Dear Ron,
The reactions to my email about a possible connection between Dowland's Say
love and Queen Elizabeth's Galliard has drawn some predictable responses,
including a welcome and encouraging Fascinating. Bravo! from Arthur. I
can understand the reticence of Ralf and Howard in accepting musical
allusions in the music of John Dowland. Of course there will be the same
group of notes which appear in other compositions, a point Howard makes
well, but are we to throw the baby out with the bath water? Some allusions
are obvious, for example the notes of Swanee River appearing in Alexander's
Ragtime Band, but others will be more obscure.
Deciding whether a group of notes, a snippet of melody and/or harmony, is a
coincidence or a deliberate allusion, is not always easy, and there will be
a grey area, where some of us accept the notes as an allusion, and others
see them as mere coincidence. We all draw the line in different places, some
of us more cautious than others. However, I guess Dowland's use of the
Woods so wild folk tune in Can she excuse has enough notes for most of
us to accept as a musical allusion.
Music c.1600, in particular madrigals, is full of word-painting, and some
instances of it are more in evidence than others. The first four notes of
Dowland's Lachrimae often appear where the text includes the word weep. Is
this an allusion to Dowland's Lachrimae, or mere coincidence? John Bennet's
Weep oh mine eyes begins with AGFE in the bass, and with Dowland's
characteristic rhythm. In John Ward's Weep forth your tears, all six
voices enter with a similar four-note descending motif, but not always with
the tones and semitones in the same place. Were Bennet and Ward alluding to
Dowland's Lachrimae? I think they were, because Dowland's pavan was so well
known in England. However, in his book on Lachrimae, Peter Holman points out
that the falling tetrachord motif occurs for moments of grief in works by
Giovanni Gabrieli, Marenzio, Wert, Monteverdi, and even Josquin. On page 40
he writes, to establish a credible connection between 'Lachrimae' and
earlier compositions we need more than four notes in common.
Lassus' well-known Susanne un jour was widely disseminated, and appeared
in various guises c. 1600. Antoine Francisque included an intabulation of it
at the start of his Tresor d'Orphée (Paris, 1600). We can speculate why the
story of Susanna and the Elders and Lassus' setting of the words were so
important at that time, but occupying first place in a collection of music
is, I think, significant.
The first item in Robert Dowland's Musical Banquet (London, 1610) is his
father's Sir Robert Sidney his Galliard. The first five notes are the same
as Lassus' Susanne un jour. Another setting of this galliard appears in
Dd.2.11 as Susanna Galliard, proving that the allusion to Lassus is
deliberate. Diana Poulton, on page 150 of her book John Dowland, writes:
Without the use of the name 'Susanna' it might have been just possible to
accept the opening phrase as a coincidence, but as it stands there can be
little doubt that Dowland had the sixteenth-century _chanson_ in mind when
he wrote his galliard.
There is one more possible allusion which I have spotted in Dowland's music,
which I don't think has been noticed before. Lassus' Susanne un jour also
makes a cameo appearance at the start of John Dowland's First Book of Songs
(London, 1597). In Unquiet thoughts, for the words I'll cut the string
and make the hammer strike, there is an allusion to a passage towards the
end of Lassus' Susanne un jour. Mere coincidence? Perhaps, but in a world
where hidden meanings abound - one has only to think of Shakespeare - I am
inclined to think that there is more to music from this period than meets
the eye.
Best wishes,
Stewart.
-Original Message-
From: lute-...@cs.dartmouth.edu [mailto:lute-...@cs.dartmouth.edu] On Behalf
Of Ron Andrico
Sent: 24 January 2014 13:09
To: R. Mattes; Stewart McCoy; lute@cs.dartmouth.edu
Subject: [LUTE] Re: Say love and Queen Elizabeth
Dear Ralf:
Perhaps one is a bit hasty to pass judgement from afar on the sharpness
of another person's tools without seeing the larger context of the
work. I observe here and on other comment forums that it is easy to
throw a good idea off-track by distracting with humorous associations.
In the end, we learn fascinating historical connections through a
perceptive eye, a discerning ear, and a complete immersion into the
subject matter and it's context. I suppose one can find echoes of the
cuckoo clock in nearly any musical phrase.
Best,
RA
Date: Fri, 24 Jan 2014 00:01:41 +0100
To: lu...@tiscali.co.uk; lute@cs.dartmouth.edu
From: r...@mh-freiburg.de
Subject: [LUTE] Re: Say love and Queen Elizabeth
SNIP
Oh dear, that's what happens if you use the wrong tool to analyze.
I wouldn't call five stepwise notes downward an melody. Otherwise
you might claim that Dowland quotes the end
