The Songs of Dowland

Extract

My purpose this afternoon is not to attempt to say much that is new or original about this great English composer, but rather to introduce him to you as a song-writer and to let you hear some of his songs. For, strange as it may seem, Dowland is still in the position of requiring an introduction even to English musicians. His name is certainly rather more widely known than it was ten or twenty years ago, yet his songs are far too rarely to be found in concert programmes, and few singers seem to know more than about half a dozen of them. And apart from singers, a large section of the English musical world still remains in complete ignorance as to the value of his work. If anyone should dispute this statement let him turn to a certain important work of reference recently published where he will find Dowland briefly described as “an old English composer of considerable note in his time.” And it was my own experience only last month to be told by one of our leading English musicians that he “had a grudge against Dowland” for the reason that he started the fashion of writing part-songs for four voices and thus lowered the taste of singers and composers, alienating them from the cult of the madrigal. I granted at once that if Dowland had contributed nothing to music besides part-songs for four voices, beautiful though some of these are (and he probably was acquainted with nothing beyond “Now, O now” and “Awake, sweet love”), that contribution would not perhaps have immortalized his name; but I then elicited that my friend was absolutely and entirely ignorant of the bare fact that Dowland was a composer of solo songs!