John Dowland, whistle-blower

Synopsis

On today’s date in 1595, in Nuremburg, the English composer and lutenist John Dowland wrote a long, agitated letter back home to London. The letter was addressed to Robert Cecil, one of the closest confidents of Queen Elizabeth.

In 1595, Europe was split into rival Catholic and Protestant camps. Spies and double agents mixed with foreign travelers and foreign students. Both sides were guilty of assassination attempts and acts of terror.

While in Italy, Dowland had fallen in with a group of English expatriates, and, to his horror, discovered that some of them were plotting to assassinate the Queen. Perhaps fearing that word of such contact would filter back to England and ruin any chance of securing a position at court, Dowland fled to Germany and penned his long letter to Cecil, “God he knoweth,” wrote Dowland, “I never loved treason or treachery nor never knew any, nor never heard any Mass in England.”

Dowland never did land that plum job at Elizabeth’s court, and ended up in the service of the Danish King. As luck would have it, the Danish King’s sister Anne married the King of Scotland, who, after Elizabeth’s death, became King James the First of England. Finally, in 1612, Dowland got what he most wanted: a position as one of the King’s Lutes, at a salary of 20 pence a day.

Music Played in Today's Program

John Dowland (1563 – 1626) A Jig Paul O'Dette, lute Harmonia Mundi 907164

On This Day

Births

• 1668 - French composer, organist and harpsichordist François Couperin ("Le Grand"), in Paris;

• 1873 - French composer and conductor Henri Rabaud, in Paris;

• 1928 - Italian film music composer Ennio Morricone, in Rome;

Premieres

• 1726 - Bach: Sacred Cantata No. 98 ("Was Gott tut, das ist wohlgetan" II) performed on the 21st Sunday after Trinity as part of Bach's third annual Sacred Cantata cycle in Leipzig (1725/27);

• 1733 - Handel: opera "Semiramide" in London at the King's Theater in the Haymarket (see Julian date: Oct. 30);

• 1739 - Handel completes in London his Concerto Grosso in A, Op. 6, no. 11 (see Julian date: Oct. 30);

• 1862 - Verdi: opera "La Forza del destino" (The Force of Destiny) in St. Petersburg at the Grand Imperial Theater;

• 1872 - Bizet: suite, "L'Arlèsienne," in Paris, at a Pasdeloup concert;;

• 1896 - Dvorák: String Quartet No. 12 in Ab, Op. 105, in Vienna;

• 1910 - Elgar: Violin Concerto, at Queen's Hall, London, during a concert of the Philharmonic Society of London with the composer conducting, and Fritz Kreisler the soloist;

• 1932 - Bernard Wagenaar: Symphony No. 2, Arturo Toscanini conducting the New York Philharmonic;

• 1957 - Copland: incidental music for "The World of Nick Adams" (after stories by Ernest Hemingway), for a live CBS television dramatization;

• 1994 - Stephen Albert: Symphony No. 2, by the New York Philharmonic, with Hugh Wolff conducting;

Others

• 1595 - Lute virtuoso and composer John Dowland pens a letter from Nuremberg to Robert Cecil (a member of Queen Elisabeth the First’s Privy Council), warning of a plot against the Protestant Queen he discovered among some expatriate English Catholics in Italy; In the long, defensively autobiographical letter, Dowland protests his own loyalty, despite admitting his previous Catholic leanings;

• 1888 - Fritz Kreisler, age 13, makes his New York City debut in recital at Old Steinway Hall;

• 1900 - Russian pianist Ossip Gabrilowitsch makes his Carnegie Hall debut in New York City during his first American tour; In 1909 he married contralto Clara Clemens, the daughter of the American writer Samuel Clemens/Mark Twain (see also listing for Nov. 16);

• 1909 - Gustav Mahler conducts the New York Philharmonic from the keyboard of a Steinway piano (whose action had been altered to imitate a harpsichord) in his symphonic arrangement of movements from Bach’s Orchestral Suites during the first of a series of “historical” concerts surveying music from the Baroque Age to the present day.