John Dowland

For a musician of the caliber of John Dowland, it is incredible that he kept being passed over by the English royal court for employment. Dowland's first application came in 1594, when the young man -- already holding music degrees from both Oxford and Cambridge -- tried to win a court post left vacant by the death of the previous incumbent; the post was left vacant. He spent over a decade working overseas, with his family in London. As late as 1610, with Dowland one of the most famous musicians in Europe, King James gave a truly minor player a job in preference to Dowland. Yet the man continued to play, and thankfully, to write music. In fact, our understanding of how good a lute player Dowland was depends not only on the testimony of those who heard him, but on the often astonishing difficulty of his surviving music. Only four pieces of music for the lute involving contrapuntal expansion of a chromatic melody survive; two of them are by Dowland.

In his "Farewell" fantasy, Dowland's basic motive rises relentlessly through the tortured chromatic notes; here in Forlorn Hope it is ever descending. The guises in which he wraps his motive, however, shift kaleidoscopically across the tonal spectrum. The piece's opening is almost conventional, except for the exotic and overtly "forlorn" motive of the descending chromatic tetrachord (falling through a melodic fourth). Even here, though, Dowland shows his technical facility, bringing in up to four "voices" interacting with the chromatic lines on only 10 of the player's fingers. After a dense episode, he comes to a cadence and begins another statement of the motive in the lowest voice -- and nothing is stable afterwards! On top of the motive he first weaves some altered fragments simultaneously, then he moves to a complete stretto passage. After taking the player (and listeners) to some fairly foreign tonal areas, the pace accelerates, first with running notes in the lowest voice, then with a bewildering number of statements of the motive in diminution accompanied by blisteringly fast countermelodies. An extended cadential flourish at the end of the piece almost does not succeed in bringing the breathless, dramatic -- and immensely difficult -- piece to any kind of repose.