John Dowland and English lute music

Abstract

About 50 sources of English lute music survive from the period 1550-1630, almost all in manuscript, containing nearly 3,000 pieces for lute solo. The quality is uneven, ranging from near-mindless jottings of a doodling beginner (though it is good that they survive to afford important insights that would otherwise be unknown) to Dowland's 'Farewell Fancy'. This rich repertoire, known as the 'Golden Age of English Lute Music' in the 1950s when samplings were first presented, is not only the golden age but the only age of English lute music, tor nothing survives before 1550 and only isolated scraps after 1630---with all due respect to Thomas Mace! At the moment it is an unanswered enigma that so little of this excellent repertoire was published in its own time-indeed there is only one work which presents the cream of solo lute music, Robert Dowland's Varietie of Lute Lessons, 1610, containing a selection of some of the best English and continental composers. The equally rich virginal school, however, faired worse by having even less in print, in marked contrast with a near-glut of publications of lute songs and madrigals, including several which cannot have had high sales. The manuscript sources fall generally into three categories: lute books compiled by professional scribes for wealthy amateur players, usually containing a selection from the stock repertoire; lute books compiled by amateurs themselves (sometimes only semi-literate when notating music) whose repertoire includes items from stock as well as little exercises, half-remembered pieces, folk tunes, mask tunes, etc.; lute books compiled by professional lutenists or very adept amateurs which usually contain music of a high standard, both from stock and from less usual sources. The majority of the lute books belong closest to the last category. The 'stock repertoire' needs defining. A corpus of lute music existed which was so popular that whenever a scribe (whoever he was) sat down to compile a lute book, certain evergreens were almost bound to be included. These pieces sometimes appear in variant forms--often mistakes and all are copied from a previous source. Between 100-130 pieces circulated in this way and, as one would expect from their contemporary popularity, they are usually very good. Just as there is hardly a lute book which does not contain something of the stock repertoire, so there is hardly a collection which does not include something by John Dowland. The source list in the Collected Lute Music shows about three-quarters of all that survive. Dowland undoubtedly dominated, both in a popular and a real artistic sense. Inevitably, many tavourites appear in several variant versions-no one piece necessarily having supremacy over others, for it is usually quite impossible to decide on the pristine Dowland version. He may indeed not have had one for he was closer to a living, improvising tradition than we are and despite his well-known complaint 115