Ronn Mcfarlane and Robert Aubry Davis: Henry VIII, Act III, Scene 1.

John Dowland: Melancholy Galliard--The same dance source gives us the prescription for this, one of Queen Elizabeths favorite dances (the head of the privy Chamber said she would dance six or seven galliards of a morning). It is an athletic dance of hopping and skipping, and only a person of Dowlands alleged temperament would take this bright work and make it of a darker hue. We wed it to one of the three Orphic references in the plays of Shakespeare, two of which are on the program. The mystical singer of Thrace who in Ovid pursues Eurydice to the very gates of hell had a powerful effect on the Renaissance imagination, and the transformative nature of his singing was appealing to that most music-loving of playwrights.

Shakespeare: Henry VIII, Act III, Scene 1. The Queens apartments.

Orpheus with his lute made trees,
And the mountain tops that freeze
Bow themselves when he did sing.
To his music plants and flowers
Ever sprung, as sun and showers
There had made a lasting spring.

Every thing that heard him play.
Even the billows of the sea,
Hung their heads, and then lay by.
In sweet music is such art,
Killing care and grief of heart
Fall asleep, or hearing die.

http://sonoluminus.com

Category:

Music

Tags:

• Ronn
• McFarlane
• Robert
• aubry
• Davis
• blame
• not
• my
• lute
• classical
• dorian
• John
• Dowland
• Shakespeare

[Berkeley1964]

Bravo!!