Saturday morning quotes 2.42: Singing Dowland As we prepare for
the release of our CD of music from John Dowland’s last book of
songs, A Pilgrimes Solace, we can’t help but reflect a bit on
how we approach the music and why. The short answer is because
we enjoy performing music that was composed for and intended to
be communicated in an intimate setting. The longer answer:
Because we have done our interpretive homework. Since there are
no audio recordings of music from 400 years ago, we have to rely
on the surviving clues and use our intelligence and musical
sensitivity to zero in on an approach that balances the
aesthetic of the music with an effective communication that
makes sense to modern listeners. Any other approach is either
insensitive to the style or else treats the music as an archaic
curiosity presented, viewed and heard as a quaint museum
display. We submit that the paradigm of generic ‘classical’
singing, an approach that treats pre-Baroque domestic music as a
simpler subset of art-song, is miss