Dowland's third battle galliard: quite a challenge!
You can find arrangements of Dowland's other battle galliards in the two previous posts.
The piece is also known as known as “The Battle Galliard” and “Mr Mildmay’s Galliard”. Poulton says that this is the definitive version which Dowland himself prepared for publication.
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| Christian IV of Denmark, who was quite the party animal. Dowland was appointed lutenist at his court in 1598, and stayed for several years, until they fell out. Image: www.frederiksborgslot.dk |
There are three 4-bar strains (a, b, c), each derived from published battle tunes (Poulton). Strain a is played once (a1), followed by a variation (a1’), then b1 and b1’, c1 and c1’. The whole process is repeated three times: a2, a2’ ,…, c4, c4’. I have labelled the score accordingly.
The piece has a strong rhythmic and melodic line. It is not difficult to understand, but very hard to play to tempo. It is not really possible to hold some of the notes in the lower voice for their full value, so I just do the best I can. I can't really see a way to get over this problem on a 4-course instrument.
I have transposed the piece to G major (strain a) and Bb major / G minor (strains b and c) to take full advantage of the range of the instrument. In particular, in strain a there is a diapaison drone on the lute, which the open 4th string of our little instrument can attempt to emulate. This does, however, mean you have to go up to the 14th fret – praise be for tabs!
(When the lute fingering is followed as closely as possible on the ukulele, strain a is set in E major, and b & c in G major. E is unfortunately not a key sympathetic to the uke, as we cannot root the E major chord, whereas the lutenist has its equivalent available on an open (low) diapaison D string. We have to make do with B on the 4th string, which is represented in the original, so is not too disconcerting. It is interesting to note that composers for the Renaissance guitar (which was tuned the same as a ukulele, but with double strings) do not seem to have used the key of E, and wisely set mostly in G, A, C and D. They did, however, seem blasé about the lack of roots, so we’re in good company.)
The basic chord sequences for the three strains are given below, transposed from the voicings in the lute original. There are only small variations in harmony between variations.
a: G | G | G D | G |
b: Bb | Bb | Bb F | Bb |
c: Bb C D | Gm | C D | G5 ||
G5 indicates a chord with no 3rd, and hence neither major nor minor. In the final bar (variation c4’) there is an unambiguous G major chord, but ending rather abruptly with D in the upper voice.
SOURCES
Music: Poulton D, Lam B. 1995. The collected lute music of John Dowland. Faber Music, London, pp 117–119.
Commentary: Poulton D. 1982. John Dowland. London: Faber & Faber, pp 139–142.
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