Songs from Dowland's First and Second Books

Dowland's oeuvre of over 80 published songs – matchless jewels of the songwriter's art, which started a national craze for lute song that ran for 25 years – spans several decades of stylistic development; this concert presents songs in his earlier styles, from the dance-form melodies of the First Book (1597) to more declamatory works in the Second Book (1600).

In 2023, five confirmed colleagues on the early music stage established Dowland’s Foundry: an ensemble whose heartland repertoire is the golden age of Elizabethan song, named after its most iconic exponent: the lutenist John Dowland.