculiar to English music, and was systematized somewhat by the 1597 publication of Dowland's ``First Booke of Songes or Ayres.'' Three more Dowland collections would follow, as would several by other composers, adding up to about 600 ayres that have survived to this day.
Lute songs were usually settings of outstanding poetic texts. Composers picked up any old drivel for their multi-voice madrigals, but they preferred quality material for their solo-voice ayres. The moods and form of the music closely followed those of the poetry.
The pieces were generally short, and assigned the greatest importance to the vocal part. The lute usually had to make do with a fairly simple accompaniment of chords, although Dowland's music for both voice and accompanist is more elaborate than that of his contemporaries.
Dowland also wrote a significant amount of instrumental music, some of it for solo lute and some for consort.
``Consort'' is the term used for an ensemble of voices or instruments (or both) between about 1570 and 1720. After Dowland's time, there came to be a distinction between ``whole'' consorts and ``broken'' consorts. A whole consort consisted of instruments of a single type - either all strings or all winds. A broken consort mixed instruments.
A typical broken consort in Dowland's time - but remember it wasn't yet called ``broken'' - revolved around the viol (rhymes with ``dial'') family. These were bowed instruments similar to violins, violas and cellos, but they were held between the knees or upright on the player's leg.
The most common broken consort consisted of a treble viol and a bass viol, the highest and lowest members of the family; a recorder, a flutelike instrument held vertically like an oboe; a lute; a cittern, sort of a Renaissance banjo with metal strings; and a bandora, an overgrown cittern, about the size of the modern guitar.
Long, complex symphonies and string quartets were things of the future. Consorts played shorter pieces, often inspired by dancing even if nobody could dance to the finished product. Their brevity did not make them simple; the melodies were often quite elaborate.
Most of Dowland's instrumental pieces are pavans, galliards and almans. The pavan is now most often seen in its French spelling, pavane, which is accented on the second syllable. It's a slow processional dance in duple time, and probably originated in Italy.
A pavan was frequently found in the company of a quicker dance, usually the galliard. This, Dowland's favorite (despite its happy character), also originated in Italy. It evolved into a grave and sober sort of piece by the end of the 17th century, but originally the galliard was a lively five-step dance in a rhythm based on either a count of three, or multiples of two. When paired, pavans and galliards often shared melodies with each other, like lovers sharing germs.
The alman, now usually given a French spelling, allemande, supposedly originated in Germany. Its tempo was moderate, between that of the mournful pavan and the sprightly galliard. Like the pavan, the alman was in duple time. Composers other than Dowland (notably Bach) often coupled it with a faster triple-time dance called a courante. So again, we have a slow-fast pairing, the pieces frequently sharing themes.
Dowland's most famous instrumental collection is (in modernized spelling) ``Lachrimae, or Seven Tears.'' It begins with a series of seven ``passionate pavans'' based on a four-note theme, and each pavan is an apt illustration of the word ``lachrymose.'' They are arranged for five viols and lute, quite a solemn sonority.
Then come 14 more pieces, most of them lively galliards that Dowland had already published as songs or lute solos. Among them is the galliard for the notorious pirate captain Piper.
Dowland listening suggestions
There's a fine recording of ``Lachrimae'' by lutenist Jakob Lindberg and the Dowland Consort on a BIS CD. Lindberg's friend and sometime collaborator Paul O'Dette has recorded several of Dowland's solo lute pieces on the Astrée label.
For the songs, choices abound. Anthony Rooley and the Consort of Musicke have done all of the ``First Booke'' on a L'Oiseau-Lyre disc. Wider-ranging single-disc collections are offered by Emma Kirkby and Rooley on Virgin, Nigel Rogers and O'Dette on the same label, and Alfred Deller and Robert Spencer on Harmonia Mundi France.