No abstract
Lawes's autograph songbook, Lbl Add. MS 31,432 (1639–41), is the most complete source of his vocal music. Most of Lawes's solo songs can be referred to as court songs or cavalier songs. Several are theater songs; indeed, more theater songs by Lawes survive than by any other composer of this period. English songs composed during the reign of Charles I have a distinct character, a unique amalgam of English tunefulness, Italian declamation, and French lyricism. This blend is quite unlike the more sophisticated gentility of the earlier English lute song, exemplified in the songs and ayres of John Dowland and John Danyel. Cavalier songs are more direct, more robust, less contrapuntal, and simpler in harmonic design. Lawes's solo songs may be divided into three main types: declamatory songs, tuneful airs, and dance songs. To these may be added declamatory-ballad forms and theater songs.
Lawes's music for more than one solo voice includes dialogues, partsongs (some with a solo section), and catches. Dialogues are settings of a short incident involving two or more characters, usually ending with a chorus. The partsongs include contrapuntal multi-voiced pieces, similar to solo declamatory songs, but with more voices. Several are for the theater. Some are harmonized airs, tuneful airs with extra voice parts, including dance songs. Several are energetic drinking songs. Lawes was a prolific writer of catches. Catches, mainly used as drinking songs, generally have a humorous content, often bawdy, and often involving play on words. Four of Lawes's catches, all drinking songs, were composed for the theatre.
Lawes's surviving sacred music consists of three verse anthems, one sacred song, twelve verses for psalms with psalm-tune choruses, thirty-two motet psalms, and eleven canons. His “Oxford” Psalms are unlike other English church music of the time, being settings of metrical psalms as a series of declamatory verses for solo voices and thoroughbass, alternating with choruses singing common psalm tunes. Lawes's motet psalms, for three voices with thoroughbass, are atypical of English church of the time. This edition includes thirty settings from Choice Psalmes (1648), plus two newly discovered psalms from the Chirk Castle partbooks. Lawes's canons are from Choice Psalmes, his autograph Ob MS Mus. Sch. b. 2, and his autograph song book Lbl Add. MS 31,432. One sacred song survives, “When man for sin thy judgement feels,” a highly embellished setting of lyrics based on verses 11 and 12 of Psalm 39.
Most of Lawes's surviving music for masques and entertainments exists in his autographs, Ob MS Mus. Sch. b. 2 and Lbl Add. MS 31,432. This edition contains all of Lawes's surviving music for Ben Jonson's The King's Entertainment at Welbeck (1633), three court masques (with symphonies for the vocal pieces: Shirley, The Triumph of Peace [1634], Davenant, The Triumphs of the Prince d'Amour [1636], and Davenant, Britannia Triumphans [1638]), and a school masque, Shirley, The Triumph of Beauty (ca. 1640-44). Music for the entertainment and masques includes solo songs (most are declamatory songs with chorus), dialogues, partsongs, one brief duet, two trios, and choruses. Several masque items have instrumental symphonies, probably for strings and thoroughbass. The symphonies are brief, light preludes in binary form. All are tuneful and rhythmically active. They have little thematic relationship with the vocal music.
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