Haunting and Intensely Sad

As I contemplate the meager biographical data available on William Lawes, I'm happy to report that he was not a tragically misunderstood and unrecognized composer who thanklessly labored for his art and ultimately died in squalid poverty, only to be recognized by a later age, and posthumously given his due. This was a favored 19th-century script, and one inappropriately applied to such musical luminaries as Mozart (during my youth, at any rate).

As applied to Lawes, this scenario has two things wrong with it. First, he led a profoundly charmed life, except for one small detail. He was favored by the ruling monarch of England, and lavishly appreciated by all who were in earshot of his music. Second, after he died, he was all but forgotten by world musical history (though not particularly so in England). His current obscurity has a lot to do with the subsequent evolution of musicological attitudes. Italy, Germany, and France seem to dominate the musical history of the last three or so centuries. England, it would appear, was a musical backwater.

This, too, evolved from a 19th-century attitude, aided and abetted by the British themselves, although this aiding and abetting actually had its start in the 18th century with the arrival of Handel. After Handel came another musical import: Haydn. To many an Englishman, the notion that real musicians didn't exist on English turf, but had to be imported from the continent, took hold ... and stuck. This was an inferiority complex in the making, and one, incidentally, which had absolutely no reason for being. Progressing into our century, I remember an exasperated comment by Sir Thomas Beecham; and I paraphrase: "Why do we insist on importing so many third-rate conductors from Europe when we have so many perfectly fine second-rate ones right here at home?"

General musicological consensus is that English music produced one luminary, John Dowland (1562-1626), then lay dormant until Henry Purcell (1659-1695), and then again slept until Sir Edward Elgar (1857-1934). Now, given this perception, I'll throw out a number of names and dates: Thomas Morley (1557-1602), Thomas Campion (1567-1620), Alfonso Ferrabosco (1578-1628), Robert Johnson (1585-1633), William Webb (1600-1656). None of these is a household name, but they all ought to be. As to why, let me posit the following: imagine a kind of vocal music whose melodic essence is of a like quality to that of the traditional and universally beloved "Greensleeves," and whose verses were written by poets the magnitude of William Shakespeare and his contemporaries, and you have some idea of the effectiveness of the music written by all these English composers. This was the musical world that William Lawes both inherited and inhabited.

Now, William Lawes biography, in as thumbnail a sketch as possible: He was born in 1602. His innate musical talent was such that the Earl of Hertford financially supported his musical education under his personal music master, John Coperario (alias John Cooper, and variously, John Cowper -- that inferiority complex again). At age 23, Lawes became the private musician of Prince Charles. When Charles ascended to the throne, Lawes continued in his post where he was both royally appreciated and recompensed for his musical efforts. In 1642, Lawes became a soldier in the Royalist army and was shot and killed by rebel forces. So there really was a tragic side to his life. In the interim. Lawes had established himself not only as an instrumental composer par excellence, but as the leading dramatic composer (before Purcell) of his day.

The instrumental music presented on this release is distinguished by Lawes' unprecedented ability to integrate the timbres of the instruments chosen into the essential compositional fabric. Unlike so much music of his age, this is not stuff that can be realized in any alternative way – the harp, or the theorbo (a large lute) cannot be replaced by any other instruments without weakening the effect. As to their musical effect, the initial two consorts (the first of them on a theme of his teacher Coperario) strongly evoke the lachrimae of Dowland. This is intensely sad stuff.

As to the rest of this program, I defy anyone to find a continental musician of similar vintage, who could produce anything as breathtakingly vibrant and as colorful as the music found here. This is haunting stuff that gets under the skin instantly ... and steadfastly refuses to leave.