476 192-9
a painted tale
PAUL McMAHON
LUTE SONGS BY
MORLEY
DOWLAND
MONTEVERDI
BATAILLE
AND OTHERS
JOACHIM THIBAULT DE COURVILLE d1581
THOMAS MORLEY 1557/58-1602
1 It was a lover and his lass
3’53
$ Si je languis (If I languish)
1’19
% Enfin la beauté que j’adore
ALFONSO FERRABOSCO II c1575-1628
2 So beauty on the waters stood
ETIENNE MOULINIÉ
(At last the beautiful one I adore)
THOMAS MORLEY
3 Who is it that this dark night
4’45
^ Will you buy a fine dog
PIERRE GUÉDRON after 1564-1619/20
CLAUDIO MONTEVERDI 1567-1643
6 Nigra sum (I am black)
7 O quam pulchra (O how beautiful)
8 Ego flos campi
(I am a flower of the field)
1’15
ALFONSO FERRABOSCO II
4’25
ETIENNE MOULINIÉ c1600-after 1669
5 Je suis ravi de mon Uranie
(My Uranie has ravished my heart)
7’19
THOMAS MORLEY
4 Cessés mortels de soupirer
(Mortals, cease your sighing)
2’35
& Fly from the world
3’26
GABRIEL BATAILLE c1575-1630
* Ma bergere non légere
2’19
(My shepherdess is not fickle)
3’55
4’45
1’56
PIERRE GUÉDRON
( Si jamais mon ame blessée
(If ever my wounded soul)
2’22
3’19
THOMAS MORLEY
JOHN DOWLAND 1563-1626
9 Flow my tears
0 A galliard to Lachrimae
! If my complaints could
4’59
3’05
passions move
@ Come again: sweet love
doth now invite
£ Lady if you so spite me
3’29
) A painted tale
2’32
JOHN DOWLAND
¡ In darkness let me dwell
Total Playing Time
3’15
2’20
Paul McMahon tenor
Tommie Andersson lute
Daniel Yeadon viola da gamba
2
In 1597, John Dowland’s First Booke of Songs or
Ayres was published; this event was entered in
the Stationer’s Register on the same day as the
publication of the last of Thomas Morley’s books
of part-songs, Canzonets or Little Short Aers to
Five and Sixe Voices. The coincidence is striking:
it is tempting to see the simultaneous
appearance of these two volumes as marking
the birth of the English lute song and the death
of the English madrigal, the one taking over
neatly from the other. But in fact the line
between the genres was blurred at first. Many
of the ‘aers’ in Morley’s collection were
published with a simple lute accompaniment, so
that they could be performed as a solo song.
And the songs in Dowland’s First Booke, though
supplied with a lute accompaniment, were
songs in four parts, laid out on the page in such
a way that a group of singers seated around a
table would each have their part facing them the
right way up. As Dowland put it, the songs were
‘so made that all partes together, or either of
them severally, may be song to the Lute,
Orpherian [or Orpharion, an elegant bandora-like
instrument] or Viol de gambo.’
with his first volume being reprinted at least four
times, and other composers were quick to
follow his lead. Some thirty volumes of lute
songs were published in England over the
next 25 years.
Dowland himself, however, spent many years
abroad, unable to gain an official position at the
court of Queen Elizabeth I, probably because of
his Catholicism. (He had converted during a fouryear stay in Paris while in the service of English
ambassador Sir Henry Cobham.) Knocked back
for the position of lutenist to the Queen in 1594
and again in 1597, he became lutenist at the
court of Christian IV in Denmark in 1598, and it
was from Denmark that he sent to his wife
(whom he had left behind in England) the
manuscript of his Second Booke, which was
published in 1600. Dowland was beginning to
abandon the part-song alternative: several of the
songs in this collection are for lute and voice
alone. Although there are also words under the
bass part, and the table of contents describes
these as ‘Songs to two voices’, the underlay of
the text suggests that Dowland was thinking in
terms of an instrumental line rather than a vocal
one for the bass. Certainly the title page
stipulates that the songs are to be performed
with the viola da gamba supporting the lute.
3’45
72’07
Dowland cannot be said to have invented the
lute song – he was not even the first to publish,
that honour going to one William Barley whose
New Booke of Tabliture, containing songs with
bandora accompaniment, had appeared in 1596
– but he was its first great champion, the one
who raised the lute song to a major art form. His
songs achieved an extraordinary popularity,
Dowland was to publish four books, each
containing 21 songs. Many are derived from
dance tunes, a common practice, as the
grammarian William Webbe wrote in his
3
Discourse of English Poetrie of 1586: ‘neither is
there anie tune or stroke which may be sung or
plaide on instruments, which hath not some
poetical ditties framed according to the numbers
thereof:...to all manner of tunes which everie
Fidler knowes better then myself.’ If my
complaints could passions move, for example,
was already well known as Captain Digorie
Piper’s Galliard. It is not known who wrote the
texts for Dowland’s songs – it seems likely he
wrote them himself – but there is in both words
and music a tendency to melancholy which the
composer appears to relish. ‘Semper Dowland
semper Dolens’, he titled one of his pavans.
Melancholy was, after all, the fashionable ailment
of the late Elizabethan age (Robert Burton, in his
Anatomy of Melancholy of 1621, claimed that
there were no fewer than 88 ‘degrees’ of
melancholy) and music was acknowledged to be
one of its most powerful remedies.
But not all Dowland’s music weeps. Though the
words of Come again: sweet love doth now
invite tell the standard hopeless tale of a lover’s
anguish at his beloved’s disdain, the music is
light and even playful. The second part of the
melody is crafted from the rhetorical gestures
typically associated with pain and suffering –
short, gasping, sobbing phrases leading to a
long-held note which ultimately falls away as the
melody tumbles down the scale (a contour
familar from the tear motif in Lachrimae) – but
the song is in the major mode and the mood
anything but serious, more pastoral than courtly.
Dowland did achieve one completely carefree lute
song: Fine knacks for ladies, ostensibly the song
of a travelling salesman trying to drum up trade
by flattering his customers. Thomas Morley’s Will
you buy a fine dog is a song in the same vein,
only this merchant’s catalogue of knick-knacks
includes a few items less innocent than gloves,
combs and ‘rebatoes’ (a kind of stiff collar): one
can well imagine his ‘potinge stickes’ (poking
sticks) being put to uses far removed from the
ironing of ruffs, and the ‘dildos’ in his version of
the nonsense ‘diddle diddle’ refrain had exactly
the same connotation in 1600 as they do today.
For a composer who could infuse the sprightly
galliard with melancholy, the slow and stately
pavan was almost too easy. Dowland in 1604
published a whole set of pavans which he called
Lachrimae, or Seaven Teares Figured in Seaven
Passionate Pavans; all are based on the same
plaintive four-note falling figure. The song Flow
my tears, though published in the Second
Booke in 1600, was probably based on the
instrumental pavan rather than the other around,
since Dowland headed the song ‘Lacrimae’ with
no further explanation, implying that the music
was already well known by that name.
Where Dowland was famous for his dolefulness,
Morley is best known for his light and lively
tone, as in It was a lover and his lass. The
song appears in Shakespeare’s As You Like it;
whether it was written specifically for the play or
simply borrowed into it is not clear, but it does
4
seem certain that Morley’s music was sung in
the original production.
Alfonso Ferrabosco, despite the exotic name, was
English born and bred. His father, also Alfonso
Ferrabosco and also a musician, came to England
from Italy in his late teens and entered the service
of Queen Elizabeth; he made several trips to the
continent as her agent, but when he decided to
return there for good, the Queen was reluctant to
release him, and his children, kept perhaps as
hostages, remained in England in the care of
another of the royal musicians, the flute player
Gomer van Awsterwyke. On the death of his
guardian, Alfonso the younger was given a royal
appointment as ‘musician for the viols’, but it was
not until the accession of James I to the throne
eleven years later that his star began to rise.
But Morley was equally capable of writing in a
serious vein. A painted tale uses a melody of
great simplicity to set a text damning those
lovers who indulge in elaborate poetry to
express their supposed passion: true love is
beyond words, says the poem, and the austerity
of Morley’s setting adds to the air of reproof.
There are occasional hints of Dowland’s ‘tear’
motif, perhaps directly inspired by the original –
Morley’s First Booke of Ayres, or Little Short
Songs came out in the same year as Dowland’s
Second Booke and included versions of two
other Dowland songs from that collection.
Under James and especially through the
influence of his Queen, Anne of Denmark, the
royal court began to take a lavish interest in the
arts as it never had during the more frugal reign
of Elizabeth, when the better-paid and more
interesting positions were to be found in the
country houses of the nobility. The courtly
entertainment of choice was the masque, that
indulgent combination of poetry, scenery,
pageantry, music and dance. Ferrabosco struck
up a fruitful collaboration with Ben Jonson and
composed many of the songs in Jonson’s early
masques. So beauty on the waters stood is
from the Masque of Beautie, a typically
elaborate entertainment in praise of the King.
The conceit of the masque is that the King’s
power is analogous to that of the sun, itself
understood as the symbol of Love. This song,
Who is it that this dark night, Morley perhaps
at his most mournful, shows the kinship
between the lute song and the consort song.
Unlike the madrigal, which was basically an
import from Italy, the lute song is really a native
English product strongly influenced by the
consort song tradition developed by William
Byrd: a single voice accompanied by four
melodic instruments, generally viols. The musical
language of the consort song was counterpoint;
instead of the elaborate word games of the
madrigal, the consort song by and large set the
text straight through. Repetition was of whole
lines of text, especially the last couplet, rather
than of striking words or phrases. In Who is it
that this darke night, imitative counterpoint
creates the fabric of the whole song.
5
‘sung by a loud Tenor’, followed the first formal
dance; it affirms the power and authority of Love
to create and order the universe.
and left to sing the final note alone. There are
however signs of an Italian influence. The
plangent ‘O, let me, living, die’ recalls the
sighing ‘Ohimè’s of many a Monteverdi
madrigal, and Dowland moves away from the
standard English consort-song approach to text,
breaking up the lines by repeating words. The
chromaticism around ‘My musicke hellish jarring
sounds’, while sensitively expressive of the text
as we would expect of the English style, is a
technique more characteristic of the madrigal
and the motet, and rarely used in song
repertoire. Interestingly, the song appeared not
in one of Dowland’s own collections of lute
songs, but in a curious anthology published by
his son, Robert Dowland, in 1610. A Musicall
Banquet is unique among English publications
for lute and voice: it contains airs from France,
Spain and Italy alongside works by English
composers. Another Dowland song which
appears in the collection, Lady if you so spite
me, in fact sets an English translation of Cesare
Renaldi’s Donna se voi m’odiate, which had
been set to music by several Italian composers.
But pomp and splendour were not all the
Jacobean era had to offer music. Fly from the
world, a sober reflection on the corruption of
human society and death as the soul’s only
escape, taps into a more moralistic vein and
expresses a preoccupation with the morbid and
sombre which emerged musically in songs of
mourning and farewell. The style is declamatory,
but not the heart-on-sleeve emotionalism
associated with the Italian recitative: the English
manner was more concerned with the meaning
of the text than with its emotion; more
intellectual than sensual. Which is not to say that
it was cold or unfeeling, but rather that the
primary concern was to articulate the poet’s
thoughts so that the meaning of the text, with
all its emotive force, would be made clear. Thus
in Fly from the world, the shifting tonality
matches the turmoil of the soul; the melody is
articulated with rests, marking out the rhetoric
of the poem (O world! O thoughts!) and, in the
closing lines, it rises with a sense of effort only
to collapse back to the song’s opening pitch, the
music ‘tiring’ as, in the text, the preoccupations
of earthly life exhaust the soul.
Though A Musicall Banquet claims to have been
‘collected and gathered out of the labours of the
rarest and most judicious Maisters of Musick
that either now are or have lately lived in
Christendome’, apart from three songs and a
lute galliard by John Dowland the English pieces
in it are by minor figures. The three French
songs, on the other hand, are by one of the
greatest composers of the air de cour, Pierre
Dowland’s late songs show him to be a master
of the declamatory style; the closing notes of
In darkness let me dwell are intensely
affecting, with the voice abandoned by the lute
6
Guédron, arranged for solo voice and lute by
another key figure, Gabriel Bataille.
language, elevated sentiments and Classical
allusion – for form over content, it is perhaps
not unfair to say.
The air de cour was not simply a French version
of the English lute song. It developed from the
‘voix de ville’ or vaudeville: light, simple Parisian
solo or part-songs using simple homophonic
harmonies; the term air de cour first appeared in
1571 on the title page of a collection published
by Adrian Le Roy. The rhythmic patterns followed
the relative lengths of the syllables rather than
adapting the prosody to fit a regular metre; the
result is an irregular but fluid alternation of
groups of two and three notes.
The air de cour suited this environment
perfectly. A simple yet elegant melody
embellished with tasteful vocal ornaments, such
as Guédron’s Si jamais mon ame blessée,
provided an ideal setting for the flowery and
highly conventional poetry with its rather
formalised imagery. The remote and idealised
lover of Cessés mortels de soupirer is typical
of the conventions of courtly love.
Guédron composed most of his airs as partsongs, and wrote only a handful of works for
lute and voice. Although the chamber music
style of polyphonic settings was well suited to
the refined ambiance of the salon, it needed
four or five skilled musicians to perform,
whereas a song accompanied on lute required
only one performer. Once the publisher Pierre
Ballard had launched his elegant new font, which
resolved the earlier difficulties of aligning the
vocal line with the lute tablature, it became
standard practice for a song to be published first
in a version for lute accompaniment, and only
months or even years later in part-song format.
This was the case for 21 of the 36 songs in
Guédron’s Second livre d’Airs de Cour of 1612;
Cessés mortels is unusual in this regard in that
Gabriel Bataille’s transcription for lute and voice
was not published until 1613, in the fourth of his
six Airs de différents autheurs mis en tablature
Like the lute song, the favourite topic of the air
de cour was love: either the courtly tradition of
unrequited love, or the pastoral tradition of
innocent pleasure. But the air de cour was
shaped by an aesthetic of extreme elegance and
grace which derived from the rarefied
atmosphere of the royal court, where political
and social advancement could depend on
wearing the right clothes or speaking in the right
idiom, on being noticed by the king at the right
place and the right time. At the same time,
taking over from the court as the centre of
artistic life was the salon, where socialites
gathered around the lady of the house for
conversation and galanterie, to read poetry and
letters, sing, play social games and perform
plays and divertissements. Those who
frequented the salons became known as the
précieux, and cultivated a taste for refined
7
de luth. Bataille also wrote his own airs de cour ;
Ma bergere non légere is a light and saucy
song in praise of a pastoral, much earthier
variety of love.
Étienne Moulinié’s airs de cour were written not
for the salons of Paris, but for the pleasureloving court of Gaston, younger brother of King
Louis XIII, in Orléans. Je suis ravi de mon
Uranie comes from Moulinié’s third collection,
published in 1629 and dedicated to ‘the lovely
Uranie...whose rarest beauties demand
homage’. The identity of this fair lady remains a
mystery, though it has been suggested that the
songs were written on behalf of the Duke, in
praise of his mistress, Marie de Gonzague.
Joachim Thibault de Courville is from an earlier
generation of composers. In the 1560s, he
devised with the poet Jean-Antoine Baïf a
system of musique mesurée à l’antique to
codify syllable lengths in poetry and music,
borrowing from the metric principles of Latin
and Greek poetry: accented syllables were to be
twice as long as unaccented ones. This system
was part of a greater plan to restore the glories
of the golden age of Greece and Rome and
transform French society; Baïf and Courville set
up (under royal patent) a secretive and elitist
Academy of Poetry and Music to begin this
revolution but their plans came to little and the
Academy was soon defunct. Courville, true to
the Academy’s ideals of secrecy, did not publish
any of his music; Si je languis appears in
Bataille’s fifth collection of 1614, published more
than 30 years after Courville’s death. The vocal
line with its intricate and delicate tracery of
embellishments soars above the extremely
simple and spare lute accompaniment.
Ornamentation was an integral element in the
performance of airs de cour and a measure of
the refinement of the performer’s taste. Since
the songs were mostly strophic, there was
ample opportunity for the embellishment of
repeats with passing notes, ports de voix,
tremblements and cadenza-like flourishes.
Gaston was especially fond of ballet, an art form
which at the time involved both dance and song;
Moulinié’s Enfin la beauté que j’adore opens
with a sarabande for the lute, and the vocal line
also draws on the stately rhythms of that dance,
recalling the close links which existed between
vocal music and dance forms.
The great master of passionate recitative was of
course the Italian Claudio Monteverdi, who used
it to such great effect in the new genre, opera.
But the declamatory style of recitative was not
confined to the stage. Monteverdi did not
distinguish between ‘sacred’ and ‘secular’ in his
writings, but between ‘practices’ – the old,
polyphonic style and the new practice of solo
voice and continuo – to be used in accordance
with the composer’s attitude to setting words.
His hymn settings, for example, resemble arias,
except that the alternate verses would have
been sung to plainsong.
8
In the case of Ego flos campi, O quam pulchra
and Nigra sum, the texts themselves blur the
boundary between sacred and secular. They are
taken from the Song of Songs, also known as
the Song of Solomon, a book of erotic poetry
found in the Old Testament. Different ages have
found different ways to understand the poems
as Scripture – no easy task for a book which
does not even mention God! Perhaps the most
popular reading these days is to see the Song of
Songs as an affirmation of the validity of human
love and sexuality as part of the divine plan, but
there is also a long tradition which interprets it
as an elaborate allegory of the love between God
and his people, and it is possible to see the changing
fortunes of the bride as tracing Israel’s history of
conversion, hope, disillusion and hope renewed.
Spiritual Exercises where practitioners must ‘see
the flames of Hell, smell the sulphur and stench,
hear the shrieks of the sufferers, taste the
bitterness of their tears and feel their remorse.’
With the unashamed ardour of the texts thus
given the ecclesiastic seal of approval,
Monteverdi was free to exploit the imagery of
the love song. The poems’ setting in a rural
paradise and their narrative of sexual relations
eagerly anticipated and ultimately consummated
would also have resonated with the secular
tradition of pastoral verse. In Ego flos campi,
the long dotted melisma on ‘umbra’ speaks of
the bride’s rising excitement as she moves in
close to the object of her desire; in the even
longer, slower, smoother melisma on the final
word we hear the sweetness of her fulfilment.
O quam pulchra features extravagant vocal
fireworks on the bridegroom’s inarticulate ‘O’,
and some sensual chromaticism on ‘quia amore
langueo’ (‘for I am sick with love’). The triple
time passages are a concession to Venetian
taste; Monteverdi generally uses this device in
his more cheerful motets, but here they serve to
provide brief moments of respite from the
intensity of the lover’s suffering, perhaps
anticipating his future bliss.
In Monteverdi’s day, allegory was common
practice in literature, and the 17th-century mind
had no problem with holding several different
allegorical interpretations to be simultaneously
equally valid. The bride’s passionate desires and
longings could represent the individual
Christian’s desire for Christ, the Church’s
relationship with its Saviour, the relationship
between the Blessed Virgin Mary and her son,
Mary Magdalen’s search for her dead Lord, or all
of the above. This Counter-Reformation period
was a time when the individual was encouraged
to the almost visceral experience of profound
religous feeling; as Denis Arnold points out, it is
the same state of mind induced in the Jesuit
Nigra sum comes from Monteverdi’s Vespers of
1610. It was written some fifteen years earlier
than Ego flos campi and O quam pulchra, and is
in fact his first independent piece for solo singer,
but there is no hint of immaturity in the writing.
9
He had already written two operas, Orfeo and
Arianna, and five books of madrigals, and Nigra
sum is full of drama from the opening phrase,
which begins solemnly in the tenor’s lowest
register as the bride declares herself to be dark
of skin, then leaps up an octave as she speaks
enticingly of her own beauty. The melody climbs
an octave and a half up the scale on ‘surge’
(‘arise’) – and the song ends with the bass line
descending an octave and a sixth, perhaps
suggesting the satisfaction of the lovers’ desire,
though that is not explicit in this particular text.
At ‘tempus putationis’ (in Latin, ‘the time of
pruning’, not, as English versions of the Song of
Songs have it, ‘the time of singing’), Monteverdi
strips his music bare, with the tenor intoning on
a single pitch like a cantus firmus, recalling the
purest and most venerable form of church music.
passages with more roughness, but today they
are beginning to correct that.’) But by the time of
Monteverdi’s death in 1643, the English lute
song had well and truly ceased to be published,
and the French air de cour was facing the same
fate; Italy’s new music, with the new harmonic
and expressive possibilities of its basso
continuo, had taken over.
Natalie Shea
1 It was a lover and his lass
3 Who is it that this dark night
It was a lover and his lasse,
With a hay, with a ho and a hay nonie no,
That o’re the green corne fields did passe
In spring time, the onely prettie ring time,
When birds do sing, hay ding a ding a ding,
Sweete lovers love the springe.
Who is it that this darke night,
Under my window playneth,
It is one that from thy sighte
Beeing ah exilde disdaineth
Everie other vulgar light.
What if you new beauties see,
Will not they stirre new affection,
I will thinke they pictures bee:
Image like of Saints perfection,
Poorely counterfeiting thee.
Betweene the Akers of the rie,
With a hay, with a ho and a hay nonie no,
These prettie Countrie fooles would lie,
In spring time...
This Carrell they began that houre,
With a hay, with a ho and a hay nonie no,
How that a life was but a flower,
In spring time...
Peace I thinke that some give eare,
Come no more least I get anger,
Blisse I will my blisse forbeare,
Fearing sweete you to endaunger,
But my soule shall harber there.
Then prettie lovers take the time,
With a hay, with a ho and a hay nonie no,
For love is crowned with the prime,
In spring time...
The Italian expressive style was well known
both in France – Caccini’s visit to the French
court in 1604 had aroused intense interest – and
in England, where Dowland boasted of his
friendship with Marenzio, and Morley was busily
publishing Italian madrigals side by side with his
own works. Though it left the occasional mark
on the lute song and the air de cour, especially
in the area of declamatory writing, those
indigenous genres tended to hold themselves
aloof from the Italian idiom. (French musicians,
while admiring the Italian singers for their
technical skill, found their aesthetic distasteful:
‘their manner of singing is much more animated
than ours...it is true that they perform their
2 So beauty on the waters stood
So beautie on the waters stood,
When Love had sever’d earth from floud,
So when hee parted ayre from fire,
Hee did with concord all inspire,
And then a motion hee them taught,
That elder then himselfe was thought,
Which thought was yet the childe of earth,
For love is elder then his birth.
10
11
4 Cessés mortels de soupirer
Cessés mortels de soupirer,
Cette beauté n’est pas mortelle;
Il est permis de l’adorer,
Mais non pas d’estre amoureux d’elle.
Les Dieux tant seulement
Peuvent aymer si hautement.
Mortals, cease your sighing
Mortals, cease your sighing,
Such beauty is not of mortal kind;
it is permitted to adore her,
but not to be in love with her.
Only the Gods
may love one so exalted.
Ils savoyent les peines
Que dans ces lieux
Je ressens en mon ame loin de ces yeux.
revealed to them the pains
which here,
far from her eyes, I feel in my soul.
Par la rigueur des loix qu’ils m’ordonnent,
En ces excez des maux qu’ils me donnent,
Privant mes yeux de tant d’appas,
Je cognois bien où les cruels aspirent,
Sa grace, son œil sans rigueurs
Fait sans flater qu’on la peut dire
Reyne des beautés et des cœurs,
Qu’elle entretient le sceptre et l’empire;
Mais les dieux seulement
Peuvent aymer si hautement.
Her grace, her gentle eye
make her worthy to be called
queen over all other beauties and all hearts,
for she holds the sceptre and the kingdom.
But only the gods
may love one so exalted.
C’est qu’ils ne respirent
Que mon trespas.
Mais, ô dieux! que ma flame ne meure pas!
From the harshness of the laws they impose on me
and the surfeit of ills they deal out to me,
depriving my eyes of such charms,
I well know what these cruel ones aspire to:
they seek only
my death.
But, O gods! let my flame not die!
Bref ces divines qualities
Dont le ciel orna sa naissance,
Deffendent mesme aux déités
Non de l’aymer, mais l’espérance
D’obtenir en l’aymant
Sinon qu’un glorieux tourment.
In short, these divine qualities
with which heaven graced her birth
forbid even the gods
not to love her, but to hope
to achieve in loving her
anything but a glorious torment.
5 Je suis ravi de mon Uranie
Je suis ravi de mon Uranie,
Toute beauté pres d’elle est ternie;
Jamais l’amour dedans ces bois
N’en a fait voir ny régner de pareille.
C’est une merveille,
Sa seule voix
Peut dompter et sousmettre les plus grands Roys.
My Uranie has ravished my heart
My Uranie has ravished my heart,
beside her all beauty is tarnished;
never within these woods has love
let the like be seen or hold sway.
It’s a marvel:
her voice alone
can tame and overcome the greatest Kings.
Tous ces jaloux de qui les malices
Me vont gesnant de tant de supplices,
Se résoudroyent d’en user mieux,
Si par mes cris dont ces forets sont pleines,
All those whose malicious jealousy
wounds me with so many torments
would resolve to inflict all the more pain
if my cries, which fill the woods,
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6 Nigra sum
I am black
I am black but beautiful,
daughters of Jerusalem.
Therefore the King took delight in me
and brought me into his chamber,
and said to me:
arise, my love, arise and come.
Now winter is passing,
the rains are over and gone,
flowers are blossoming in our land;
the time of pruning is at hand.
Nigra sum sed formosa,
filiae Jerusalem.
Ideo dilexit me Rex
et introduxit in cubiculum suum,
et dixit mihi:
surge, amica mea, surge et veni.
Iam hiems transiit,
imber abiit et recessit,
flores apparuerunt in terra nostra;
tempus putationis advenit.
7 O quam pulchra
O how beautiful
O how beautiful you are, my love,
my dove,
my beautiful one, how lovely you are.
O how beautiful are your eyes, like doves,
your hair is like a flock of goats,
your teeth white as newly-shorn goats.
How beautiful you are, O loveliest of maidens!
how beautiful you are compared to other women.
Come away with me
O quam pulchra es amica mea
columba mea
formosa mea o pulchra es
O quam pulchra oculi tui columbarum
capilli tui sicut greges caprorum
dentes tui sicut greges tonsarum
quam pulchra es O pulcherrima
quam pulchra es inter mulieres
Egredere et veni
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for I am sick with love.
Come, my beautiful one,
my sister,
come, spotless one,
come, for I am sick with love
and my soul turns to water within me.
qui amore langueo
Veni formosa mea
soror mea
veni immaculata mea
veni quia amore langueo
et anima mea liquefacta est.
8 Ego flos campi
I am a flower of the field
I am a flower of the field
and a lily of the valley.
Like a lily among thorns,
so is my love among maidens.
Like an apple tree among the trees of the forest,
so is my beloved among young men.
I sat down under the shadow of the man I had longed for,
and his fruit was sweet to my taste.
Ego flos campi
et lilium convallium.
Sicut lilium inter spinas,
sic amica mea inter filias.
Sicut malus inter ligna silvarum,
sic dilectus meus inter filios.
Sub umbra illius quem desideraveram sedi,
et fructus ejus dulcis gutturi meo.
9 Flow my tears
Flow my teares fall from your springs,
Exilde for ever: Let mee morne
Where nights black bird hir sad infamy sings,
There let mee live forlorne.
@ Come again: sweet love doth now invite
And feare, and griefe, and paine for my deserts
Are my hopes since hope is gone.
Come againe: sweet love doth now envite,
Thy graces that refraine, to do me due delight,
To see, to heare, to touch, to kisse, to die,
With thee againe in sweetest simphathy.
Harke you shadowes that in darcknesse dwell,
Learne to contemne light,
Happie, happie they that in hell
Feele not the worlds despite.
Come againe that I may cease to mourne,
Through thy unkind disdaine, for now left
and forlorne:
I sit, I sigh, I weepe, I faint, I die,
In deadly paine, and endles miserie.
! If my complaints could passions move
If my complaints could passions moove,
Or make love see wherein I suffer wrong:
My passions weare enough to proove
That my despayrs had governd me to long,
O love I live and dye in thee
Thy griefe in my deepe sighes still speakes,
Thy wounds do freshly bleed in mee
My hart for thy unkindnes breakes,
Yet thou doest hope when I despaire,
And when I hope thou makst me hope in vaine.
Thou saist thou canst my harmes repaire,
Yet for redresse thou letst me still complaine.
Out alas, my faith is ever true,
Yet will she never rue, nor yeeld me any grace:
Her eies of fire, her hart of flint is made,
Whom teares nor truth may once invade.
Gentle love draw forth thy wounding dart,
Thou canst not pearce her hart, for I that
do approve:
By sighs and teares more hote then are thy shafts:
Did tempt while she for triumps laughs.
Can love be ritch and yet I want,
£ Lady if you so spite me
Is love my judge and yet am I condemn’d?
Thou plenty hast, yet me dost scant,
Thou made a god, and yet thy power contemn’d.
That I do live it is thy power,
That I desire it is thy worth,
If love doth make mens lives too sowre
Let me not love, nor live henceforth:
Die shall my hopes, but not my faith,
That you that of my fall may hearers be
May here despaire, which truly saith,
I was more true to love, then love to me.
Downe vaine lights shine you no more,
No nights are dark enough for those
That in dispaire their last fortuns deplore,
Light doth but shame disclose.
Never may my woes be relieved,
Since pittie is fled,
And teares, and sighes, and grones my wearie dayes
Of all joyes have deprived.
From the highest spire of contentment,
My fortune is throwne,
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Lady if you so spight me,
Wherefore do you so oft kisse and delight mee?
Sure that my hart opprest and over-cloyed,
May breake thus over-joyed,
If you seeke to spill mee,
Come Kisse me sweet and kill mee,
So shal your hart be eased,
And I shall rest content and dye well pleased.
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$ Si je languis
If I languish
If I languish in an unknown agony,
if my desire, once so firmly restrained,
now, unleashed, carries me where it will,
Should I complain as I do?
A new pain brings its own suffering;
with greater beauty comes greater torment.
Si je languis d’un martire incogneu,
Si mon désir jadis tant retenu,
Ores sans bride à son gré me transporte,
Me doy je plaindre ainsi comme je fais?
Un nouveau mal fait de nouveaux effets,
Plus de beauté plus de tourment apporte.
% Enfin la beauté que j’adore
Enfin la beauté que j’adore
Me fait cognoistre en son retour,
Qu’elle veut que je voye encore
Ces yeux pour qui je meurs d’amour.
Mais puisque je revoy la beauté qui m’enflame,
Sortez mes desplaisirs, hostez vous de mon ame.
At last the beautiful one I adore
At last the beautiful one I adore
reveals on her return
that she wishes me to see again
those eyes for love of which I die.
But since I see again the beauty which sets me on fire,
begone, displeasures, leave my soul.
Le ciel voyant que son absence
M’oste tout mon contentement
Octroye à ma perseverance
La fin de mon cruel tourment.
Mais puisque je revoy...
Heaven, seeing how her absence
strips me of all contentment,
rewards my perseverance by granting
an end to my cruel torment.
But since I see again...
Mes maux changés vous en délices,
Mon cœur arrestés vos douleurs,
Amour bannissez mes supplices,
Mes yeux ne versez plus de pleurs.
Et puisque je revoy...
Pains, change into delights!
My heart, suffer no more!
Love, banish my torture,
Eyes, weep no more tears!
And since I see again...
^ Will you buy a fine dog
Will you buy a fine dogg with a hole in his head,
With a dildo dildo,
Muffes cuffes rebatoes and fine Sisters thred,
With a dildo dildo.
I stand not one poyntes pinnes periwigges combes glasses
Gloves garters girdles buskes, for the briske lasses,
But I have other dainty daintie trickes:
Sleeke stones and potinge stickes,
With a dildo didle didle dildo,
And for a need my pretty pretty pods,
Amber Civett and muskecods,
With a dildo didle didle dildo.
& Fly from the world
Fly from the world O flye thou poore distrest,
Where thy diseased sense infects thy soule,
And where thy thoughts doe multiply unrest,
Tiring with wishes what they straight controule,
O world, O world betrayer of the minde,
O thoughts, O thoughts that guide us being blinde.
Come therefore care, conduct me to my end,
And steere this shipwrackt carkasse to the grave:
My sighes a strange and stedfast winde shall lend,
Teares wet the sailes, Repentance from rocks save.
Haile death, haile death, the land I doe discry,
Strike saile, goe soule, rest followes them that dye.
* Ma bergere non légere
My shepherdess is not fickle
My shepherdess
is not fickle
in love,
she gives me something nice every day.
I lead her,
Ma bergere
Non légere
En amours
Me fait reçevoir du bien tous les jours:
Je la meine
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La pourmeine
Par les champs,
Où nous prenons ensemble de doux passe temps.
I go with her
through the fields
where we spend pleasant times together.
Que si j’ose
Autre chose
Rechercher,
Elle ne me veut laisser aprocher.
Mais subite
Prend la fuitte,
Moy après,
Je sçay bien la poursuivre et la joindre de près.
Si je lève
Sus sa greve
Le genoux,
Sa cotte si haut qu’on voye dessoubs:
En furie
Elle crie,
Et me mord;
Et puis en bien peu d’heur nous sommes d’accord.
For if I dare
to try
something else,
she won’t let me near her.
Suddenly
she runs away,
with me after her:
I know where to find her and get close to her.
If I lift
my knee
up over her leg,
with her petticoat so far up you can see underneath:
in fury
she shouts
and bites me;
and then in no time at all we’re of one mind.
Nostre vie
Sans envie
Nous passons,
Charmans nos soucis de gayes chansons.
Fy des villes
Où les filles
Ne font cas
Des amants qui pour elles conduise au trespas.
We spend
our days
free from envy,
soothing our cares with merry songs.
Shame on the towns
where the girls
pay no heed
to the lovers who for their sake are led to destruction.
( Si jamais mon ame blessée
Si jamais l’amour d’aultre dame
Eschaufe mon cueur de sa flame,
Puisse-je esprouver les rigueurs
De toutes sortes de malheurs.
If ever the love of another lady
should warm my heart with its flame,
let me feel the rigours
of all kinds of evils.
Si jamais le temps ny l’absence
Peuvent esbranler ma constance,
Puisse-je sans aucun secour
If ever either time or absence
should shake my constancy,
let me languish the rest of my days
with none to come to my aid.
Languir le reste de mes jours.
) A Painted tale
A Painted tale by Poets skill devised,
Where words well plast great store of love profest,
In loves attyre can never Maske disguysde,
For looks and sighs true love can best expresse,
And he whose wordes his passions right can tell
Dooth more in wordes then in true love excell.
¡ In darkness let me dwell
In darknesse let mee dwell, The ground shall sorrow be,
The roofe Dispaire to barre all cheerfull light from mee,
The wals of marble blacke that moistned still shall weepe,
My musicke hellish jarring sounds to banish friendly sleepe.
Thus wedded to my woes, And bedded to my Tombe,
O Let me living die, Till death doe come,
In darknesse let mee dwell.
If ever my wounded soul
If ever my wounded soul
should rest its thoughts anywhere but in you,
let my punishment be
to be deprived of all contentment.
Si jamais mon ame blessée
Loge ailleurs qu’en vous sa pensée,
Puissé-je estre pour chastiment
Privé de tout contentement.
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19
for his interpretation of Baroque repertoire,
particularly the Evangelist in the Passions of J S
Bach. He has appeared as soloist in the festivals
of Melbourne and Brisbane and has given
concerts for broadcast on ABC Classic FM and
the MBS network. Paul was a member of The
Song Company from 1997 to 2001, touring
regularly with this ensemble throughout
Australia, Asia and Europe.
Paul McMahon
Paul McMahon is one of Australia’s leading
tenors, performing a diverse range of repertoire
throughout the country. After graduating from
the University of Southern Queensland and the
Queensland Conservatorium of Music, he began
his career with the Lyric Opera of Queensland,
(now Opera Queensland) where he performed
and covered a number of roles including Don
Ottavio in Don Giovanni; Monostatos in the Die
Zauberflöte; Remendado in Carmen; Triquet in
Eugene Onegin and Borsa in Rigoletto. Paul’s
other operatic roles include The Novice in Billy
Budd in the acclaimed Australian premiere
production for the 1993 Brisbane Biennial
Festival of Music. He was a soloist in Opera
Queensland’s ‘Opera on the Move’ tour of
Southern Queensland in 1995; appeared in the
1997 National Opera Festival in Canberra and, for
the 1999 Sydney Festival, prepared the roles
Pisandro and Telemaco in Monteverdi’s Il ritorno
d’Ulisse in patria by Netherlands Opera.
His solo recordings for ABC Classics include
Handel’s Messiah – a CD and DVD recording
broadcast by ABC Television, Carl Orff’s Carmina
Burana, Fauré’s La naissance de Vénus and
Apollo in Handel’s Semele. He is featured on
Swoon – A Visual and Musical Odyssey, Felix
and Me, the Christmas discs Perfect Day and
Glorious Night, Prayer for Peace, The Rise and
Rise of Australian Rugby and the soundtrack to
the Australian feature film The Bank.
A Churchill Fellowship in 2002 enabled Paul to
undertake intensive study in Baroque repertoire
at the Royal Conservatory in The Hague,
Netherlands. His performances in Australia in
2002 included Bach’s Magnificat for Sydney
Philharmonia and Apollo in Handel’s Semele for
Pinchgut Opera.
Paul makes regular appearances as soloist with
orchestras, chamber music groups and choirs.
These include Sydney Symphony, Melbourne
Symphony Orchestra, Australian Chamber
Orchestra, Australian Brandenburg Orchestra,
Sydney Philharmonia Choirs, Cantillation,
Australian Bach Ensemble, Australia Ensemble
and Orpheus Choir in Wellington. Paul’s
repertoire ranges from Monteverdi to Vaughan
Williams and Arvo Pärt and he is highly regarded
20
In 2003, Paul appeared as soloist with Sydney
Symphony (Mozart’s Requiem and Sofia
Gubaidulina’s Now Always Snow ); Melbourne
Symphony Orchestra (Stravinsky’s Pulcinella) in
the Melbourne Festival; Pinchgut Opera
21
(Purcell’s The Fairy Queen); Australian
Brandenburg Orchestra (Bach’s Cantata 147);
Sydney Philharmonia (Bach’s Markus Passion);
Coro Innominata/Concertato (Handel’s
Alexander’s Feast); Willoughby Symphony
Orchestra and the Royal Melbourne Philharmonic
Choir (Messiah).
Paul’s engagements for 2004 include
appearances with the Melbourne Symphony
Orchestra (Messiah and Mozart’s Requiem);
Christchurch Symphony (Bach’s Cantatas 29 &
147); Christchurch City Choir (Messiah); Sydney
Philharmonia Choirs (Grand motets by Rameau
and ‘Monteverdi’s Books’); Pinchgut Opera
(Monteverdi’s Orfeo); University of Tasmania and
Melbourne Chamber Orchestra (Britten’s
Serenade for Tenor, Horn and Strings); Sydney
Conservatorium of Music (Bach’s Johannes
Passion) and the Australian Brandenburg
Ensemble (New England Bach Festival). 2005
engagements include Messiah with The
Queensland Orchestra and a series of Bach
cantatas with Sydney Philharmonia, to be
broadcast live on ABC Classic FM.
Tommie Andersson
Daniel Yeadon
Tommie Andersson is Australia’s leading
specialist in lutes, early guitars and the
interpretation of music for these instruments, as
well as a highly sought-after accompanist and
continuo player. He came to Australia in 1984
after completing his studies at the Schola
Cantorum Basiliensis, where his teachers
included Eugen Dombois and Hopkinson Smith.
He has toured extensively in his native Sweden,
as well as performing and giving masterclasses
in many European countries.
Daniel Yeadon originally studied cello and piano
in the north of England. He graduated in physics
at Oxford University and subsequently worked
as a scientific book editor in London. The lure of
music soon proved too strong and he moved on
to the Royal College of Music to gain a Diploma
in Early Music Performance.
He performs regularly as continuo player with
the Australian Chamber Orchestra, Opera
Australia, the Australian Brandenburg Orchestra,
The Song Company, and Sydney Philharmonia
Choirs. He appears on numerous discs, including
his solo album on the Musica Viva label.
Executive Producers Robert Patterson, Lyle Chan
Recording Producer and Editor Ralph Lane
Recording and Mastering Engineer Virginia Read
Project Coordinator Alison Johnston
Editorial and Production Manager Hilary Shrubb
Cover and Booklet Design Imagecorp Pty Ltd
Photography Steven Godbee
Recorded 3-9 February 2003 in the Eugene
Goossens Hall at the Australian Broadcasting
Corporation’s Ultimo Centre.
After training with the European Community
Baroque Orchestra he became principal cellist of
the renowned period instrument ensemble
Florilegium, performing throughout the world. In
1995 he joined the Fitzwilliam String Quartet,
playing on both modern and period instruments.
With the quartet he appeared at all the major UK
music festivals, toured the USA and Russia and
made frequent radio and CD recordings. He has
taught cello and viola da gamba at the Royal
College of Music and the Royal Academy of
Music in London, at Cambridge and York
Universities in the UK, and also at Bucknell and
Penn State Universities in the USA.
2004 Australian Broadcasting Corporation.
2004 Australian Broadcasting Corporation.
Made in Australia. All rights of the owner of copyright reserved.
Any copying, renting, lending, diffusion, public performance or
broadcast of this record without the authority of the copyright
owner is prohibited.
Now based in Sydney, Daniel Yeadon appears
with Salut! Baroque, Sinfonia Australis, Pinchgut
Opera, Opera Australia and the Australian Bach
Ensemble. He continues to perform regularly
with many of the London-based period
instrument ensembles.
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