Over het album

From 1598 to 1606, Dowland entered the service of Christian IV of Denmark as court Lutenist. Having had the opportunity to absent himself by traveling to England both for the musical needs of the court and «on his own business», he was in London from the summer of 1603 until the summer of 1604, and during that stay he published Lachrimae, or Seaven Teares (1604), a collection he dedicated to Anne of Denmark, Christian IV’s sister, wife since 1589 of the new King James I.

Lachrimae is Dowland’s only publication of consort music, and the only collection for a string consort and lute. It is scored in five parts for a consort of viols (or violin-family instruments) and one part for lute in tablature. All parts are not printed in separate scores, as was customary, but on a single folio: all six performers could read their part from two facing pages by sitting around the table with the book placed in the middle. That 'book-singing' is par excellence that of polyphony says a lot about the decisive function that also in terms of performance takes on the graphic arrangement of the music on the charts containing it. 

The most unique of the graphic solutions devised for polyphonic music is the 'table' layout adopted by John Dowland for the publication of Lachrimae or Seaven Teares. The six parts of the music are printed on two adjacent large-format (folio) sides and arranged in such a way that, with the open book in the middle of a table and the musicians distributed on its sides, each has his or her part facing the right way. The ideal performance condition, where possible, remains today that with the 'book' of music open on a table and the performers arranged around it in the positions envisaged by the author, so as to faithfully recreate the original sound conditions of this music, for a listening experience that brings together the visual and auditory aspects of the concert in a single, more intense perceptive sensation.