Cambr

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Sacred End gure is alluded to in bb. 1 2 of the Quintus, and in bb. 5 6
of the Cantus, and two fanfare-like fourths in bb. 5 6 of the Tenor recall
the epizeusis in bb. 19 20 of Gementes . But much of the melodic
material is new, particularly in the second and third strains, and the
pavan takes new harmonic directions, hinting at D minor in the rst
strain and approaching G minor in the second. The beautiful turn into
C major in bb. 13 15 is a hint that the pavan is concerned with despair-
ing love, for it is another allusion to I saw my Lady weepe , at the words
to be advanced so .
Lachrimae Coactae
The title, enforced tears or perhaps insincere tears or even crocodile
tears , suggests a connection with one of the most striking melancholy
types: the revenger or malcontent. When the Elizabethan vogue for mel-
ancholy began in the 1580s it was associated with Italy, and in particular
with Italian travellers or those who a ected Italianate manners.52 Their
melancholy was supposedly caused by society s failure to appreciate
their talents, or by their dissatisfaction with the status quo. Thomas
Nashe thought it a pitiful thing that the malcontent
should take uppe a scornfull melancholy in his gate and countenance,
and talke as though our common welth were but a mockery of govern-
ment, and our Majestrates fooles, who wronged him in not looking into
his deserts, not imploying him in State matters, and that, if more regard
were not had of him very shortly, the whole Realme should have a misse
of him, & he would go (I mary would he) where he should be more
accounted of.53
56
The seven Passionate Pavans
Such alienation could easily lead to deceit, intrigue, treachery, sedition,
revenge and murder. One wonders whether Dowland was thought to
exemplify the melancholy malcontent. He repeatedly complained that
his talents went unrecognised in England, he had spent much of his
career abroad and had travelled to Italy, and at one stage he was suspected
by the authorities of sedition.
Be that as it may, Coactae certainly seems to illustrate the malcontent.
It relates mainly to Tristes , and can be thought of as a parody of it in
the musical sense as well as the general sense of ironic or satirical exagger-
ation. It distorts or exaggerates a number of its aspects, just as treachery
and revenge pervert grief and despair. For instance, the strange melodic
pattern G A B A in bb. 10 11 of the Cantus of Tristes is reversed,
appearing in bb. 6 7 as B A G A, while the mutatio toni at the start of
the second strain turns into B minor rather than G minor, the A leading
note replacing its enharmonic equivalent, B a kind of musical irony
that would not have been lost on the lutenist, for whom B and A were the
same symbol in the tablature.54 Similarly, the anabasis or ascensio in bb.
20 2 of Tristes is modi ed and inverted in bb. 11 13, with an unsettling
F F change in the Altus and sinister chromatics in the Bassus. The har-
monic instability is maintained almost to the end of the strain: the music
swerves to avoid a D minor cadence in b. 14, then apparently heads
towards G major but settles into a V I E major cadence, replacing the
expected phrygian cadence. It is perhaps signi cant that the pavan gener-
ally has the most complex part-writing of the set. It starts with the tear
motif in close canon between the Cantus and the Quintus, and there is
much use of syncopation or syneresis, a gure that could be thought of as a
musical portrayal of intrigue or deceit, though admittedly no source of
the period gives it this interpretation.55
Lachrimae Amantis
With Amantis , a lover s tears , the cycle takes a much more positive turn.
The tone is set by the Bassus, which marches up a fth from tonic to domi-
nant, echoing (a) in the process, and then up a seventh, swinging the music
into a radiant C major, the rst time this key has been reached in the rst
strain. When the music returns to the home key at the end of the strain, it
does so unexpectedly by way of four beats of A major harmony, produced by
57
Dowland: Lachrimae (1604)
a sighing A C sixth in the Bassus and the Altus. Some of the ideas come
from Tristes , but they are the less anguished ones, or have been modi ed to
seem more joyful and con dent. Thus the rst three bars are modelled on
the anabasis or ascensio in bb. 20 2 of Tristes , while the questing second
strain recalls the second strain of Tristes , but uses modulations only on the
sharp side of the harmonic spectrum; ats are conspicuously avoided, with
the exception of the expressive 6 3 chord in b. 10. Two other features of
the pavan contribute to its distinctive character: it conspicuously avoids
phrygian progressions, and at the end of each strain the rate of chord-
change slows down markedly, producing an oddly static or even ecstatic
e ect. Varying the rate of chord-change was a basic expressive device for the
madrigal composer, but it was rarely used in dance music.
We are clearly not dealing here with conventional love melancholy. In
the medical tradition deriving from Galen, love melancholy involved
sorrow virtually by de nition, for erotic love was thought to be a san-
guine rather than a melancholy passion; it was warm and moist, pro-
duced by an excess of blood in the body. The lover only became cold, dry
and melancholic if his love was thwarted. But Amantis is certainly not
sorrowful; as Dowland put it, neither are tears shed alwayes in sorrowe,
but sometime in joy and gladnesse . The pavan could refer to an alterna-
tive tradition, deriving from Aristotle by way of Marsilio Ficino and
other humanists, that saw melancholy as noble, virtuous and even
inspired. The Anatomy of Melancholy is mostly concerned with the [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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