John Dowland (1563-1626) 

Say, Love

No. 7 from The Third and Last Book of Songs or Aires (1603)

 

John Dowland was an English, possibly Irish-born composer, singer, and lutenist. He is best known today for his song "Flow, my tears". Very little is known of Dowland's early life, but it is generally thought he was born in London or possibly Dublin. It is known that he went to Paris in 1580 where he was in service to the ambassador to the French court. He became a Roman Catholic at this time, which he claimed led to him not being offered a post at Elizabeth I's Protestant court. He worked instead for many years at the court of Christian IV of Denmark. He returned to England in 1606 and in 1612 secured a post as one of James I of England's lutenists. He died in London. Most of Dowland's music is for his own instrument, the lute. They include several books of solo lute works, lute songs (for one voice and lute), part-songs with lute accompaniment, and several pieces for viol consort with lute. His best known work is the lute song "Flow My Tears". He later wrote what is probably his best known instrumental work, Lachrimae or Seaven Teares Figured in Seaven Passionate Pavans, a set of seven for five viols and lute, each based on "Flow My Tears." It became one of the best known pieces of consort music in his own time. His pavane, "Lachrymae antiquae" was also one of the big hits of the seventeenth century. Dowland's music often displays the melancholia that was so fashionable in music at that time. He wrote a consort piece with the punning title Semper Dowland, semper dolens (always Dowland, always doleful), which may be said to sum up much of his work. Dowland's song, Come Heavy Sleepe, the Image of True Death, was the inspiration for Benjamin Britten's Nocturnal after John Dowland  for guitar, written in 1964 for the guitarist Julian Bream. This work consists of eight variations, all based on musical themes drawn from the song or its lute accompaniment, finally resolving into a guitar setting of the song itself. Dowland's lute music is a recurring theme in Philip K. Dick's science fiction.