John Dowland
John Dowland's lute songs and ayres carry a rare, deliberate melancholy: tears that fall in measured pavans, love that stings in galliards, darkness that still sings. His music remains the living heart of the English Renaissance songbook.
Flow my tears and the Lachrimae pavans built on its falling phrase became the signature of an age that found beauty in exile and night. He wrote for his own instrument, the lute: solo works, songs for one voice and lute, part-songs, and consort pieces with viols. Can she excuse my wrongs, In darkness let me dwell, Sorrow stay, Time stands still: the titles alone map a private weather of longing and complaint. Yet the craft is never heavy. The lines move with courtly grace, the dances sparkle, and the bitterness sits inside music made to ravish the ear. Semper Dowland, semper dolens was his own wry motto, and four centuries on singers and lutenists still reach for him when they need truth without noise.
Compositions by John Dowland appear on
The Emerald Leopard
Josie and the Emeralds pair acclaimed early-music soprano Josie Ryan with some of Australia’s finest viol players, the Emerald City Viols. Founded in 2011, the group is known for sophisticated performances and inventive programmes of Renaissance and contemporary works, including compositions and arrangements by director Brooke Green.