CD: Various artists: The John Dowland Collection

"To be Irish is to know that in the end the world will break your heart." - Daniel Patrick Moynihan

It's been said that composer and lutenist John Dowland was Irish. I don't have the last word on Dowland's ethnicity, but he was, like Moynihan, a Catholic, and knew more than a bit about heartbreak, judging by his compositions.

I have to confess that when I faced the blog last week, I didn't have the heart for anything beyond a Shakespearean comedy or two. Perhaps Preston Sturges and Woody Allen have already said it all on the use of laughter as a weapon against despair, so I'll just leave it at that.

But in honor of Shakespeare's birthday and the continuing observances in DC, I had no choice but to return to his contemporary Dowland and the attendant themes of melancholy, mortality, and tears.

Then again, to return to Dowland has its rewards. On an overloaded shelf in my apartment is a stack of Dorian CDs, a fair number of which deal with English, Irish, and Scottish music. I went rooting around tonight and found various Dowland tracks lurking there among the Dorians, delicious collections from yesteryear featuring early music ensembles, lutenists, bright-voiced sopranos. Good CDs, better memories.

Which brings me to this particularly interesting collection from Deutsche Grammophon. It's not a label I'd particularly associate with early music, and yet here's a new two-CD disc set of Dowland works performed by an array of artists, most associated with an early music repertoire. Imagine, if you will, a collection with not one but two countertenors, Grayston Burgess and the great Andreas Scholl.

The tenor Nigel Rogers performs on three well-chosen selections ("I Saw My Lady Weep," "Shall I Sue," and "Me, Me, and None but Me"), which, if anything, left me wanting more.

Also appearing are Emma Kirkby (with the Consort of Musicke) and two other sopranos, the decidedly versatile Barbara Bonney and Anne Sofie von Otter. Bonney's radiant voice and sweet tone are especially pleasing here, given the tender melancholy of the lyrics. As always, I enjoyed the darker shadings of von Otter's voice and marveled at the breadth of her repertoire.

Ms. von Otter's fellow Scandinavian Goran Sollscher, who has recorded material extending from the Renaissance to Lennon and McCartney, provides brief but winning guitar transcriptions of Dowland lute pieces ("The Shoemaker's Wife," "A Piece without a Title," etc.). I enjoyed the way these instrumentals were interspersed with the solo vocals and ensemble work.

That said, I went back to guitarist Julian Bream's acclaimed recording of Benjamin Britten's Nocturnal (based on Dowland's "Come, Heavy Sleep") and searched again for another angle on the composer. I'm still searching, and it will no doubt take more interpretations before I'm finished.

Then again, the John Dowland who composed these melancholy themes also gave us "Fine Knacks for Ladies," heard on the collection disc in a charming performance by the Consort of Musicke. That's a song to bring a smile to the lips, and it's worth having more than one version of it (I certainly do).

Dowland is not done with us yet, either. Film composer Patrick Doyle appropriated "Weep You No More, Sad Fountains" for an arrangement in the 1995 film Sense and Sensibility, and of course Sting, as I mentioned in a previous blog entry, recorded his own Dowland album, Songs from the Labyrinth, on Deutsche Grammophon as well.

Perhaps withe Dowland, as with Shakespeare, we always await the next performance.