Oh How Much I Love Your Solitariness - John Dowland
Saturday, October 04, 2014
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| Helianthus annuus September 28, 2014 |
And when he saddest sits in homely cell,
He'll teach his swains this carol for a song:
Beauty, strength, youth are flowers but fading seen;
Duty, faith, and love are roots and ever green.
His Golden Locks, John Dowland.
Michael Slattery sings His Golden Locks with detailed view of shruti box being played!
In spite of all that I
was raised in what was a musical household. I was taught a few things that in
retrospect were a product of the times when recordings (40s and 50s) were
limited. Research for facts involved going to public libraries. And so I
learned that:
There was Renaissance music
which was all about genteel French dancing while men ate with their hands and
threw bones to the dogs. There was baroque music and classical music and
in-between a God called Bach. I never asked my mother if Bach’s music was
baroque. My mother liked the romantics so I heard a lot of Chopin,
Rachmaninoff, Tchaikovsky and Grieg. I had no idea of the existence of anybody
who had composed music beyond Debussy. I was never able to ascertain why my
mother told me that the music of Mozart proved that he was impotent!
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| Grégoire Jeay, Sylvain Bergeron, Amanda Keesmaat, Michael Slattery, Seán Dagher & Alex Kehler |
My mother told me that
Henry Purcell was the sole English composer of note. There was nobody before or
after him of any note. I once told this to David Lemon (very English and who
loves English music and has an extensive collection of William Blake etchings)
this and he returned with a most sour expression.
My first exposure to baroque music was the German Archiv recordings of the early 60s. These recordings started a trend in authentic reproduction of baroque music. Modern violins were un-beefed and fitted with gut strings. The sound was less loud and more subtle.
That trend has
resulted in a sort of niche placement of baroque music where a baroque violin
virtuoso like Monica Huggett is unknown by a Vancouver crowd that might revel
at listening to Anne-Sophie Mutter playing her violin with the Vancouver
Symphony Orchestra.
Some of these baroque
musicians and enthusiastic baroque concert goers may even show disdain at
cellos with spikes and violins with chin rests and non gut strings.
It does not take too
much thought to figure out that people who listen to “serious” music are snobs
and are ready to lambast performances that do not meet their requirements for
period accuracy.
I must admit that I
have been a culprit of all the above and noticed how a baroque performance of
Vivaldi’s Four Seasons was more satisfying to me than one by my friend, violinist Cory
Cerovsek with the Vancouver Symphony.
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| Michael Slattery's shruti box |
This kind of personal foolishness has even made me think that beyond the inventive early baroque of the 17th century there was no room for that pseudo-hippie renaissance stuff with all those formal dances and handkerchiefs (not to mention the throwing of bones).
Al that is reference and
proof of my late-in-life sudden appreciation that renaissance music was music
of the Renaissance. Even a cursory knowledge of history tells us that the Dark
Ages awoke in that period and brought us cathedrals and glorious art. I
therefore had to re-think and abandon my mother’s sage advice.
My wife Rosemary and I
went to the Orpheum Annex (they refuse to accept tips if you buy stuff a the bar)
on Friday night to an Early Music Vancouver presentation of Dowland in Dublin
with tenor Michael Slattery and Montreal’s La Nef headed by lutenist Sylvain
Bergeron.
I coaxed my wife
Rosemary to accompany me by telling her that Sylvain Bergeron was a matinee
idol. I told this to Early Music Vancouver Artistic Director Matthew White who
with a broad grin on his face told me, “Sylvain is too old to be one.” Here is
the Wikipedia definition of a matinee idol:
Matinée idol is a term used mainly to describe
film or theatre stars who are adored to the point of adulation by their fans.
The term almost exclusively refers to male
actors. Invariably the adulation was fixated on the actor's looks rather than
performance. It differs from "sex symbol" (and is also faintly
derogatory) in that it suggests the star's popularity came from the afternoon
matinée performances rather than the "big picture" evenings and,
hence, a less discriminating audience.
During the 1920s, three actors Rudolph
Valentino, Ramon Novarro and Ivor Novello were considered leading Matinée idols.
After the nights
satisfying performance (more on that below) my wife told me that I was right
about Bergeron (take that M. White!) and particularly was attracted to Bergeron’s
elegance and his beautiful hands (take that again M. White!)
Now to the “critical”
aspect of the concert with first a description by Bergeron of the concert’s
goals:
To my loving Country-man, Mr. John Forster the younger, Merchant of Dublin, in Ireland.”
In thus dedicating the
song ‘From Silent Night’ in his collection A Pilgrim’s Solace (1612), John
Dowland reveals his possible Irish origins. Was Dowland, often considered the
first great English composer, actually Irish? He may have belonged to an old
Irish family, the O’Dolans, who settled in Dublin in the middle of the 16th century. The
hypothesis that he was Irish seems strengthened by the fact that he was a
Catholic, and had an honorary diploma from Trinity
College in Dublin. And what makes the hypothesis
seductive is the fact than many of his melodies, if stripped of their complex
accompaniment and counterpoint are, in their simplicity and flavour, very
Celtic. When an Irish flute, violin, cittern, and percussion join the lute in
playing them, they sound indeed like real Irish airs.
Dowland is mainly
known today for the expressiveness of his Ayres, and for the somber melancholy,
even depressive, mood of his music. His motto, Semper Dowland, semper dolens
(always Dowland, always down), seems to proclaim an aspect of his personality,
but it may just be a cliché. We should not forget that, in his time, the time
of Shakespeare, there was a cult of melancholy. Dowland, in actual fact, was a
pleasant and cheerful chap who spent his days making jokes! He seems, as well,
to have had very good relationships with women; the fact that a significant
number of his dedications are to women testifies to this. In his music, and his
choice of titles for it, Dowland clearly reveals himself as a split
personality. On the one hand, he is a man of melancholy, the man who wrote so
many weepy works: ‘Lachrimae’, ‘Flow my tears’, ‘I saw my Lady weep’, ‘Go
Crystal tears’. On the other hand, he is a man of lightness, wit, and satire:
‘My Lady Hunsdon’s Puffe’, ‘Mistress Winter’s Jump’, ‘Mrs. White’s Thing’. In
putting together tonight’s program, we have chosen to concentrate on the
latter, light-hearted Dowland.
Though he was admired
throughout Europe as a composer and lutenist,
Dowland was not engaged by the English court until very late in his life. This
was probably because of his religion, and because of his forthright tongue —
Queen Elizabeth could not tolerate plain speaking. So the virtuoso lutenist
traveled all over Europe, playing for the great princely courts, and winning
fame as the composer of the greatest international hit of the day: the pavane
‘Lachrimae’, which he turned into the song ‘Flow my tears’. After having been
rejected several times by his sovereign, Dowland must have felt resentment and
a deep sense of injustice. Finally, at the end of his life, a British
sovereign, King James I, hired him. But this was but slight consolation; the
great musician found himself in a lute ensemble with hacks of modest talent,
who had obtained their jobs at court through schemes and flattery.
Tonight we celebrate
the Irish Dowland by imagining how some of his tunes would have sounded if
played by traditional instrumentalists and singers in a 16th-century pub.
An early music purist would have noted that Amanda Keesmaaat’s cello had a spike and Alex Kehler’s violin had a chin rest. This would alert the purist that the instruments were modern instruments. He would have been in doubt about Seán Dagher’s cittern but would have sighed in relief at the sight of Grégoire Jeay’s flutes (ignored his playing of a triangle) and Sylvain Bergeron’s tall lute.
That tenor, Michael Slattery also played an
Indian origin shruti box (it looked like a multicoloured compact filing folder)
would have left the purist in apoplexy. But it would have fascinated my friend sound man and piper Don Harder.
Fortunately for all of us (me at least)
Bergeron’s explanation that he wanted his group with Slattery to sound like
Irish airs in a pub (a 16th century one!) came to the rescue and I
threw my purist political correctness out the window. But I must point out that
a 16th century Irish pub and the 21st century Orpheum
Annex both did not have any Guinness.
It is my feeling that Matthew White’s
direction (being a less purist one) will open Early Music Vancouver to a new
fan base as will Early Music Vancouver’s pairing with David Pay’s Music on Main
to present intimate little concerts with a bar setting.
Since I am no music critic, I cannot go beyond
writing here that the music was grand, intimate in the setting with cabaret-style
tables (no Guinness!). I can add, though that it was not too hard to see where
Irish folk music came from. At many points I wanted to dance.
Watching Michael Slattery, smartly dressed with a narrow tie and patent leather dress shoes, he seemed to be someone you might run into in Silicon valley (Slattery sort of looks nerdish in a young and good looking way). His singing to this amateur was not effected in any way. I would almost say it was down-home pleasant and his diction meant I did not need to read the program lyrics.
Watching Michael Slattery, smartly dressed with a narrow tie and patent leather dress shoes, he seemed to be someone you might run into in Silicon valley (Slattery sort of looks nerdish in a young and good looking way). His singing to this amateur was not effected in any way. I would almost say it was down-home pleasant and his diction meant I did not need to read the program lyrics.
The true moment “on the road to Damascus” was to realize
that John Dowland the consummate lutenist and composer was a wonderful poet who
perhaps as a contemporary to Shakespeare suffered for it. Or perhaps he was
well known in his time (the Danish court paid him handsomely) and his Lachrimae
Pavan was almost as popular as that Louie-Louie of his time, La Folia.
On Saturday morning I called up my friend
Dublin-born and former Vancouver Poet Laureate George McWhirter to tell me more
about Dowland’s poetry and the lack of a general awareness of his excellence. McWhirter
angrily blurted out, “Don’t get me started on how music seems to trump lyrics…”
I was astounded by the repeated lines in Say
Love If Ever Thou Didst Find:
She, she, she, and only she,
No, no, no, no, and only no,
So, so, so, so, and only so,
McWhirter called this a song repetition (even
if it were only a poem and not also a song).
I inquired on the beauty of the word
solitariness in O Sweet Woods
O sweet woods the delight of solitariness,
O how much I love your solitariness
McWhirter tried to explain the difference
between it and solitude. I could not understand so I have come to believe that
had I taken any of McWhirter’s courses at UBC I would have failed!
Dowland in Dublin for me was a satisfying poetry reading
that was accompanied by stupendous music played by musicians who define the old
term Renaissance men (and women). They have their fingers in all sorts of pies
(Slattery is a visual artist and a writer)and I cannot wait to see what they
will do next.
And a hurrah for Early Music Vancouver’s
awakening.
I wondered about the
meaning of that word in the instrumental work My Lady Hunsdon's Puffe. My
only conclusion is that he meaning of
the word puffe is uncertain and the cause of much speculation.
