John Dowland

The Melancholiac's Melancholiac (The Bus 5.48)

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ARCHIVE EDITION - FIRST PUBLISHED (1.30) 18 JULY 22

The Stop

John Dowland (1562 or 1563 – 1626) was an English composer, virtuoso lutenist and one of the most famous musicians of the Renaissance period. Famous for his instrumental music and melancholic songs, few historical records means very little is known about Dowland’s early life. While there are roughly equivalent claims locating his birthplace in either Westminster or Dublin,¹ most accounts of his life begin in 1580 when he moved to Paris to serve Sir Henry Cobham, Elizabeth I’s ambassador to the French court.²

John Dowland

Dowland’s principle instrument was the lute,³ and after four years honing his expertise in France, he returned to England to ‘pursue his love interest’ and in 1588 received a Bachelors in Music from Christ Church, Oxford. His dream was to be a lutenist in the English court, and in 1594 he made an unsuccessful application for this position.⁴ However, he was successful at the Danish court of King Christian IV who was ‘so fond of music that his musicians were often the highest paid servants of the court.’

‘The Lute Player’/Caravaggio

Despite his success in Denmark, Dowland continued to publish his music in London to the extent he was eventually dismissed from the Danish court in 1606 for his overlong stays in England (though it is also possible the court could no longer afford his salary). Though he was one of the most famous composers in Europe, it wasn’t until 1612 that he secured a position at the court of England’s King James I, where he remained until his death in 1626. Though the exact date of his death is unknown, records show he received a final salary on 20 January 1626, and that he was buried at St Ann’s, Blackfriars, on 20 February 1626.

Dowland worked during a time of musical transition and absorbed many of the new ideas he encountered on the Continent, composing music ‘unequalled by any other writer for the Renaissance lute.’ Most of his nearly 90 published works are traditional lute songs renowned for their melancholia – highly fashionable in the music of the time. Married with children,⁵ but largely separated from his family due to his court commitments, by all accounts his melancholia was real.⁶ This perhaps explains his decision to title one composition ‘Semper Dowland, semper dolens’ (‘always Dowland, always doleful’) – and provides context to the first verse of one of his best known works, ‘Flow my tears’:

Flow my tears, fall from your springs,
Exil'd for ever let me mourn;
Where night's black bird her sad infamy sings,
There let me live forlorn.

Throughout his lifetime, Dowland had many contemporary admirers – not least of which was the poet Richard Barnfield.⁷ In Poem VIII of The Passionate Pilgrim (1598), Barfield refers to Dowland by name - and gives the highest praise to his lute-playing:

If music and sweet poetry agree,
As they must needs, the sister and the brother,
Then must the love be great 'twixt thee and me,
Because thou lovest the one, and I the other.

Dowland to thee is dear, whose heavenly touch
Upon the lute doth ravish human sense;
Spenser to me, whose deep conceit is such
As, passing all conceit, needs no defence.

Thou lovest to hear the sweet melodious sound
That Phoebus' lute, the queen of music, makes;
And I in deep delight am chiefly drown'd
When as himself to singing he betakes.

One god is god of both, as poets feign;
One knight loves both, and both in thee remain.

The Detour

Today’s Detour is to an article from the MIT Press Reader by Jean-Claude Ellena. The ‘nose’ of the luxury brand Hermès for fourteen years, Ellena is a master perfumer who has been the Creative Director of Fragrance at Le Couvent since 2019. This article in which he explains the role of patchouli as the scent of the 1960s and the erotic appear of vetiver is an excerpt from his Atlas of Perfumed Beauty. I can’t stand the smell of patchouli, but this article made me want to search out both of these scents.

A Master Perfumer's Reflections on Patchouli and Vetiver

The Recommendation

Today’s Recommendation is Philip K. Dick’s Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said (1974). The title is a direct reference to Dowland’s famous song and quotations from the work begin each major section of the novel. Set in a futuristic (1988!) dystopia in which the USA has become a police state following the Second American Civil War, the novel was nominated for a Nebula Award (1974) and Hugo Award (1975), winning the John W Campbell Memorial Award for Best Science Fiction Novel (1975).

From the back: Jason Taverner is a Six, the result of top secret government experiments forty years before which produced a handful of unnaturally bright and beautiful people – and he’s the prime-time-TV idol of millions until, inexplicably all record of him is wiped from the data banks of Earth. Suddenly he’s a nobody … in a police state where nobody is allowed to be a nobody. Will he ever be rich and famous again? Has he ever, in fact, been rich and famous?

I’ve read several of PKD’s novels and while this isn’t my favourite, it’s certainly a good introduction to the author’s themes, preoccupations and interests⁸ that run throughout his work. It’s also a solid science fiction novel that - like all good sci-fi - is less about the ‘future’ than a commentary on the time in which it was written. Give it a go!

The Sounds

To accompany the Stop, today’s playlist is a collection of five compositions by John Dowland. It’s 18 minutes of Elizabethan music impeccably played, including the very melancholy Flow My Tears.

The Thought

Today’s Thought is a quote from Cicero:⁹

“Any man can make mistakes, but only an idiot persists in his error.”

If you have a thought on this Thought - or any part of today’s issue - please leave a comment below:

And that’s the end of this stop - I hope you enjoyed a brief diversion from your regular journey!

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Until the next stop …

1. Though it is generally accepted Dowland was born in London, the claim for his Irish origins receives some credence from his dedication in his song ‘From Silent Night’ to ‘my loving countryman Mr John Foster the younger, merchant of Dublin in Ireland.’

2. The first time I heard Dowland’s music was while returning home from Atlanta on New Year’s Day, 1995. In that part of the world (Hwy 11, South Carolina) there are few decent radio stations, but a scan stopped for a while on a local classical station which was playing some of his work. They’ve stayed with me ever since. Sources for this Stop include: John Dowland (Famous Composers) and John Dowland (Britannica).

3. The lute is a roughly pear-shaped string instrument which was a forerunner of the modern guitar. Held like a guitar, the lute was strummed and played as either a solo instrument or to accompany a vocalist. The Caravaggio painting provides a good picture of how it was played.

4. A converted Catholic, Dowland blamed his religion for his failure to succeed in the Protestant court. This is doubtful, however, as there were Catholic musicians employed by the court at the time.

5. One son – Robert – took his father’s place as court lutenist after Dowland’s death.

6. Both his lyrics and personal letters reveal him as ‘rather gloomy and depressed.’

7. For a biography of this rival to Shakespeare, see: Barnfield (Poemhunter)

8. Including, but not limited to: dystopia, paranoia, mind-bending experimental drugs, alternate realities and histories, police states, personal identity and social conflict.

9. Cicero (106-43 BCE) was a Roman statesman, philosopher and writer who futilely tried to ‘uphold republican principles in the final civil wars that destroyed the Roman Republic.’ For a good biography, see: Cicero (Britannica).