Thomas Brewer my Musical Servant, through his Proneness to Good-Fellowshippe, having attained to a very Rich and Rubicund Nose, being reproved by a Friend for his too frequent use of strong Drinks and Sacke; as very Pernicious to that Distemper and Inflammation on his Nose – “Nay, faith,” says he, “if it will not endure Sacke, it’s no Nose for me.
--Sir Nicholas L’Estrange, Merry Passages and Jests
Thomas Brewer was an accomplished violist, but little else is known about his professional life. There are, however, many rounds and catches, attributed to him in John Hilton’s collection Catch that catch can (c. 1650) and several a capella part-songs, known as glees, a form he said to have introduced, in Dialogues, Glees, Ayres, and Ballads, for Two, Three, and Four Voyces, (1667) published by John Playford. Three instrumental works are preserved in manuscript in the collection of the
The English lute song, inspired by a unique understanding of the dramatic relationship between poetry and music, is a treasure in the history of song. The difference between English lute songs and other songs written during the late-sixteenth and early-seventeenth centuries, is that lute songs were written specifically for the voice and lute and not simply [songs written as] adaptations of madrigals and other polyphonic music. Lute songs were written by musically educated professional composers, who traveled throughout Europe, studying and listening to different styles of music, which they integrated into musical settings for lyric poetry. During the late-sixteenth century the innovations of Italian music and poetry greatly influenced European conventions. Yet, while the composers of the English lute song acknowledged and borrowed from this strong current of influence, they never compromised their own musical sense of how the English lute song should sound.
Let every singer conform his voice to the words.
--John Dowland
The vocal melodies composed by Robert Jones make it easy for a singer to follow Dowland’s very good advice. Jones had a talent for composing melodies remarkably close to a poem’s natural cadences as if the song were to be spoken rather than sung. In fact, Jones claimed in his First Booke of Songes and Ayres (1600) that ‘ever since I have practiced speaking I have practiced singing’. Robert Jones’s frequent use of full chords punctuated with ornaments or figures also helps to illuminate the sometimes intricate twists and turns of the poem. In “And is it night?” the lute fills between full chords show how effective this technique can be by imitating the sound of the lover stealing towards her beloved. Jones displays a fine talent for playfulness and irreverence in “My complaining.” It is parody of a courtly love song that merrily mocks the sometimes banal poetic pretensions of the lover’s complaint. In “As I lay lately in a dream,” Jones again uses familiar poetic conventions--the poet’s dream as setting and word play--to recount a tale of a metamorphosis (perhaps a reference to the story of Pan and Syrinx in Ovid Metamorphoses, available and popular at the time in Arthur Goldman’s translation) that wittily overturns the very conventions the song imitates. Jones published five books of lute songs, a book of madrigals, and he contributed to Thomas Morley’s The Triumph of Oriana (1601-03), a collection of songs dedicated to Elizabeth I. In 1609-10, he joined lutenist Philip Rosseter to manage the Children of the Revels of the Queen, a repertory company of boy actors, who performed at Whitefriars Playhouse.
Philip Rosseter (1568-1623)
Philip Rosseter, composer, musician, and theatrical manager, was appointed lutenist in the court of James I from 1604 to
Short ayres, if they be skillfully framed and naturally expressed, are like quick and good epigrams in posey, many of them showing as much artifice, and breeding as great difficulty, as a larger poem. . . . What epigrams are in poetry, the same are ayres in music, then in their chief perfection when they are short and well seasoned. But to clog a light song with a long preludium is to corrupt the nature of it. A naked ayre, without guile or prop or colour but his own, is easily censured of every ear and requires so much the invention to make it please.
Robert Johnson (c. 1582-1633)
Robert Johnson, lutenist and composer, was to the manner born, so to speak. His father John was lutenist in the court of Elizabeth I. After the death of his father (1594), Johnson as apprentice joined the household of George Carey, 2nd Baron of Hunsdon, whose patronage included John Dowland and the Lord Chamberlain’s Men, a theatrical association that included Shakespeare and his players, which later became the King’s Men. After the accession of James I, it was apparent that a new era of cultural life was to begin. Musical and theatrical entertainments, especially masques, were generously subsidized by the court, providing Robert Johnson and many other musicians with steady commissions. He was appointed lutenist in James I’s “Private Musick” (1604), lutenist to Prince Henry (1611-12), and composer for “lute and songs” in the court of Charles I. In association with the King’s Men, he composed music for the dramas of Johnson, Shakespeare, and Beaumont and Fletcher, among others. Today Robert Johnson is best known for his musical settings of “Full fathom five” and “Where the Bee sucks,” songs performed in Shakespeare’s The Tempest, that display his mastery of theater music and fulfill his stated intention “to marry the Words and Notes wel together.”
John Wilson (1595?-1674)
For this I know, and must say’t to thy praise,
That thou hast gone in musick, unknown wayes,
Hast cut a path where there was none before,
Like Magellan traced an unknown shore.
Thou taught’st our Language, first, to speak in Tune,
Gav’st the right accents and proportion.
----from a dedication to John Wilson by Henry Lawes
John Wilson was a composer, lutenist, and popular chamber singer. Although to one contemporary,
John Dowland (1563-1626)
John Dowland served Elizabeth I’s ambassador to the French court and earned a degree in music at
Anthony Holborne (c. 1545-1602)
Anthony Holborne, Gentleman Usher to Elizabeth I, who enjoyed the patronage of Mary Sidney, Countess of Pembroke, was an accomplished composer of dances and music for the lute, cittern, and bandora. John Dowland dedicated “I saw my Lady weepe,” the first song in his Second Book of Songs (1600) ‘to the most famous, Anthony Holborn’. Holburne published his compositions for the cittern (a metal-strung, pear-shaped instrument) The Cittharn Schoole (1597), and Pavans, Galliards, Almains, and other short Aeirs both grave, and light, for five parts for Viol, Violins, or other Musical Winde Instruments (1599), a collection of consort music that has proven both seminal and enduring. Holborne’s compositions are included in John Dowland’s Variete of Lute Lessons (1610), Robert Morley’s, A plaine and easie introduction to practicall musicke (1597), and William Barley’s A new booke of tabliture (1596). Anthony Holborne’s “Heigh ho holiday” is a bright lute piece with a memorable tune and fine rhythmic articulation .
“Sweet nightingale” is an old Cornish folk song. The translation from the Cornish language probably dates from the 17th century.
“The dark is my delight” lyrics written by John Marston (c1575-1634), is taken from his popular play, The Dutch Courtesan, first performed by the Queen’s Player’s at Blackfriars in London (1605). The play, a staple of the so-called “city” comedies, bawdy plays that satirized social, political, and sexual mores of Londoners, was revived in 1613, and later adapted and performed after the Restoration in the 1660s.
“The dark is my delight” was published with musical score in Giles Earle's Songbook (c. 1615-1626). Although the composer is anonymous, evidence exists to attribute the musical setting to Robert Jones (1583-1633), a prolific composer of lute songs and an active participant in theater productions. Giles Earle was a copyist for Jones, and “My mistress sings no other song” from Robert Jones’s own First Booke of Songes and Ayres (1600) also appears in The Dutch Courtesan. “The dark is my delight,” a sophisticated song that cleverly plays on words, is perfectly complemented by the musical playfulness and irreverence that characterize Robert Jones’s song settings.
“Lord Willoughby’s welcome home,” is an anonymous Elizabethan ballad. The musical setting is an adaptation for lute by John Dowland (1563-1626) of a popular tune with continental and British sources. Dowland’s setting transforms a jig about a comic character, Rowland, into a spirited celebration of the bravery in battle and victorious return home of Peregrine Bertie, 13th Baron Willoughby de Eresby in 1589, after a successful military campaign in the
“The cuckoo,” originally a sad Somerset folk song, “Who’s going to shoe your pretty little foot,” and “The tailor and the mouse,” a song for children that dates from the 16th century, are all traditional English folk songs.
by Amy Elizabeth Wheeler
& Jaroslaw Lipski.