O Sweet Love: Songs by Dowland & Byrd

William [Composer] Byrd (Composer), John Dowland (Composer), Daniel Taylor (Performer) | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Performer: Daniel Taylor
• Composer: William [Composer] Byrd, John Dowland
• Audio CD (April 10, 2001)
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: Atma Classique
• ASIN: B00005B677
• In-Print Editions: MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #344,030 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Editorial Reviews

From International Record Review - subscribe now

The consort song is among the most rewarding of Elizabethan musical genres. In it we experience the pleasure of listening to a voice as part of a broader musical texture, the singer blending into the polyphonic weave created by the four viol players. We also enjoy the medium itself as something wonderfully sturdy and flexible, 'apt', in the period meaning of the word, for court entertainments, church services or amateur home music-making. This was a form which the great Tudor and Jacobean composers such as Thomas Morley and Orlando Gibbons delighted to explore to its fullest, but the real virtuoso in the field was William Byrd in collections such as the Psalmes, Sonets and Songs of 1588. Byrd's gift for moulding and expanding a singable voice line 'framed', as he put it 'to the life of the words' is matched by the supple authority of his counterpoint, a learning which manages simultaneously to flatter the singer.In the case of the young Canadian countertenor Daniel Taylor it doesn't really need to. The programme on this disc presents a mixture of Byrd consort songs, Dowland lute songs and instrumental pieces by both composers played by lutenist Stephen Stubbs with Susie Napper and Margaret Little on violas da gamba. This collection is as good as any in introducing those unfamiliar with Elizabethan art music to its skilful fusion of contrapuntal techniques with folk melody, popular tunes and dance rhythms. It is hard to imagine a better demonstration of the ways in which a period style can come alive in hands gifted with a genuine sense of its expressive vitality and sophistication.Taylor's voice – colourful, potent and keenly focused – is an ideal advocate for these pieces. In the disc's more sombre moments, such as the great Byrd laments for Thomas Tallis and Sir Philip Sidney, the singer creates an appropriate rhetorical climax to these songs without ever losing sight of the inherent beauty in their ensemble structure. The Dowland numbers, on the other hand, are treated with a stunning vocal agility which allows each significant word of the text its due impact while sustaining suitable rhythmic crispness. Listen to Shall I strive or Come again and virtuosity of this kind almost makes you feel that you're catching the authentic tones of intimate erotic conversation from Shakespeare's age.Some listeners may quibble with the decision to divide the instrumental lines between a brace of gambas rather than allotting a player to each of the four parts. Les Voix Humaines, however, aren't called this for nothing, adept as they are in exploiting the quasi-vocal qualities – what one Jacobean poet memorably called 'the grumbling cat-lines' – of their instruments. There's a humorously galumphing account of The Carman's Whistle, while Tregian's Ground shows Byrd at his most absorbingly cerebral. As for Stephen Stubbs's lute, thank goodness for a player who, instead of apologetically picking and scratching in the background, makes us wake up and take notice. In the end, though, this is Daniel Taylor's show, a genuinely exciting engagement by a countertenor of obviously stellar radiance with music for whose subtler shadings he has an infallible grasp.Jonathan B. Keates

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Sweet Love hath climbed its mountain peak, May 11, 2006

By 

Ingrid Heyn "No man is an Iland, intire of it... (Melbourne, Australia) - See all my reviews

This review is from: O Sweet Love: Songs by Dowland & Byrd (Audio CD)

There are some performers whose recordings are instantly slotted into the "must have" section of a collector's mind. The sweet-as-mead voice and high intelligence of Canadian countertenor Daniel Taylor make him one of these performers.

Daniel Taylor's voice is like a map that is elegantly and sensitively written, expressive and colourful, its lines and lineaments portraying to the highest degree the geography of music itself. This is no accident - it is an achievement which less intellectually gifted singers can rarely attain (and even then, only by following to the nth degree the careful and minute work of someone who DOES have this particular approach to the music). And when it is a unique interpretation, fresh every time and yet containing similar elements every time, the listener can but sigh with pleasure and bliss, thanking God in His kindness that He has given such a singer to grace the earth.

Dowland's and Byrd's songs are among my favourite in the entire oeuvre. I adore performing them; I adore listening to them. I do demand more when I listen than a pretty tone. Pretty tones are easily come by. I want... I want to hear the poetry of the words in the music. I want to hear each word given a pearl-like placing in the phrase. I want to hear the phrases caress like silk the very texture of the air.

This recording performs exactly that. It is deeply satisfying, very beautiful, and demonstrative of Daniel Taylor's most excellent technique. (I cannot fathom the criticism in one of the previous reviews, in which the reviewer complains of Mr Taylor's technique, speaking of flaws which I have not heard. Either I am peculiarly insensitive to these flaws, or - more likely, since I'm a critical (in the best sense of the word!) listener of music as well as being both a performer and teacher of singing - these flaws exist with as little validity as the oft-vaunted single-footed monsters drawn on Renaissance maps. In other words... they do not exist.)

Beautiful, beautiful singing. Very highly recommended indeed.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Montreal Countertenor Shines, April 4, 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: O Sweet Love: Songs by Dowland & Byrd (Audio CD)

You have got to...
You need to...
You must...
You will never be the same after you...
FIND THIS DISC.

His performance of "Shall I strive with words to move" sums it
all up. TOOOOOO BEAUTIFUL.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars heartbreakingly beautiful, July 21, 2009

By 

Catherine Iannuzzo (Boston, MA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Byrd - Dowland: "O Sweet Love" (MP3 Download)

Taylor really understands this music, and his interpretation ravishes the ear and the mind. I can't recommend it highly enough.