Back to a piece by (probably) my hero
As promised in my previous post of "A Dreame" from the Margaret Board Lute Book, here is a piece of the same name by the Master.
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I couldn't resist an image of Russel T Davis' wonderful version of A Midsummer Night's Dream, by you-know-who. |
I have transcribed directly and slavishly from: Poulton D, Lam B, Eds. 1995. The collected lute music of John Dowland, Edn 3. Faber Music, London
There are three strains of, unusualy, 7, 7 and 9 bars, each repeated. Some fingerings are a little tricky, because the ukulele is tuned slightly differently to the lute. I have suggested a few fingerings, which you may care to ignore.
Diana Poulton was of the opinion that this piece was most probably by John Dowland, although there was no written evidence. In my inexpert opinion she was correct for 3 reasons:
1. his favourite cadence occure in bars 14, 16 and 19;
2. the unheralded D on the first string in bar 18, as in "Far[e]well" (P3) where the same note occurs unexpectedly at the end of bar 30;
3. in general (eg. bar 10) the unexpected notes and harmonies – which are, of course, to be expected in a Dowland piece.
In his performance on lute, Nigel North plays this piece at 38 bpm, but I must admit that it sounds much more mournful than on the chirpy ukulele, and not much more sombre on the Renaissance guitar. He also plays some fancy divisions in the repeats, which I leave to your own invention and creativity.
A pdf of the arrangement is free to download here.
