I was up way too late last night, trying to get organised for the week ahead, and failing.\u00a0 It is to weep.\u00a0 And who better to weep with than John Dowland, the author of such cheery works as ‘Weep, O mine Eyes’, ‘Weep ye no more sad fountains’, ‘Lachrimae, or Seven Tears’, ‘I saw my lady weep’, and, of course, ‘Flow, my Tears’?<\/p>\n
(I must admit, whenever I read my way down a list of Dowland song titles, I find myself becoming increasingly concerned for the man’s mental health.\u00a0 He wasn’t a happy man, that’s for sure.)<\/p>\n
[youtube http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=f7vLOjzG4no&hl=en_US&version=3&rel=0]<\/p>\n
\u00a0I have a deep affection for this particular piece of Dowland.\u00a0 Several years ago, I was in France and I bought a Museum Pass, which entitles you to access to any museum in Paris during the life of the pass – five days, in my case.\u00a0 I took this as a challenge, and went to more obscure and tiny Parisian museums than you can possibly imagine during my week there – I literally walked one pair of shoes to holes.\u00a0 One morning, I went out to La Villette to the science museum there, which turned out to be full of very loud school-children on an excursion.\u00a0 Having been immersed in French for three days at that point, I had the inevitable linguistic headache, and it was all a bit much, so I left the science museum after only an hour, and promptly got lost, which I’m very good at doing in Paris, because I always find something more interesting than what I was looking for.\u00a0 On this occasion, it was the Cit\u00e9 de Musique, which is a museum of musical instruments throughout the ages.\u00a0 You are given a pair of headphones as you enter, and as you walk through the museum, you hear the sound of music played on the instruments you are looking at.<\/p>\n
For the lute, there is no-one better than John Dowland, and I can still hear in my mind the gorgeous counter-tenor singing the opening bars of ‘Flow my Tears’.\u00a0 By the end of the song, my headache was gone, and from then on, the afternoon was magical.<\/p>\n
I haven’t been able to find my counter-tenor on YouTube, and sadly, I have no idea who he was, so I can’t look for him, and none of the performances I’ve found so far match the sublime beauty of that one, though Scholl is very good, if a trifle fast (Deller<\/a>, on the other hand, is lovely, but so painfully slow) – his tone is absolutely perfect for this, and I love the way he ends it.<\/p>\n I particularly wanted a counter-tenor version of this piece for today, but there are some absolutely beautiful mezzo soprano recordings out there.\u00a0 My favourite, I think, is this recording by Valeria Mignaco<\/a>, who has recorded a lot of rather lovely Renaissance songs with Alfonso Marin on the lute.\u00a0 Her style goes against all my instincts for this sort of music, but somehow it really works for me, nonetheless – much more so than versions by opera singers such as Emma Kirkby.\u00a0 It’s definitely a mistake to make Dowland too operatic.<\/p>\n I do like this version for classical guitar<\/a>, though.\u00a0 I think Dowland would approve.<\/p>\n