Dear All,
Earlier today I was accompanying Dowland's "Say love, if ever thou didst find". I remarked to the singer and gamba player, that people today often assume the song refers to Queen Elizabeth. Though not named, she is likely to be the song's "she". A similar use of the word "she" occurs in "Now, oh now I needs must part" and "Can she excuse". The titles of their instrumental settings, "The Frog Galliard" (Frog = Duc d'Alenc,on) and "The Earl of Essex Galliard", point us to the names of the characters referred to in "Now, oh now" and "Can she", which in turn suggest that the Queen must be the unnamed "she". The first few notes of "Now, oh now" match the first few notes of the well-known "Aria del Gran Duca", a piece first performed in 1589 in Florence for a Medici wedding. The Duc d'Alenc,on was the son of Marie de Medici, Queen of France, so Dowland appears to be using music for a grand duke at a successful Medici wedding in his song about a failed courtship by a different Medici grand duke. In the second part of "Now, oh now", there is a modulation to the supertonic; there is a similar modulation in the second part of "Monsieur's Almain". "Monsieur" was the name commonly used for the Duc d'Alenc,on; "Frog" was Queen Elizabeth's nickname for him. Many years ago I wrote on this list about "Now, oh now" and its associations, and there were some who were not convinced. They argued that such things were mere coincidences, yet musical references abound in music from this period. Another example is a quotation from "The Sacred End Pavan" in "Henry Unton's Funeral", showing that Henry has come to his own sacred end. Dowland's "Farewell" has links with a madrigal by Weelkes, and references to Dowland's Lachrimae for weeping (e.g. John Bennet's "Weep oh mine eyes") are ubiquitous. If the first few notes of "Now, oh now" point to the Duc d'Alenc,on, what about the first few notes of "Say love"? This afternoon I noticed that they are exactly the same as the first few notes of Dowland's "Queen Elizabeth's Galliard". Was Dowland using his own galliard to show that the song really is about the Queen? Best wishes, Stewart McCoy. -- To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
