It has taken a surprisingly long time for Hyperion, an English label distinguished in the area of Baroque music, to get to the music of brothers William and Henry Lawes. It forms an indispensable part of the literature that we have from the reign of Charles I, which is typically presented as a period in which the common Englishman lived in hopeless subservience to the King, only ending with the English Civil War and Charles' goateed head resting on a bloody bundle of straw. The Lawes brothers were faithful and devoted ...
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It has taken a surprisingly long time for Hyperion, an English label distinguished in the area of Baroque music, to get to the music of brothers William and Henry Lawes. It forms an indispensable part of the literature that we have from the reign of Charles I, which is typically presented as a period in which the common Englishman lived in hopeless subservience to the King, only ending with the English Civil War and Charles' goateed head resting on a bloody bundle of straw. The Lawes brothers were faithful and devoted servants to the King -- William died defending him in 1645 -- but the music they created, and in particular, the poetry they set, demonstrates that the court of Charles I was anything but a slavish indulgence. The court music of the Lawes brothers is lively, discursive, and often irreverent, suggesting that the King, while he ruled with an iron hand, was not above considering a variety of points of view within his own court, and was even willing to take some pointed criticism, if well...
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