The Medici link between Alencon and Ferdinando is somewhat tenuous.
Catherine was descended from Cosimo Medici whilst Ferdinando and Marie were
descended from Lorenzo so they were cousins about 10 times removed. Would
anyone really have thought of Alencon as being a Medici. Incidentally the
younger brother of the reigning French king was always known as Monsieur.
For all we know Dowland may have heard Foscarini playing the Aria del Gran
Duca. He had links with the Guise family.. And yes I am familiar with
it..What baroque guitarist is not? It is in fact in common time whereas Now
Oh Now is in triple time if I recall rightly. Another link which seems
somewhat tenuous.The descending line at the beginning is surely very common?
I always send my messages both to the list and to the person whose message I
am replying to. When we discussed protocol on this list no-one would agree
on anything so I have my own protocol and treat everybody in the way I would
like to be treated myself.
As ever
Monica
----- Original Message -----
From: "Stewart McCoy" <[email protected]>
To: "Lute Net" <[email protected]>
Sent: Thursday, January 23, 2014 9:30 PM
Subject: [LUTE] Say love and Queen Elizabeth
Dear Monica,
Thank you for your two messages, and for correcting my mix-up of French
queens. Yes, it was Catherine, not Marie, who was mother of Queen
Elizabeth's "Frog".
The Aria del Gran Duca was first performed at the Florentine Intermedii
in 1589, and eventually became one of those tunes which everyone knew,
and it turned up in many different guises. I am sure you are familiar
with it yourself. Dowland visited Florence in 1595, and played the lute
to Ferdinando I. He would no doubt have heard about Ferdinando's
sumptuous wedding which had taken place six years earlier. He would
have met Italian composers there, and it seems unlikely that the famous
Aria would have passed him by. "Now, oh now" was published two years
later in 1597.
Catherine de' Medici was a Medici, so her son, the Duc d'Alencon, was
the son of a Medici. Ferdinando I, at whose marriage the Aria was first
performed, was also a Medici. There is a Medici link between Fernando
and Alencon.
Ferdinando was a great duke, the Gran Duca of the "Aria del Gran Duca".
Alencon was also a duke, le Duc d'Alencon. Ferdinando and Alencon were
both dukes.
Much of what I wrote was already in the public domain, and the link
between Alencon and "Now, oh now" has been accepted by most people now.
What I think is a new discovery, is spotting the link between "Queen
Elizabeth's Galliard" and "Say love". As with "Now, oh now", it's not
just the melody notes which are the same; it's the bass and harmony
which are the same too.
Best wishes,
Stewart.
-----Original Message-----
From: Monica Hall [mailto:[email protected]]
Sent: 23 January 2014 19:46
To: Stewart McCoy
Cc: Lutelist
Subject: Re: [LUTE] Say love and Queen Elizabeth
Well - I don't know about the rest of it - but the Duc d'Alencon was
the
youngest son of Catherine de Medici, the wife of Henri II of France.
Marie
de Medici was the second wife of Henri IV and the mother of Louis XIII.
The Duc d'Alencon died in 1584 and he wasn't a Medici grand duke - he
was a
prince of the house of Valois. The Medici wedding was between
Ferdinando
de Medici who was only very distantly related to Catherine and the
French princess Christine of Lorraine of the Guise family. The link
with Dowland
seems rather tenuous. Would he even have known about the Medici
wedding?.
Monica
----- Original Message -----
From: "Stewart McCoy" <[1][email protected]>
To: "Lute Net" <[2][email protected]>
Sent: Thursday, January 23, 2014 7:11 PM
Subject: [LUTE] Say love and Queen Elizabeth
> 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'Alen,con) 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
> [3]http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
--
References
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2. mailto:[email protected]
3. http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
