Ayres for Four Voices, and: Lute Songs: The Original First and Second Books Including Dowland's Original Lute Tablature (review)

John Dowland. Ayres for Four Voices. Newly edited by David Greer. (Musica Britannica, 6 [new ed.].) London: Published for the Musica Britannica Trust by Stainer and Bell, 2000. [Gen. foreword, p. xix; introd., p. xxi-xxiii; editorial notes, p. xxiv-xxv; acknowledgments, p. xxvii; facsims., p. xxviii-xxxv; score, 215 p. Cloth. ISMN M-2202-1983-2. £78.]

John Dowland. Lute Songs: The Original First and Second Books Including Dowland's Original Lute Tablature. Transcribed for voice and guitar by David Nadal. Mineola, N.Y.: Dover Publications, c1997. [Introd., p. vii; notes about the transcriptions, p. ix-x; score, 112 p. (including facsim. reprod. of original title pages). ISBN 0-486-29935-X. $10.95.]

The songs of John Dowland (1563?- 1626) can be ranked among the finest examples of English vocal music from any period and are among the very best works composed by a lutenist. Published in 1597 (London: Peter Short), Dowland's first songbook bears the full title The First Booke ofSonges or Ayres of Fowre Partes with Tableture for the Lute: So Made That All the Partes Together, or Either of Them Severally May Be Song to the Lute, Orpherian or Viol de Gambo. The composer intended these songs for performance by one to four vocalists and/ or instrumentalists in a variety of combinations, and all twenty-one songs in the book are presented in the ingenious and then novel "table-book" format, with the left-hand page containing the cantus part and the lute tablature, and on the opposite page the altus, bassus, and tenor voices facing the top, right-hand, and bottom sides of the book, respectively. Thus musicians, grouped around a table, could perform the songs from a single copy of the songbook. While the vocal parts might be played on viols, the tablature must be realized by an instrument tuned to fit the interval patterns implied in the notation--most probably a seven-course lute, although Dowland also suggests the orpharion, a wire-strung instrument tuned identically to the lute. In performance, a lute or orpharion could accompany four voices and/or viols, or any combination thereof, and it is even possible for a single performer to realize the tablature and sing the cantus.

This flexibility of instrumentation may be one of the keys to the success of The First Booke as well as the genre itself, since this collection warranted not just one, but at least four successive editions (1600; 1603; 1606 in a revised version; and 1613)-- unprecedented for a work with lute tablature and quite rare indeed for the publication of any genre of music from the period. These editions fall into two groups: the 1597 edition and the two closely related reissues of 1600 and 1603; and a substantially revised edition published in 1606 and 1613. Fortunately for the modern editor, Dowland's other three song books--The Second Booke of Songs or Ayres of 2, 4, and 5 Parts (London: Thomas Este, 1600); The Third and Last Booke of Songs or Aires (London: Thomas Adams, 1603); and, finally, A Pilgrimes Solace (London: William Barley, 1612)--offer nowhere nearly as complex a publishing history. Over 75 percent of these songs are four-part settings, but the later books also contain a number of songs for two or three voices. In addition, the first and second books and A Pilgrimes Solace conclude with short pieces for solo lute.

Edmund Horace Fellowes took the first step in the rediscovery of Dowland's printed songs by publishing The English School of Lutenist Song Writers: Transcribed, Scored and Edited from the Original Editions (16 vols. [London: Stainer & Bell, 1920- 32]). He edited all four of Dowland's songbooks with the instrumental accompaniment and the cantus part only (book 1 as vols. 1-2 [1920-21]; book 2 as vols. 5-6 [1922]; book 3 as...