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Elizabeth Kenny, Editorial, Early Music, Volume 41, Issue 2, May 2013, Pages 187–188, https://doi.org/10.1093/em/cat034
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Extract
2013 is the 450th anniversary of the birth of England’s greatest lute-playing composer, John Dowland. Anniversary-inspired research can shed new light on a figure, and sometimes reveal as much about the way in which musical, social and critical environments have shifted around him or her. The writers in this issue set out to recall and celebrate the achievements of what are by now several generations of scholars, performers and listeners to Dowland’s extraordinary music, and they also ask questions about our traditions of performing, listening and thinking about major composers of the past. As a guitarist taking her first steps on the lute at the Royal Academy of Music some 25 years ago, I, like many others, had the good fortune to encounter first editions of Dowland’s songs and the odd manuscript such as the Board Lutebook (with its record of Margaret Board’s first-hand lessons with Dowland) via the medium of the supermarket plastic bag from which the late Robert Spencer produced them with the flourish of a magician. Subsequent generations owe much to his curiosity and collaborative generosity. Technologies and times have changed, and the physical insights of the books and the instruments have been complemented by digital resources, changes in recorded sound and images, and audiences for whom a greater array of sounds is available than ever before. Lest this anniversary only serves to remind us of the widening gulf of years between us and our subject, it is worth remembering that Dowland, who often stood truculently against the changing whims of musical fashion, nonetheless embraced technological change. Towards the end of his career he radically adapted his playing technique from a contrapuntally orientated ‘thumb-under’ style, derived from earlier plectrum techniques, to the ‘thumb-out’ technique, with the widening distance (and difference) between treble and bass voices. This went hand in hand with organological developments: increases in the number of courses or pairs of strings extended the bass range of the instrument at the turn of the 17th century, ushering in a different range of musical possibilities. ‘The lute’ was constantly being reinvented.
