Artist: Chelys Consort of Viols, Emma Kirkby, James Akers
Title: A Pleasing Melancholy: Works by Dowland & Others
Year Of Release: 2017
Label: BIS
Genre: Classical
Quality:  flac 24bits - 96.0kHz + Booklet
Total Time: 01:12:15
Total Size:  1.3 gb

Tracklist
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01. Lachrimæ "Seven Tears": No. 1, Lachrimæ antiquæ "Flow My Tears"
02. Book of Songs, Book 2: No. 2, Flow My Tears
03. Lachrimæ "Seven Tears": No. 2, Lachrimæ antiquæ novæ
04. Lie Down Poor Heart
05. Book of Songs, Book 2: No. 2, If Floods of Tears Could Cleanse My Follies Past
06. Lachrimæ "Seven Tears": No. 3, Lachrimæ gementes
07. Lachrimæ "Seven Tears": No. 4, Lachrimæ tristes
08. Book of Songs, Book 2: No. 5, Mourn, Mourn, Day Is with Darkness Fled
09. Lachrimæ "Seven Tears": No. 21, Mr. George Whitehead His Almand
10. What Greater Grief
11. Paduan (After J. Dowland)
12. Volta (After J. Dowland)
13. Book of Songs, Book 2: No. 3, Sorrow, Stay (Arr. William Wigthorpe)
14. Eyes Look No More
15. Lachrimæ "Seven Tears": No. 5, Lachrimæ coactæ
16. Lachrimæ "Seven Tears": No. 6, Lachrimæ amantis
17. My Heavy Sprite (Arr. Ibrahim Aziz)
18. If I Could Shut the Gate Against My Thoughts
19. Lachrimæ "Seven Tears": No. 7, Lachrimæ veræ

‘A pleasing melancholy’ is how Robert Burton described the feeling that certain music can give rise to, in his The Anatomy of Melancholy from 1621. Some 20 years earlier John Dowland, melancholic par excellence, had expressed a similar idea in the dedication of his Lachrimae, or Seven Tears: ‘pleasant are the tears which music weeps’.

During this period in England, melancholia had become fashionable, especially in cultural and literary circles, and spawned countless poems, paintings and songs. When Dowland’s lute song Flow My Tears was published in 1600, the instrumental Lachrimae Pavan on which it was based had been in circulation for several years and was the composer’s ‘number one hit’ both in England and on the continent – and four years after the song, he returned to the music and varied it in the ‘seven tears’ for viol consort and lute.

Colleagues of Dowland such as Robert Jones and John Danyel explored similar moods and emotions in their own songs, sometimes – as in Danyel’s Eyes look no more – making clear allusions to Dowland’s famous pavan. The Chelys Consort of Viols released their first disc in 2015 to critical acclaim. For the present recording they are joined by lutenist James Akers, and Emma Kirkby, the English soprano who has long been a leading figure in the field of early music.