Musicall Humors: John Dowland – [Complete] Lachrimæ (24/96 FLAC)

Composer: John Dowland
Performer: Musicall Humors, Julien Léonard, Nicholas Milne, Myriam Rignol, Lucile Boulanger, Josh Cheatham, Thomas Dunford
Format: FLAC (tracks)
Label: Alpha
Catalogue: ALPHA944
Release: 2023
Size: 1.27 GB
Recovery: +3%
Scan: yes

Lachrimae, or Seven Tears
01. Lachrimae antiquae
02. The King of Denmark’s Galliard
03. Lachrimae antiquae novae
04. Sir John Souch his Galliard
05. Lachrimae gementes
06. Mr. Nicholas Gryffith his Galliard
07. Lachrimae tristes
08. Mr. Giles Hobies Galliard
09. Lachrimae coactae
10. The Earl of Essex Galliard
11. Lachrimae amantis
12. Captain Digorie Piper his Galliard
13. Lachrimae verae
14. Mr. Henry Noel his Galliard
15. Sir Henry Umpton’s Funeral
16. Mr. Bucton’s Galliard
17. Mr. John Langton’s Pavan
18. Mr. Thomas Collier his Galliard
19. Mr. George Whitehead his Almand
20. Mistress Nichols Almand
21. Semper Dowland semper dolens

‘London, April 1604. With the freshly printed partbooks of his Lachrimæ under his arm, John Dowland walks from the printing house to his home in Fetter Lane. He should have been back in Denmark long ago, but for the moment all his thoughts are on the new publication he is carrying, his latest and most ambitious work to date: a complete cycle of instrumental music, twenty-one dances, honourably dedicated to Anne of Denmark, Queen of England.’ For Dowland has just completed one of the greatest masterpieces of Renaissance music. He had left England to enter the service of the Danish court, disappointed at not being appointed court composer to Elizabeth I, but he seems to have made the best of all his setbacks to compose this magnificent collection of purely instrumental works, much of it bathed in the melancholy typical of late sixteenth-century England. Musicall Humors – a collective of the finest gambists of their generation – performs the complete set of pavans, galliards and ‘almands’, grouped into suites, each with its own character. A character inspired by the music, but reinforced here by the changing composition of the consort and the players taking turns to perform the ‘top line’, so that each musician’s personal playing style gives each piece a specific colour.