pavane

Holman gives greatest attention to the "Seaven Tears Figured in Seaven Passionate Pavans," based on Dowland's well-known lute piece.

Holman further identifies a motive in the third strain of the pavan with one in the third strain of Thomas Morley's "Sacred End Pavin." The motive and the title come from a refrain at the end of an anthem by Christopher Tye and later anthems by Thomas Weelkes and Morley.

Discounting Dowland's Catholicism, Holman proposes that each tear pavan portrays a particular type of melancholy, that fashionable Elizabethan malady synonymous with Dowland's persona and music.

In fact the joint earliest source extant for the four-part series, and for only the first five items at that (the pavans, and fantasia No.

Dr Hanley gives no very detailed description of the layout of RCM MS 1197, though he follows its order as authoritative in prefacing the pavans to the fantasias.

Two inevitable questions face any performers of these pieces: are the seven 'passionate pavans' to be taken as an unbroken sequence?

On this disc a substantial piece for solo lute marks off the seven pavans from the generally lighter dances that comprise the rest of the collection.

The A minor Pavan (on folios [11.sup.v]--12) is actually misattributed here to Byrd: 'A pauen Mr Birde set to Lute by fr.

In his fourth variation, he relinquishes clear melodic statements of the tune for a texture in which two upper parts are in close canonic quavers over a harmonic bass line ('representing' the tune, which perhaps arose as a descant to it); this texture is strikingly similar to Variation 3 of the Quadro Pavan (No.