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The Part-Songs of the English Lutenists
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 January 1967
Extract
It is well-known that many of the airs of Dowland and his contemporaries were printed so that they could be performed either as solo songs or as part-songs. Every music student reads about the unusual way in which the extra vocal parts were disposed on the page, and simple airs like Ford's ‘There is a lady sweet and kind’ and Campion's ‘Never weather-beaten sail’ are probably best known to most of us in their part-song form. But on the whole modern scholarship has concentrated on the solo versions rather than the part-songs. E. H. Fellowes's English School of Lutenist Song Writers prints only the versions for voice and lute, and so do the smaller collections of Peter Warlock and Noah Greenberg. Of the part-songs, only those of Pilkington and Dowland have been reprinted in entirety, Pilkington's in the Old English Edition edited some seventy years ago by G. E. P. Arkwright and Dowland's in Musica Britannica. For the rest, only a selection is available in not always reliable sheet-music copies. This bias is reflected in most comment on the air: Fellowes and Warlock make only passing reference to the part-songs, and the same is mainly true of more recent work. Now I do not wish to suggest that, in the last analysis, this emphasis is mistaken. But I do think that the part-songs deserve closer examination, not only because of their own worth but for the deeper insight which this exercise offers into the nature of the air.
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- Research Article
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- Copyright © 1968 The Royal Musical Association and the Authors
References
1 32 vols., London, 1920–32 (currently being revised and enlarged by Thurston Dart and others under the new title The English Lute-Songs).Google Scholar
2 (With Philip Wilson) English Ayres, Elizabethan and Jacobean, 6 vols., London, 1927–31.Google Scholar
3 (With W. H. Auden and Chester Kallman) An Elizabethan Song Book, London, 1957.Google Scholar
4 Vols. xviii-xx, London and Oxford, 1897–8.Google Scholar
5 Vol. vi, transcribed by E. H. Fellowes, edited by Thurston Dart and Nigel Fortune, London, 1953 (revised edn. 1963);Google Scholar
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8 London, 1968, p. 125.Google Scholar
9 The Elizabethan Madrigal, New York, 1962, pp. 122–7.Google Scholar
10 Address ‘To the Reader’, Two Books of Airs (c.1613), sig. A2v. See p. 109, footnote 20.Google Scholar
11 The Musical Times, cv (1964), 26. The two songs are ‘His golden locks’ and ‘My heart and tongue were twins’.Google Scholar
12 See Dart and Fortune in Musica Britannica, VI. xiii: Foulton. loc. cit.Google Scholar
13 See p. 98, footnote 11.Google Scholar
14 Note on the music examples: clefs, key-signatures and barring have been modernised and (except in Ex. 6) note-values halved. Spelling, punctuation and capitalization have also been modernised.Google Scholar
15 This air occurs twice in Cavendish's songbook: as No. 11 it is printed for one voice with lute and bass viol (with words underlaid); as No. 17 it is for four voices with lute. There are some differences between the treble and tablature of the two versions, but these do not affect the point at issue.Google Scholar
16 The same words received the attention of two other madrigalists, East (Madrigals, 1604, Nos. 21–22) and—somewhat varied—Vautor (First Set, 1619, No. 11).Google Scholar
17 Consort songs were usually composed for voice and four viols, but ones for voice and three viols are also to be found. In addition to some by Byrd there are the following examples: Pilkington, ‘Down a down’ (First Book of Songs, 1605); Bateson, ‘If floods of tears’ (Second Set of Madrigals, 1618); Mundy, ‘The Shepherd Strephon’ (Songs and Psalms, 1594); Patrick Mando, ‘Like as the day’, printed in Consort Songs, ed. P. Brett (Musica Britannica, xxii), London, 1967, p. 24. See also the collections of Thomas Ravenscroft.Google Scholar
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19 The Conway MS. See The Shakespeare Society's Papers, ii (London, 1845), 65–75.Google Scholar
20 ‘These airs were for the most part framed at first for one voice with the lute or viol, but upon occasion they have since been filled with more parts, which whoso please may use, who like not may leave. Yet do we daily observe that when any shall sing a treble to an instrument the standers-by will be offering at an inward part out of their own nature, and true or false, out it must, though to the perverting of the whole harmony.’Google Scholar
21 ‘Also, if we consider well, the treble tunes which are with us commonly called “airs” are but tenors mounted eight notes higher, and therefore an inward part must needs become them, such as may take up the whole distance of the diapason, and fill up the gaping between the two extreme parts; whereby, though they are not three parts in perfection, yet they yield a sweetness and content both to the ear and mind, which is the aim and perfection of music.’Google Scholar
22 E.g. Jones, Second Book, Cavendish, Nos. 1–14, Bartlet, Nos. 19–21, and Nos. 1–8 in Dowland's Second Book.Google Scholar
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a Part of Dowland's ‘If that a sinner's sighs’, sung by four voices.
- b
b Part of Dowland's ‘Burst forth, my tears’, sung by four voices.
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c Part of Cavendish's ‘Fair are those eyes’, sung first as a solo with lute accompaniment, then by four voices.
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d Cavendish's 'Sly thief’, sung by four voices.
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e The opening of Jones's ‘Cease, troubled thoughts’, sung first as a solo with lute accompaniment, then by four voices.
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f The same, sung by one voice accompanied by three strings,
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g Jones's ‘Cynthia, queen of seas and lands’, sung first as a solo with lute accompaniment, then by four voices.
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h Bartlet's ‘A pretty duck’, sung first as a solo with lute accompaniment, then by four voices.
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i One of Campion's psalm paraphrases, ‘Out of my soul's depth’, sungfirst as a solo with lute accompaniment, then by four voices with lute,
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j Dowland's ‘Come again, sweet love doth now invite’, sung as a treble and alto duet with lute accompaniment.
I should like to thank those who recorded the illustrations: Ian Harwood played the lute; the singers, music students at Birmingham University, were Mary Hamlin, Rosemary Thorndycraft, Andrew Giles, Adrian Carpenter (who directed), Nicholas Lacey and Graham Cummings.Google Scholar