The Second Booke of Songs or Ayres of 2. 4. and 5. parts

As English songwriters go, John Dowland sits alongside Henry Purcell and Paul McCartney among the undisputed greats—a giant of his age and a musical pathfinder for all those who came after him. If Dowland’s very successful First Book of Songs (1597)—a broadly dance-based collection of strophic pieces all innovatively laid out so they could be performed by either a single singer with lute accompaniment or an ensemble of voices—launched the fashion for the solo lute song, then the Second Book of Songs (1600) sees the composer testing the genre’s limits, experimenting in bold new ways. The range of forms and moods is far greater in this collection, which contains many of Dowland’s best-known songs. The opening sequence sets the often-melancholic tone—the mood a personal signature for a composer whose punning composition title “Semper Dowland, Semper Dolens” (Always Dowland, Always Doleful) could be taken as his motto. The yearning suspensions of “I saw my lady weep” give way to the starkly beautiful “Flow my tears”—its evocative melody the theme for Dowland’s exquisite set of variations, Lachrimae (Tears). Gradually, the mood lightens, with the pastoral sweetness of “A Shepherd in a Shade” and the charming oddity that is “Fine Knacks for Ladies”—in which a peddler advertises his motley assortment of wares “cheap, choice and brave” to the listener.