Benjamin Britten said,
I couldn’t be alone. I couldn’t work alone. I can only work really because of the tradition that I am conscious of behind me… I feel as close to Dowland as I do to my youngest contemporary.
Fragments of the songs of English Renaissance composer John Dowland emerge and dissipate as fleeting ghosts in Britten’s Lachrymae, Op. 48. Subtitled “Reflections on a Song by John Dowland,” the work unfolds as a series of variations on Dowland’s lute song, If My Complaints Could Passions Move, published in 1597. Only at the end does the full melody come into focus, delivering a resolution of peace and catharsis.
In the sixth variation, another Dowland song, Flow my tears, emerges. Perhaps it is this intrusion that gives the work its title, Lachrymae, which translates as “tears” or “weeping.” Additionally, Dowland wrote a viol consort piece of the same title in the 1590s.
Composed in April of 1950, Lachrymae was originally scored for viola and piano. During a trip to the United States, Britten promised the violist William Primrose that he would write a piece for him, partly to persuade the noted musician to appear at the Aldeburgh Festival. According to the story, months later Britten was hard at work on his opera, Billy Budd, when Primrose contacted him for the score. Britten composed it in a single night. 25 years later, a few months before his death in 1976, the composer arranged the work for viola and string orchestra.
Benjamin Britten learned to play the viola as a child. A mellow voice in the midrange, it becomes a soulful protagonist, moving through haunting spaces, and culminating with an impassioned ascent into the highest register in the final variation.
Dowland: If My Complaints Could Passions Move
Here is the song in its original form:
Recordings
- Britten: Lachrymae, Op. 48a Kim Kashkashian, Dennis Russell Davies, Stuttgarter Kammerorchester ECM Records
- Britten: Lachrymae for Viola and Piano, Op. 48, Yuri Bashmet, Sviatoslav Richter
- Dowland: If My Complaints Could Passions Move, Grace Davidson, David Miller Hyperion Records