Sting Sings Dowland - Early Music America

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Sting Sings Dowland
The British rock star talks about his fascination with the music of the great Elizabethan lutenist
that it blew
me away when I first heard it.
There is simply no precedent for this
song. It exists completely alone, and I
love singing it.” The song is John Dowland’s “In Darkness Let Me Dwell,” and
the singer is Sting. That’s right, Sting,
who, as a member of The Police and as
a successful solo artist, has made dozens
of pop and rock CDs. And now for
something completely different: Sting
and lutenist Edin Karamazov have just
released Songs from the Labyrinth, a
recording of Dowland songs, on the
Deutsche Grammophon record label.
“The songs of John Dowland have
been haunting me for over 20 years,”
says the singer. Sting’s first taste of
Dowland came after a 1982 Amnesty
International benefit concert. The English actor John Bird mentioned the composer, and the seed was planted. Sting
remembers, “The next day I was
intrigued enough to seek out a recording
of Dowland’s songs performed by Peter
Pears, with Julian Bream on lute.” He
appreciated the beauty of Dowland’s art
but did not see himself performing the
songs.
A decade later, Sting’s friend, the
concert pianist Katia Labèque, suggested he rethink that position. She coached
him on three songs that he performed at
informal musical soirées. Time passed,
and Sting’s long-time colleague, rock
guitarist Dominic Miller, stepped into
the picture. “Dominic commissioned
the instrument-maker Klaus Jacobsen to
make a nine-course lute for me,” says
Sting.
Of course, it’s one thing to have the
instrument, another to play it. Miller
introduced Sting to the Sarajevo-born
lutenist Edin Karamazov after one of
their Frankfurt shows. Karamazov
played Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D
T
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PHOTO: KASSKAKA/DG
HE SONG IS SO MAGICAL
minor, a jaw-dropping moment. Sting,
Miller, and Karamazov spent an intense
hour talking about music. Karamazov
remembers the moment: “I played for
him, and I think Sting believes in
instinct and felt that we had something
in common, something to share. He
said, ‘Let’s do something together.’ The
first person I thought of was John
Dowland.”
“Edin’s rather a mystical character,
like someone out of another era,” says
Sting. “He has a successful concert
career, but he also plays on the street in
Dubrovnik when he feels like it. He’s
not of this time. He’s absolutely passionate about the music and driven to
do things that are refreshing and new.
As soon as I met him, I knew that this
was the time for this catalog of songs,
which had been haunting me for so
long.”
He continues, “I immersed myself in
Dowland for two years, but it was never
planned as a recording until the last
minute. It was basically a labor of love.”
Former lead singer of The Police, Sting
(left) has collaborated with lutenist Edin
Karamazov (right) on an album of music by
John Dowland and readings, to be released
by Deutsche Grammophone in October.
In addition to studying lute with
Karamazov, Sting studied Karamazov’s
recordings. “Edin had recorded with the
countertenor Andreas Scholl. I was very
interested in the record they made
together because Edin was playing and
because, at the time, it was the latest
recording of Dowland songs. I listened
to it very closely and respected it
immensely.
“As a matter of fact, I listened to a
lot of Dowland recordings and felt that
I couldn’t compete with that style but
also thought that maybe there was
something I could do in my own style
that would be relevant, respectful, and
new.”
Respecting the past included taking
singing lessons. “I wanted someone
from the serious music side to advise
me about breath and where to breathe,
so I spoke with Richard Levitt of the
Schola Cantorum in Basel,” Sting says.
“I have good breath control, but occasionally I might make a decision about
where to breathe that might make nonsense of the lyrics. I needed someone
with the discipline to say, ‘You should
breathe there, at the end of this line,
where the comma is and not where you
think it should be.’ I also had a problem
with diphthongs, so [Levitt] got me to
sing them without whining. He taught
me about warming my voice, which is
something I don’t normally do. It was a
great help to have someone with that
knowledge and experience.”
As Sting himself will tell you, his
recording is not what we’ve come to
think of as period Dowland performance. “I’m not really interested in the
concept of purity in music,” he says.
“You hear the phrase ‘music purist.’
What does that mean? It smells of fundamentalism, anti-progress. We’ve
evolved as a species by experimenting
and synthesizing ideas, coming up with
something new while at the same time
respecting the past and giving it its
due. It will be interesting to take it
somewhere else.”
But at the core is Sting’s fascination
with Dowland. “He pulls you into the
center,” says the singer. “The more I listen to the later songs, the more I realize
you can’t really understand what he is
doing unless you accept that it’s a spiritual path for him and he is finding his
way towards whatever is next. He’s
singing very clearly about death – not
a particularly common theme in pop
music.”
He continues, “Dowland’s songs are
very economic, which is not to say simple; they are complex songs, but there is
an economy about them that is quite
staggering. There’s hardly any dressing
up in them, nothing flowery. They are
very ascetic. He says a great deal without saying too much. He’s very pithy,
and his musical ideas stand out like little
gems in the dark. I’d like to assimilate
that into my own work – being less
verbose, less flowery.
“He borrowed a lot of European
styles, but there is something very English about them,” says Sting. “I’ve
learned a great deal by sitting in the
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A letter from John Dowland to Robert Cecil,
Earl of Salisbury, which Sting reads on
his new album for Deutsche Grammophone,
Songs from the Labyrinth. Letter printed
courtesy of the Marquess of Salisbury.
room with [Dowland] and playing his
notes, watching him make decisions
about where the stuff goes, and recognizing motifs and his little tricks. It’s
dazzling for the period, with an amazing
sense of chromatic invention. Amazingly, he was one of the first popular
artists, and his songs were produced for
a mass market. Those songbooks found
their way into English homes and probably some of those in the American
colonies. He’s a comically itinerant musician, like me; I feel a certain sympathy
with him.”
In addition to songs, the CD includes
lute solos played by Karamazov as well
as Sting joining Karamazov in the
instrumental duet “My Lord Willoughby’s Welcome Home.” “Sting is a natural
musician,” Karamazov says. “During the
recording session he came in with some
of his own good ideas, wanting me to
improvise in some places. In working
with him, I improved my own way of
playing.”
Perhaps what makes the recording
unique – as if Sting singing Dowland
isn’t enough – are a series of read
excerpts from a long letter that Dow22
Fall 2006 Early Music America
land wrote to Queen Elizabeth I’s
secretary of state, Sir Robert Cecil.
“I was thinking people would hear
these songs without any knowledge of
the period or the historical character,”
says Sting. “People who are not early
music fans may not have ever heard of
Dowland and might pick this record up
out of curiosity. I wanted to give them
the context to understand the songs – a
it, that it would make sense to them.”
Sting continues to play his lute every
day. “As a bass player, I have some disadvantages with it, but Edin has given
me great guidance, and I’ve played every
note that Dowland has written. Whether
you’d want to pay money to hear that is
another issue, however.” Is there another early music recording in the future? “I
am very open to suggestions about
where I should go further with this,”
“If I bring a certain percentage Sting says. “I’m rather interested in taking what I’ve assimilated in this music
of people along from
and making something new with it –
The Police to my own work
and I don’t mean just adding drum beats
and now to a new place,
to it. I’m not quite sure where it could
like Dowland, then I feel
arrive or what it could be, but it excites
my job is very satisfying.”
me. I like to think that good work is
never wasted. Even if this never became
– Sting
a record, it would have somehow bled
kind of historical soundtrack. So we
into my development as a musician.”
have this rather paranoid letter where
“I’ve tried to bring audiences along
Dowland is trying to save his livelihood with me on my little journey,” Sting conand perhaps his life [Dowland was a
tinues. “For me, music is a spiritual path
Catholic during a time when that could
and is about learning. I’m still a student.
prove fatal] by speaking to the highest
If I bring a certain percentage of people
courtier in the land during a time when along from The Police to my own work
England was a police state. It has a
and now to a new place, like Dowland,
drama to it that provides a kind of
then I feel my job is very satisfying. I
ambient context to the songs. I enjoyed know it’s not going to be a platinumreading the letters, and we improvised
selling record on the top of the Billsome music behind them – an experiboard charts. But who knows? You
mental idea. It was doing this that
just don’t know what this music can
clinched the idea of making a record for do to people.”
me. I thought people would respond to —Craig Zeichner

T h e
T e r r a
S
N o v a
C o n s o r t
• Winners in the 1999 EMA/Dorian Recording Competition
• Featured performers at Regensburg Festival in 2000 and 2004
• Ensemble in Residence at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival
for over 15 years
• Two CDs on Dorian Label: Renaissance en Provence & Baylado:
Journey into the heart of Spain
• New programs: Song That Never Ends, Traditional song of Galicia
and Alta California: music of California circa mid-19th century
• Now touring Renaissance en Provence and Baylado
For booking information contact:
Thomas Gallant at MCM Music Management (845) 691-4960
tpgallant@mcmartistsworldwide.com
You may purchase CDs by visiting www.terranovaconsort.com
“Terrifically stylish and full of spirit...”
—The Chicago Tribune
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