Teares and Lamentations

About

Mayfield Consort (Director: David Force)

Minstrels of Melodious Melancholy (Director: Michael Fields)

The luscious sound world of the Jacobean royal court comes to St Dunstan's with a rare opportunity to hear works for voices accompanied by the instrumental ensemble known as a 'broken consort'. With viols, lutes, gittern, bandora and recorder, this was a favourite entertainment for aristocratic families in the reign of James I. Although on the surface the music appears to tap into the Jacobean obsession with melancholy, all is not what it seems: underneath, the texts and music deal with themes of love, jealousy, betrayal, greed and shameless lust that make modern phenomena such as Love Island look positively tame! The Mayfield Consort joins with the Minstrels of Melodious Melancholy, who include some of Britain's leading specialists in this repertoire, to perform a programme based around music from Sir William Leighton's 1614 collection 'The Teares and Lamentacions of a Sorrowful Soul', together with choral music by Tallis, Weelkes, Wilbye and Gibbons, and a celebration of the 400th anniversary of the lutenist John Dowland.