John Danyel - The Complete Songs and Lute Music

John DANYEL (1564-c.1626)

Complete Songs and Lute Music

A Fancy

Can doleful notes?

Coy Daphne fled

Dost thou withdraw thy grace?

Eyes, look no more

He whose desires are still abroad

I die whenas I do not see

If I could shut the gate

Like as the Lute Delights

Mrs M E her funeral tears for the death of her husband

Now the earth, the skies, the air

Pavan in C major

Stay, cruel, stay!

The Passymeasures Galliard

Thou pretty bird, how do I see

Time, Cruel Time

What delight can they enjoy

Why canst thou not?

Nigel Short (countertenor), David Miller (lute), Libby Crabree (soprano), Charles Daniels (tenor), Matthew Vine (tenor), Adrian Peacock (bass), Jacob Heringman (lute), Mark Caudle (bass viol)

Recorded in January & March 1994.

Won’t you step into the home of the Grenes of Great Milton? This recording will transport you back to rural England at the turn of the seventeenth century and the intimate, introspective environment of domestic music-making. And how fortunate the Grenes were to have in their service John Danyel (1564-c1626), a composer of music so tuneful and alert to the texts he is setting.

We have here an entertaining selection of vocal solo and quartet music, which was printed in 1606, interspersed – as it would have been at the Grenes’s house – with lute solos and duets (which, apparently, may have been only partly composed by Danyel), suited to a variety of occasions. Two of the works, Mrs E. her funeral tears for the death of her husband and Can doleful notes?, are in three parts and skilfully interrelated. Those of Mrs E.’s mourning each employ the same final line of text, “Pine, fret, consume, swell, burst and die”, though Danyel sets it differently each time (I won’t spoil the effect by telling you how). The melodic treatment of the second trio offers stark contrasts, between the wandering lines of “Can doleful notes”, the scalic “No, let chromatic tunes” and “Uncertain turns of thought” (with its wonderfully poised setting of “then die and dying last”), which ultimately inform a progression of thought. Coy Daphne fled is a narrative in which the first stanza is sung by Nigel Short and the answer by Libby Crabtree, to great effect; its connection with the Grene family, and Anne Grene (the dedicatee) in particular, is evident from the final line: “She rests still Green, and so wish I to be”.

Nigel Short takes the lion’s share of the songs, bringing to them poise, beauty of tone and formidable vocal control – nothing less than the music requires. The magical opening track, Like as the lute delights, immediately signals the prominence on the CD and the sublime skills of Short’s principal accompanist, David Miller, who ends the recording with Danyel’s divisions on Browning (Mistress Anne Grene her leaves be greene), playing a specially tuned nine-course lute.