York Early Music Festival: EMS 10 July

[doversoul1]

Lucie Skeaping presents a live programme from the National Centre for Early Music as the 2016 York Early Music Festival kicks off in style. Lucie will be joined by guests including lutenists Anthony Rooley and Thomas Dunford and flautist Tabea Debus

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b07jhv6m

‘kicks off’, does it….?

[Richard Tarleton]

Have to catch this later, as something else also starts at 1400.....But yes with Rooley and Dunford, not to be missed!

[doversoul1]

Have to catch this later, as something else also starts at 1400.....But yes with Rooley and Dunford, not to be missed!

Well…. I’ll be very interested to hear what you think of this King of Denmark’s Galliard.

[Richard Tarleton]

Well…. I’ll be very interested to hear what you think of this King of Denmark’s Galliard.

Not sure what Diana Poulton would think of the added percussion! Quite effective, and Dowland would not have been above a jam session

In fact Dowland reworked this piece several times during his life, adding more divisions each time - his first take on it was his "Battle Galliard". He reworked it for his piece dedicated to King Christian lV - who besides being his employer for a while was also the brother in law of his next employer, King James 1. There's a shortened version for viol consort as well.

The opening measure belongs to the 16thC genre of "battle pieces", derived from 2 pieces which swept Europe in the early 16thC (so Diana P tells me) - Jannequin's La Bataille and Werrecore's La Bataglia Taliana, and it can also be found (for example) in Byrd's The Battle, in the section called The marche of horsemen, in My Lady Nevell's Booke. It appears in numerous other places, Poulton gives a few examples, including Dowland's Mr Langton's Galliard.

It's tremendous fun to play, successive divisions leaping between 2 and 5 sharps (BDBDBD) - guitarists retune their G strings to F# which replicates the tuning of a renaissance lute (at a different pitch) - you can play it straight from the lute tablature unless like me tablature does your head in, I prefer a good transcription. I have multiple versions on lute and guitar on CD.

[Vox Humana]

I'm currently listening to the concert by Alamire. Lovely stuff. I was fuming about the lack of programme info until it occurred to me to scroll down the page. Doh!