Pitchperfect week 21: Dowland’s “Midnight”
Hellooooo Steemit! 🎶 Today I want to share a lovely, melancholic lute piece by Tudor-era composer John Dowland, on the ukulele. 💕 The incomparable Tony Mizen (a classical guitarist, and Britain’s first to obtain a degree in ukulele) has published this arrangement and many others in his book, From Lute to Uke, available via Amazon or Flea Market Music.
As I mention in the video, Dowland is most widely known for his lute and vocal duets and madrigals, but this is an unaccompanied lute composition.
For the curious, I am playing this on my baritone ukulele; ukuleles come in four sizes, the soprano (which most people are familiar with), the concert, the tenor, and the baritone. They are called thusly by size alone; many ukuleles are able to be tuned to a variety of tunings from mandolin style to guitar style. My baritone is currently using standard re-entrant tuning (g C e a) to better accommodate this arrangement.
Enjoy!
Thank you for performance, but also for all the interesting information!
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Beautiful and a little sad music. Really, sounds like a little guitar.
It is a tad melancholy, but, it is also a great example of a Dowland work (he was known for the melancholy).
The ukulele IS indirectly related to the guitar family; it is rather close to the cuatro and similar Portuguese instruments, which have lineage back to the vihuela (the father of the Spanish “classical” guitar). What gets interesting is that the lute — which was common to just about every other part of Europe — had its origins in the Middle East, and the Spanish, given their long and volatile history with the Muslims of Morocco, did not find the lute particularly appealing... so they developed the vihuela and associated instruments instead!
So the story goes, the small guitar-like instruments worked their way into Portugal, and then traveled across the world with the Portuguese sailors, at which point, the Hawaiians appropriated it and made it their own. 🙂
Wow, what an interesting story you told! About musical instruments - this is a specific knowledge, not everyone will know about their origin. @heatherthebardб you can write a whole book on this topic ))) And the attitude of the Spaniards and Moors in the middle ages has long been known. Yes, there were constant conquests and campaigns.
The chapter of the reenactment group I am a member of spans the entire Pacific Northwest where I live — Washington, Oregon, northern Idaho, and British Columbia. A few years ago, I won the “bardic” championship — a contest for musical and performance arts requiring research, documentation, and then a historically accurate performance. Two of the pieces I presented that year were lute pieces, transcribed for guitar (which i also play). The presentations were part performance, part history class for the audience. I LOVED it! One day when I am not so busy being mom (I competed before having children), I would love to compete again. 💕
So, you just have things to do again. That's great!