Sting - John Dowland
Apr. 30th, 2016 02:16 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
charisstomaFlow my tears, fall from your springs,
Exil'd for ever let me mourn;
Where night's black bird her sad infamy sings,
There let me live forlorn.
— John Dowland
Dowland lived 1563 - 1626. His music often displays the melancholia that was so fashionable in music during the Elizabethan time.
Dowland's melancholic lyrics and music have often been described as his attempts to develop an "artistic persona" though he was actually a cheerful person...
The title page of Lachrimæ is adorned with a Latin epigram: 'Aut Furit, aut Lachrimat, quem non Fortuna beavit' ('He whom Fortune has not blessed either rages or weeps'). Dowland points out in his dedication that there are different types of tears. “The teares which Musicke weeps” can be pleasant: “neither are teares shed always in sorrow but sometime in joy and gladnesse”.
