The Music From the 1500’s That Blows Rick Beato Away: An Introduction to John Dowland’s Entrancing Music


In 2006, Sting launched an album referred to as Songs from the Labyrinth, a col­lab­o­ra­tion with Bosn­ian lutenist Edin Kara­ma­zov con­sist­ing most­ly of com­po­si­tions by Renais­sance com­pos­er John Dow­land. This was regard­ed by some as somewhat eccen­tric, however to lis­ten­ers famil­iar with the ear­ly music revival that had already been happening for a number of many years, it will have been nearly too obvi­ous a selection. For Dow­land had lengthy since been redis­cov­ered as one of many late six­teenth and ear­ly sev­en­teenth cen­tu­ry’s musi­cal tremendous­stars, thanks partially to the file­ings of clas­si­cal gui­tarist and lutenist Julian Bream.

“Once I was a child, I went to the pub­lic library in Honest­port, New York, the place I’m from, and I received this Julian Bream file,” says music professional­duc­er and pop­u­lar Youtu­ber Rick Beato (pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured right here on Open Cul­ture) in the video above. Beato describes Bream as “one of many nice­est clas­si­cal gui­tarists who ever lived” and cred­its him with hav­ing “pop­u­lar­ized the clas­si­cal gui­tar and the lute and renais­sance music.” The par­tic­u­lar Bream file­ing that impressed the younger Beato was of a John Dow­land com­po­si­tion made exot­ic by dis­tance in time referred to as “The Earl of Essex Gal­liard,” a per­for­mance of which you’ll be able to watch on Youtube.

Half a cen­tu­ry lat­er, Beat­o’s get pleasure from­ment for this piece appears undi­min­ished — and certainly, a lot in evi­dence that this prac­ti­cal­ly turns right into a reac­tion video. Lis­ten­ing will get him rem­i­nisc­ing about his ear­ly Dow­land expe­ri­ences: “I might placed on this Julian Bream file of him play­ing lute, simply solo lute, and I might sit there and I might putt” — his father hav­ing been golf enthu­si­ast sufficient to have put in a small indoor placing inexperienced — and “imag­ine liv­ing again within the fif­teen-hun­dreds, what it will be like.” These pre­have a tendency time-trav­el ses­sions matured right into a gen­uine inter­est in ear­ly music, one he pur­sued on the New Eng­land Con­ser­va­to­ry of Music and past.

What a delight it will have been for him, then, to seek out that Sting had laid down his personal ver­sion of “The Earl of Essex Gal­liard,” some­occasions oth­er­sensible referred to as “Can She Excuse My Wrongs.” In a single espe­cial­ly strik­ing sec­tion, Sting takes “the sopra­no-alto-tenor-bass half” and data the entire thing utilizing solely lay­ers of his personal voice: “there’s 4 Stings right here,” Beato says, refer­ring to the rel­e­vant dig­i­tal­ly manip­u­lat­ed scene within the music video, “however there’s actu­al­ly greater than 4 voic­es.” Songs from the Labyrinth might solely have been a mod­est­ly suc­cess­ful album by Sting’s stan­dards, but it surely has little question turned various mid­dle-of-the-road pop followers onto the beau­ty of Eng­lish Renais­sance music. If Beat­o’s enthu­si­asm has additionally turned a number of clas­sic-rock addicts into John Dow­land con­nois­seurs, a lot the wager­ter.

Relat­ed con­tent:

The His­to­ry of the Gui­tar: See the Evo­lu­tion of the Gui­tar in 7 Instru­ments

Bach Performed Beau­ti­ful­ly on the Baroque Lute, by Pre­em­i­nent Lutenist Evan­geli­na Mas­automotive­di

Watch All of Vivaldi’s 4 Sea­sons Per­shaped on Orig­i­nal Baroque Instru­ments

Hear Clas­sic Rock Songs Performed on a Baroque Lute: “A Whiter Shade of Pale,” “Whereas My Gui­tar Gen­tly Weeps,” “White Room” & Extra

Renais­sance Knives Had Music Engraved on the Blades; Now Hear the Songs Per­shaped by Mod­ern Singers

What Makes This Music Nice?: Professional­duc­er Rick Beato Breaks Down the Nice­ness of Clas­sic Rock Songs in His New Video Collection

Primarily based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His initiatives embrace the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the ebook The State­much less Metropolis: a Stroll by means of Twenty first-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video sequence The Metropolis in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­ebook.



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