Luogo e data di registrazione		Plenarsaal, München (Germania) - 5/6 maggio 1973
	Registrazione: live / studio		studio
	Executive Producer		Dr. Andreas Holschneider
	Recording Producer		Dr. Gerd Ploebsch
	Balance Engineer		Klaus Scheibe
	Prima Edizione LP		ARCHIV - 2533 157 - (1 LP - durata 55' 09") - (p) 1974 - Analogico
	Prima Edizione CD		ARCHIV - 447 727-2 - (4 CD's - durata 71' 05"; 73' 47"; 68' 14" & 62' 37" - [CD1 1-19]) - (c) 1995 - ADD
	Cover		David Vinckboons: Die Gartengesellschaft (Gemälde 17. Jahrh.), Archiv für Kunst und Geschichte, Berlin
	Note		-

 

English lute music came to full fruition at the end of the Elizabethan and beginning of the Jacobean period, around 1600 to 1610, alongside virginal music. The reign of Elizabeth I (1558-1603) was one of advance both at home (completion of the Reformation, social improvements) and abroad (defeat of the Spanish Armada, growth of worldwide trade). Increased political power and economic strength were matched by a Golden Age in the realms of literature and music. The Elizabethan age was also that of Shakespeare, and of the composers Morley, Byrd, Holborne, Dowland and Gibbons. High politics left their mark, if indirectly, on the works in this recording. Dowland’s The Earl of Essex Galliard is a reminder of the hot-headed favourite of the “Virgin Queen”, Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex, who died on the scaffold in 1601. The eight variations by Francis Cutting entitled Walsingham were named after Elizabeth’s Secretary of State Sir Francis Walsingham, who as head of her secret service uncovered the Catholic Babington conspiracy, which led in 1587 to the condemnation and execution of Mary, Queen of Scots. The wealth of musical forms and expressive possibilities in Dowland’s music is evident from the compositions of his recorded here. These include, as well as works full of impassioned grief (for example Forlorne Hope Fancy with a lamento bass moving chromatically downwards a fourth) and melancholy pieces (Semper Dowland semper dolens and the seven celebrated Lachrimae pavanes of 1604), some of a cheerful and comic nature, often referring to a particular person (My Lady Hunsdonßs Puffe and Mrs. Winterßs Jump). Dance and variation forms are blended with great skill, as are strict imitation and the features of the free toccata, and traditional dances are transformed into character pieces and mood pictures (Melancholy Galliard). Dowland was a master of the art of imitation, his harmony is richly colourful (with chromaticism) and full of unexpected shifts of tonality, while his melodies are flowing, lyrical and sensitive. At the same time they are simple and so easily memorable that some of his compositions became accepted as folk songs, for example his song Can she excuse. There was no rigid dividing line between art and folk music, between vocal and instrumental pieces, or between artistically stylized and practical dance music in Elizabethan and Jacobean England. Just as some of Dowland’s pieces became folk songs, traditional folk songs found their way into art music. Francis Cutting’s Greensleeves is an example of this. Several other lute compositions of the time were based on this familiar folk song, whose popularity is reflected in the fact that Shakespeare referred to it in The Merry Wives of Windsor.