Joel Frederiksen - Bass

Programme und Projekte

Fire

Passion in English Lute Song

Joel Frederiksen - Bass und Renaissance Laute
8-course Renaissance lute by Andrew Rutherford, 1985, New York

The Nature of Fire

Fire, Fire - Thomas Campion (1567-1620)
Your faire looks enflame my desire - Campion
Beauty, since you so much desire - Campion

Ballad Settings

Robin is to the Greenwood gone - John Dowland (1562-1626)
Scarborough Faire - Anonymous
Fortune my foe - Anonymous
Go from my window - Anonymous

A King´s Music

Whereto should I express - Henry VIII (1491-1547)
O my heart - Henry VIII

A "Renaissance" Man

If thou longst so much to learn - Thomas Campion
Breake now my heart and die - Campion
It fell on a summer´s day - Campion

A Plaine and Easie Introduction

I saw my lady weeping - Thomas Morely (1557-1603)
I care not for these ladies - Campion
There is a lady sweet and kind - Thomas Ford (c. 1580-1648)

Master Dowland

Time stands still - John Dowland
Lady Hunsdon´s Puffe - Dowland
Can she excuse - Dowland

Musica Transalpina

Amarilli mia bella - Giulio Caccini (c. 1545-1618)
Deh chi d´alloro - Caccini

The Noble Fire

That flame is born - Henry Lawes (1596-1662)
Fire, fire - Nicholas Lanier (1588-1666)

Although a brief period in time, the Golden Age of Elizabethan Lute Song (1588-1632) occupies an important place in history for the extraordinary flowering of poetry and music which it represents.

Thomas Campian embodies the ideal of the Renaissance man: a physician, a poet with a command of history and myth, and a musician who wrote sensitively to the word. He can be witty and even funny in songs such as It fell on a Summers´s day and I care not fot these Ladies. He can also craft a moving miniature like Breake now my Hearte and Dye, with its well balanced three-part structure and poetic portayal of a man who finally cannot run away from love.

John Dowland was perhaps the greatest of all Elizabethan songwriters, with four books of lute songs encapsulating Elizabethan melancholy, sensitive text setting and advanced compositional devices. The most celebrated lute virtuoso of his day, his song accompaniments are as intricately crafted as his solos. In the profoundly moving Time Stands Still, he sets a text of pure devotion with a finely crafted melody. Can She Excuse also survives as the "Earl of Essex´s Gilliard" and contains the folk tune The Woods so Wild, as heard in the lute part of the last section.

During this Elizabethan Golden Age, popular songs existed alongside popular-sounding but learned compositions. Their popularity is evident in the many surviving "Broadsides" that preserve the words of these ballads as well as the tunes to which they were to be sung. A few are presented here as ballads arranged for the lute. Robin is to the greenwood gone (from the Folger Ms. 1610.1) is an excellent representation of one of Dowland´s masterful solo settings. The popular tune Fortune my Foe or "The Lover´s Complaint for loss of his Love" is sung over a Romanesca bass.

Scarborough Fair is an adaptation of a tune by William Chapel in his book Popular Songs of Olden Times.

Thomas Morely, in his setting of I saw my Lady Weeping, applies many of the techniques which made hin a fine compuser of madrigals. His use of suspensions and dissonance create a mood of intensity which sustains itself much longer then most lute songs.

Nicholas Yonge´s 1588 puplication of Musica Transalpina began a vogue in England for Italian music. Amarilli mia bella, teh Giulio Caccini song, is presented here as puplished and arranged by Robert Dowland (John´s son) in A Musicall Banquet (London, 1610). Deh chi dálloro is a monody performed from the original facsimile in a style which exploits the entire range of the bass voice, a new and popular trend in the Early Baroque.

The final pieces on the programm are experiments in the new "Continuo" style, influenced by the work of Giulio Caccini and the Florentine Camerata. The program concludes with Nicholas Lanier´s Fire, Fire, a setting of the original Compian poem with which the program began.

Fire, fire, fire, fire
Loe here I burne in such desire,
That all the teares that I can straine
Out of myne idle empty braine,
Cannot allay my scorching paine.
Come Trent and Humber, and fayre Thames,
Dread Ocean haste with all thy streames:
And if you cannot quench my fire,
O drowne both mee, and my desire.
Thomas Campian,
from the Third Book of Ayres, 1617

Impressum - Haftungsausschluss - Copyright by Joel Frederiksen