As the title suggests, Mistress Elizabeth Davenant, Her Songes, was a collection of music made for a specific individual. The collection dates to the year 1624 and has never left Oxford, where Elizabeth Davenant's father, John Davenant, was a prosperous tavern-keeper whose clientele apparently included William Shakespeare. This is not the only recording to take a cross-section of English early music by relying on a single manuscript, but it is one of the most interesting, and, as long as you are ready for a mood that's very ...
Read More
As the title suggests, Mistress Elizabeth Davenant, Her Songes, was a collection of music made for a specific individual. The collection dates to the year 1624 and has never left Oxford, where Elizabeth Davenant's father, John Davenant, was a prosperous tavern-keeper whose clientele apparently included William Shakespeare. This is not the only recording to take a cross-section of English early music by relying on a single manuscript, but it is one of the most interesting, and, as long as you are ready for a mood that's very gloomy even by the standards of English music of the early 17th century, one of the most attractive. The preponderance of melancholy songs, interrupted by a few dances for lute but by hardly any cheerful vocal music, seems to have resulted not from Mistress Davenant's individual personality but from a constellation of factors characteristic of the collection and the world of which it was a part. That world, contends annotator Anthony Rooley in the notes (which are worth the price of...
Read Less
Add this copy of Mistress Elizabeth Davenant: Her Songs to cart. $19.34, new condition, Sold by Importcds rated 4.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Sunrise, FL, UNITED STATES, published 2011 by Ramée.