ABSTRACT
John Dowland, English lutenist, composer, translator, entrepreneur, and poet, remains one of the most intriguing figures of the early modern period. The most internationally known English musician of his generation, he played at Danish and German courts and traveled throughout Italy and France. The musician also spent time at home, where he produced the most well-received London musical print of the time, The First Booke of Songes or Ayres of fowre partes with Tableture for the Lute (1597), which was reprinted at least four times. This groundbreaking anthology of songs, which could be performed by vocal soloist with lute accompaniment, four singers, or any combination of the aforementioned, stood at the forefront of an early seventeenth-century English lute song-air craze that was short-lived, but enthusiastically embraced by those in classes that valued courtly poetry and domestic music. The tablebook format of the volume, allowing performers to sit around a table and share one book, became the standard for lute song-airs that followed. Dowland himself produced three more printed songbooks, a volume of consort of music, and a translation of an earlier theoretical treatise. The composer’s choice to set some lyrics that tapped into the early seventeenth-century trend toward melancholy helped shape his own public persona, one that encouraged visions of isolation and despair. Yet contemporaneous mentions of the composer suggest someone perceived as talented, vital, and savvy. Such a figure begs for further study.
