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because, ever sorrowing, I know not how to sorrow ), copied in Decem-
ber 1602 by the barrister John Manningham from a French work on civil
law, but David Pinto has suggested to me that it ultimately derives from a
phrase of St Augustine, dolerem, quia non legerem quod dolerem
( how sorry would I be, for that I might not read that which would make
me sorry ).7
Dolens seems to portray Dowland s personal anguish in a way that
the Lachrimae pavans do not, concerned as they are with the various
characters of melancholy; indeed, the piece seems to be much more of a
self-portrait than Antiquae or Antiquae Novae , an exploration of
Dowland s own melancholy character. Signi cantly, the connections are
mostly with Tristes . Both pavans open with sighing suspended gures
that refer to Go christall teares , and the modulatio toni outlining the
G A B gure in the Cantus of bb. 10 11 of Tristes is echoed by bb.
7 8 of Dolens (see Ex. 5.1). Also, the dotted-crotchet quaver gures I
remarked on in the former are developed into a full-blown contrapuntal
gure at the end of the second strain of the latter.
However, the most striking feature of Dolens is its harmonic
instability. Dowland seems to have set out to make it as di cult as pos-
sible to determine its tonality. It continually twists and turns between
Tones 1, 2 and 3, false relations constantly cancel the e ect of the leading
notes of internal cadences, and each strain breaks o with an unexpected
inconclusive cadence, leaving the music in the air a device perhaps
inspired by the similar cadence at the end of the second strain of
Gementes . It is the musical equivalent of aposiopesis, the rhetorical
64
Divers other Pavans, Galiards, and Almands
device that Henry Peacham senior described as when through some
a ection, as of feare, anger, sorrow, bashfulnesse, and such like, we break
of[f] our speech, before it all be ended .8
The reader will be aware by now that I believe Dolens was written
especially for Lachrimae, and that the lute solo, with its disappointingly
conventional nal cadence, is not the original as Diana Poulton sug-
gested; perhaps it was altered by someone who could not stomach
Dowland s inconclusive ending.9 I nd it hard to believe that this striking
e ect, used so memorably at the end of the song In darknesse let me
dwell in A Musicall Banquet, was not part of his original conception,
though two sources of the lute setting, The Euing Lute Book and The
Weld Lute Book, are usually dated around 1600, and therefore appear to
predate Lachrimae. But this is just a guess: the Euing book was probably
copied nearer 1610 than 1600, and the Weld book could easily date from a
year or two after 1603 4.10 With strains of ten, eleven and fteen bars,
Dolens is by far Dowland s longest pavan, and its third strain, with a
synthetic cantus rmus in the manner of Philips s 1580 Pavan (see
Chapter 3), contains some of his most complex and sophisticated
counterpoint.
Sir Henry Umptons Funerall
The two remaining pavans in Lachrimae are shorter and simpler works,
and seem to be earlier. Unton is unique to the collection: there is no sep-
arate lute setting, perhaps because the Lachrimae lute part has all the
essential melodic material and works well as a solo; perhaps it was con-
ceived as such. The piece is a memorial to the diplomat Sir Henry Unton
or Umpton of Wadley near Faringdon in Berkshire (d. 23 March 1596),
and is therefore the counterpart to a collection of Latin verse, Funebria
nobilissimi ad praestantissimi equitis D. Henrici Untoni (Oxford, 1596), and
the famous biographical painting, now in the National Portrait Gallery,
that includes depictions of a mixed consort and a ve-part viol consort.11
Warwick Edwards rst pointed out that Unton has virtually the
same harmonic plan as a pavan by Holborne, The Funerals in Pavans,
Galliards, Almains, no. 31, entitled more precisely The Countess of
Pembroke s Funeral in the lute setting presumably Anne, second wife
of William Herbert, rst Earl of Pembroke (d. 8 August 1588).12 Thus
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Dowland: Lachrimae (1604)
Dowland seems to have borrowed from Holborne rather than the other
way round, and this is borne out by the music. Holborne s pavan is rela-
tively simple, with three eight-bar strains and rather loosely organised
counterpoint mainly in plain patterns of rising and falling crotchets,
while Dowland s is much more elaborate, with the third strain extended
to ten bars, and several sections of complex imitative counterpoint. Two
of them are related to ideas in Antiquae : bb. 6 7 is another version of
the Sacred End gure, with its appropriate associations with the words
Mercie, good Lord, mercie , while bb. 13 14 uses the contrapuntal
version of the tear motif derived from the opening of Marenzio s Rivi,
fontane, e umi . I believe that Dowland intended this idea to represent
consolation and relief from sorrow in Tristes , and it presumably has the
same meaning here.
M. John Langtons Pavan
It has often been suggested that pavans named after individuals were
written as memorial pieces, and while Unton seems to con rm the
theory, Langton contradicts it: the Lincolnshire landowner John
Langton (1561 1616) of Langton near Horncastle was very much
alive in 1604, and the piece is Dowland s least sorrowful pavan, in a
sunny Tone 6.13 Zarlino wrote that its ancestor, the lydian fth mode,
brings to the spirit modesty, happiness, and relief from annoying
cares , and that the moderns, induced by the sweetness and beauty of
the ionian eleventh mode, replace b-natural with b- at e ectively
creating F major.14 The pavan exists in three versions, an early unti-
tled lute pavan, the Lachrimae consort setting, and a later lute setting
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