{"id":5442,"date":"2006-10-04T23:34:38","date_gmt":"2006-10-04T23:34:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2006\/10\/sting-and-john-dowland.html"},"modified":"2006-10-04T23:34:38","modified_gmt":"2006-10-04T23:34:38","slug":"sting-and-john-dowland","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/10\/sting-and-john-dowland.html","title":{"rendered":"Sting and John Dowland"},"content":{"rendered":"

I don’t think I ever blogged on this, although I know I meant to. Sting’s newest album, Songs from the Labyrinth<\/a>, is his performance, accompanying himself on lute, of the songs of 16th century composer John Dowland:<\/p>\n

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Born in 1563, Dowland was recognised in his own lifetime as one of the greatest musicians in Europe. But for much of his life, he was thwarted in his ambition to secure a post at the English court, only becoming lutenist to James I in 1612. Dowland was a Catholic who refused to attend services of the Church of England, but at a time when others of his faith negotiated favour with the Protestant queen, his failure to win a place at her court was also down to bad luck. Instead, he played for wealthy patrons in Europe, including Christian IV of Denmark. In November 1595, Dowland wrote to Sir Robert Cecil, Elizabeth I’s secretary of state, distancing himself from Jesuit enemies of the queen. Sting has incorporated extracts from this letter as short recitations on the album. "This project was never really meant to be a record. It was a labour of love. I wanted to learn these songs, and out of curiosity, Edin and I just kept going," said Sting. <\/p>\n

"I think it only became a record when we decided to put extracts of this letter in. Those that are familiar with John Dowland normally think of him as being this melancholy, doom-laden character, but he can write songs that are absolutely joyful – full of passion and happiness. He has it all. I’m not a trained singer for this repertoire, but I’m hoping that I can bring some freshness to these songs that perhaps a more experienced singer wouldn’t give. <\/p>\n

"For me they are pop songs written around 1600 and I relate to them in that way; beautiful melodies, fantastic lyrics and great accompaniments." <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n

This Sunday’s "Early Music Show" on the BBC3 features Sting and Dowland’s music. <\/a>The program is available for listening online for a week after its broadcast. <\/p>\n

(Sting himself talks about the album, unfortunately repeating historical myths about how the "Jesuits" were "tirelessly" working to overthrow Elizabeth, implying that the entire Catholic population was working to get rid of her. <\/a>Sorry, no. Most simply wanted to be able to practice their religion and be loyal subjects as well, somehow, and the Jesuits were not too happy with Pius V’s Bull, issued against the advise of English Catholics themselves. <\/a>.  Here’s your reading assignment for the fall, Sting.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I don’t think I ever blogged on this, although I know I meant to. Sting’s newest album, Songs from the Labyrinth, is his performance, accompanying himself on lute, of the songs of 16th century composer John Dowland: Born in 1563, Dowland was recognised in his own lifetime as one of the greatest musicians in Europe.…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":180,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5442","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nSting and John Dowland - Via Media<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/10\/sting-and-john-dowland.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Sting and John Dowland - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"I don’t think I ever blogged on this, although I know I meant to. 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The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/author\/awelborn"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5442","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/180"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5442"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5442\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5442"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5442"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5442"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}