John Dowland - Come, Heavy Sleep

Details

Description

Come, heavy sleep, for 4 voices & lute (First Book of Songs), (ca. 1597)

Steven Rickards, counter-tenor
Dorothy Linell, lute

Queen Elizabeth I herself knew John Dowland's songs, though he was unable to secure a court position during her lifetime. After a promising beginning to his musical career, Dowland set off for Rome to study composition with Luca Marenzio. Along the way, he met other prominent Italian musicians in Venice and Bologna. In Florence, however, he became embroiled in a plot by English exiles to assassinate the Queen; though Dowland confessed freely, he returned only to Kassel and eventually had to take employment by King Christian IV of Denmark. Dowland continued writing English songs and published his first book of them in 1597. He synthesized many musical styles together, including the unquenchable sense of affection present in the Italian madrigal. One piece that wears its poetic heart thus on its musical sleeve is his song Come, heavy sleep.

The text of Come, heavy sleep mentions no beloved, nor any specific cause for the poet's trouble. Some deep sorrow, however, incites "rebels in [his] breast," and leaves him exhausted within his "thought worn soul." In the middle of the night, he cries out for the onset of sleep, using a Shakespearian association of sleep with "the image of true Death." For this restless and pathetic image, Dowland expanded his compositional pallette. Many songs of the First Booke contain quite supple freedom in rhythm for the singer; in Come, heavy sleep, this freedom lies in the frequent yet unexpected lengthening of many notes; the singer holds each as if to plead for sleep to come. The harmonic language of this song is even more poignant. The opening harmonies rock gently (and conventionally) between G, D, and C. Quickly, however, the song reaches more exotic and uneasy harmonic regions. One of the most striking shifts occurs just between the song's two phrases. The first closes on a G chord, which strongly resonates in the lute's open strings. The second phrase opens with an abrupt change to B major, which would suddenly require a more muted tone on the instrument. Only after an unquiet sequential series does the music return to any (brief) sense of repose. [allmusic.com]

Art by Hendrick Ter Brugghen