The Lute Song Takes Shape

London in 1597, when the solo song with lute became a printed, domestic genre

Related

RenaissanceMadrigalChansonLute

The lute song had no single birthday. What happened in London in 1597 was that an existing kind of solo song was printed in a format anyone could buy, sing and set on a table.

Time and place

London, 1597. John Dowland's First Booke of Songes or Ayres appeared with twenty-one songs and the lute part in tablature. The book was reprinted within a few years, and Dowland went on to serve the Danish and English courts. Similar songs had circulated in manuscript and in court circles before.

What happened

Each song was laid out in four parts printed on one opening, so four singers could sit round a table, or one singer could perform it with the lute playing its written part. The lute was no longer only a bass support; it had preludes, interludes and answering phrases, making a duet with the voice. Dowland's melodies follow English stress, with chromatic harmony and abrupt cadences. Tunes such as Come again were memorable and easy to copy and arrange. The genre was not invented in 1597, since Italian solo madrigals and French courtly songs came first. The book fixed it in a standard format.

What changed

Song became a publishing product. Sales encouraged London printers to issue similar collections for two decades, and composers began writing for print rather than for a single court performance. The home became a listening room; those who played the lute sang the songs themselves. The equality of voice and accompaniment led on to the seventeenth-century chamber cantata and eventually to the nineteenth-century art song.

Listen for the turn

In Come again, hear voice and lute take turns to breathe, the lute finishing phrases the voice leaves open. In Unquiet Thoughts, chromatic harmony recolours the same melodic shape. Dowland's Galliard shows the same idiom surviving without a singer. A second score of Come again in the catalogue lets you hear the tune travelling on its own.

Related

This turn belongs to Renaissance, sits beside Madrigal and Chanson, and its instrument is the Lute.

Sources

• The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 2nd ed., entry "Dowland" — dates and print history checked, not quoted
• Diana Poulton, John Dowland (Faber and Faber, 2nd ed. 1982) — biography and the 1597 songbook checked, not quoted

Used for fact-checking only; all prose is original.