Sting's "Songs from the Labyrinth" Quiz

Answer: John Dowland

John Dowland was born most likely in or around London; however, there are some who claim that he was born in Ireland, perhaps near Dublin. He established himself as a lutenist and singer who composed many of his own songs. He achieved such a celebrated reputation that he believed himself the logical choice to replace John Johnson, one of Queen Elizabeth I's lutenists, upon his death. However, his application for this position was declined, and he bitterly believed his rejection was the result of his Catholicism, the faith to which he had converted earlier when he was in Paris serving the English ambassadors there. In response, he left England and began traveling the European mainland, where he settled in Denmark for a long while to serve the Danish monarchy. He apparently also traveled in Italy as well before making his way back to England, where he was eventually appointed one of King James I's lutenists. Throughout all of this time, he continued to write songs and publish them in various collections. By the end of his life, he had become known as the "English Orpheus" and was considered one of Europe's most accomplished lutenists. His songs are often melancholy ones lyrically; however, his music is often joyful and lively as it incorporates the contrapuntal rhythms of the dance music of his time.

Acoording to the booklet accompanying the album "Songs from the Labyrinth", Sting's interest in Dowland seems to have begun in 1982 while he was still recording new albums with The Police. One evening while performing at a show for Amnesty International, the actor John Bird visited Sting backstage and suggested to him that he explore the songs of John Dowland. Sting found a recording of some of Dowland's songs performed by Peter Pears and Julian Bream, and while he enjoyed what he was hearing, he didn't see how any of this music would be important to "the repertoire of an aspiring rock singer". Over a decade later, the concert pianist Katia Labeque convinced Sting that his "unschooled tenor" voice would be perfect for singing Dowland's songs, so Sting learned three of the lutenist's songs under her tutelage and performed them with her at a few informal gatherings. Then, a few years later, Sting's friend Dominic MIller, the guitarist credited on most of Sting's albums since "The Soul Cages", gave Sting a lute that he had had specifically commissioned to be built for Sting. However, it was not until later when Sting was introduced to Edin Karamazov, one of Europe's most critically acclaimed lutenists, that he began to take seriously the idea of recording an album of Dowland's music. Edin played an archlute for Sting backstage at one of Sting's shows in Germany, and Sting was instantly mesmerized. Edin visited Sting a few months later in England, and the rest is history, as they say. Sting compares his roundabout journey from being introduced to Dowland to recording an album of his music to walking a labyrinth--thus, the title of the album.

Answer: Come Again

The song "Come again" (on Sting's album, the words of the title after the first word are not capitalized) is in reality a longer song with more verses than the abridged version Sting recorded. Stnig explains in the booklet that accompanies the album that he chose to shorten the song not only for the sake of "brevity" but also to create purely a mood of passion, the feeling represented by the verses he opted to sing. Of course, even the words that Sting chooses to sing are laced with melancholy as well as with passion, for the singer is upset that he cannot be with the woman with whom he has shared a physically romantic encounter while he still burns with desire for her. Many of the songs from the Elizabethan period possess a melancholy tone, and Dowland's tunes are no exception. However, Sting, again in his album notes, explains, "It would be unfair to label Dowland--in today's reductive terminology--a 'depressive'". He later argues, "If there was a song to give the lie to Dowland's dolorous reputation, then surely it is "Come again", a joyous hymn to the intoxication of romantic love".

The notes and words of the song "Come again" appear in Dowland's book "First Booke of Songes", which was published in 1597. The music is Dowland's original composition; however, the lyrics remain anonymous.

Answer: Edin Karamazov

Edin (pronounced the same as the first two syllables of Edinburgh, Scotland) Karamazov was born in 1965 in Zenica, Bosnia and Herzegovina, spent his childhood in war-torn Sarajevo, and currently resides in Zagreb, Croatia. He began his career as a classical guitarist and gained fame and recognition through competitions throughout Europe. Eventually, however, he heard the lute and, as Sting recounts in the booklet accompanying his "Songs from the Labyrinth" album, "[fell] in love with its complexity and resonance and cut off his fingernails in preparation for the technique of playing with only the flesh of the fingers on the right hand". He then spent years studying the lute and music in Switzerland at the Schola Cantorum of Basle. Karamazov made his debut as a solo lutenist in 1998 when he was asked to replace Julian Bream at a performance. After that, he began to make many appearances on albums accompanying other musicians until 2006, when he and Sting collaborated. This compilation of John Dowland's songs from the English Renaissance brought Karamazov much more attention and exposure than he had previously experienced, and he released his first solo album, "The Lute Is a Song", in 2008 with Sting among others providing vocals on different songs. Karamazov is now celebrated not only for his great skill but his charasmatic playing as well.

At one of Sting's shows in Frankfurt, Germany, Dominic Miller, the guitarist who has played with Sting for over twenty-five years now, brought Edin Karamazov backstage to meet Sting an hour before Sting was to perform. Karamazov impressed Sting by playing Bach's "Toccata and Fugue in D Miinor", and they talked about music and its influence on their lives before the music of John Downland came up in conversation. A few months later, Karamazov visited Sting in England and eventually confessed to him that the two had met many years before. Sting did not recall such a meeting at first, so Karamazov reminded him of how he and Trudie Styler, Sting's wife, were attending a circus in Hamburg, where Karamazov and his band played selections from Mozart between various acts. Sting was so impressed by the band's playing that he sent word backstage to ask if the group would mind coming to England to play during a birthday celebration Sting and Trudie were setting up. Karamazov sent back a response that essentially said, "they would not be willing to perform for [Sting], that they were serious musicians and not performing monkeys at the beck and call of a rock singer and his wife". Sting then recalled the moment and remembered how terribly embarrassed he had been. Now, however, Karamazov was the one embarrassed, and as he began to apologize to Sting for his arrogance, Sting couldn't help but laugh at the whole situation.

Answer: Fine Knacks for Ladies

In the booklet accompanying the 2006 album "Songs from the Labyrinth", Sting includes a reproduction of the sheet music for "Come, heavy sleep" to demonstrate how songs like "Fine knacks for ladies" were represented and printed in the past. Both songs listed here and appearing on Sting's album were meant to be sung in four-part harmony. The sheet music demonstrates how all four parts are written on one page but separated and arranged on that one page so that each of the four singers could stand at a different side of a small table and read his part comfortably. In other words, one part is arranged top to bottom, another part is arranged bottom to top, a third part is arranged left to right, and the fourth part is arranged right to left. As Sting observes, this older format for sheet music suggests that "the venues for performing these songs were not grand salons or the concert halls of a later age, but small private livingrooms". He further explains his own feelings that "there is an intimacy to this music that lends itself easily to the proximity and whispering closeness of the modern microphone".

The song "Fine knacks for ladies" was published in 1600 in Dowland's "Second Booke of Songs". Again, Dowland wrote the music, but the composer of the lyrics is unknown.

Answer: Christianus the Fourth

Christianus the Fourth or Christian IV was king of Denmark and Norway from 1588 to 1648. His reign, which he began at the age of nineteen, remains one of the longest among the Scandanavian countries, and Christianus IV is remembered as one of the most popular and ambitious kings. He initiated a number of projects and reforms that established Denmark and Norway as one of the stablest and wealthiest nations of Europe during the time of the European Renaissance. However, he also involved Denmark in the Thirty Years War, which hurt the Danish economy as well as cost Denmark some of the territories it had once conquered. Interestingly, he changed the name of Norway's capital from Oslo to Christiania after himself, a name which remained until 1925.

John Dowland had a very important reason for composing this song for Chritianus IV and for naming the instrumental composition "His Most High and Mighty Christianus the Fourth, King of Denmark, His Galliard". First of all, Christianus was a great lover and supporter of music, and when Dowland left England after being rejected by Elizabeth I, he courted Christianus, who hired him as one of his court musicians. Christianus paid Dowland such a grandiose salary--500 daler per year-- that he became one of the most highly paid servants of the Danish court. Dowland served Christianus from 1598 to 1606, when he was dismissed from the court because of his often lengthy visits back home to England. However, Christianus's sister Anne had grown to be a great admirer of Dowland as well, and when she married James I of England and became queen, she was responsible for Dowland's being hired to serve in James's court as one of James's lutenists.

Answer: the archlute

The archlute is a stringed and fretted instrument with a round-backed sound box just as the lute is; however, it is slightly larger with longer and thicker strings so that it creates sounds somewhere between the tenor notes of the lute and the bass notes of the theorbo, essentially the larger bass equivalent of the lute. The archlute also tends to have fourteen courses whereas the lute has fewer. "Courses" are very closely spaced parallel strings, and an instrument with fourteen courses might have a total of twenty-eight strings.

Sting became seriously interested in playing the lute after Dominic MIller, the guitarist who has played on Sting's albums and toured with him for over twenty-five years, gave him an eight-course lute he commissioned Klaus Jacobsen, a well-respected professional lute maker, to build personally for Sting. The soundboard of this lute has a hole in its center designed to resemble the labyrinth on the floor of Chartres Cathedral, a design that Sting loved so much that he had had a labyrinth constructed according to the same pattern in the garden of his English home.

Sting was introduced to the archlute by Edin Karamazov, who collaborates with Sting on the "Songs of the Labyrinth" album. When Miller introduced Sting to Karamazov backstage at one of Sting's performances in Frankfurt, Germany, Karamazov played the archlute for Sting at that time. In the booklet accompanying the "Songs of the Labyrinth" album, Sting writes, "I'd never seen an archlute before and was immediately struck by the functional beauty of its design, and by its oriental strangeness".

On the album "Songs from the Labyrinth," Sting plays a 13-course archlute. However, Edin Karamazov plays an 8-course lute, a 10-course lute, a 13-course archlute, and a 14-course archlute (not all at the same time, of course).

In the notes accompanying the album, Sting comments on the challenge of learning to play various lutes: "Related to the Arabic "'ud', the lute is close enough to the guitar for a modern guitarist to feel relatively familiar with it, but different enough in tuning and fingering to force a brain-teasing restructuring of synapses. Slowly and surely, I began to be drawn into the labyrinthine complexities of this ancient instrument and its beguiling music".

Answer: Flow My Tears

The music of "Flow my tears" was definitely written by John Dowland, and many believe that he most likely wrote the lyrics as well. As noted in the question, the song became Dowland's signature piece because of his reputation as a melancholy musician; in fact, he often signed his name "Jo. Dolandi de Lachrimae" (John Dowland of Tears). The song is meant to be a hopeless one, and at one point the singer laments, "And fear, and grief, and pain for my deserts / Are my hopes since hope is gone".

The music of the piece is written in the style of music meant for a pavan, a slow, processional dance. Furthermore, the opening of the song makes use of the "falling tear motif", meaning it begins on one note and descends step by step through the musical scale of notes.

The song appears in print in Dowland's "Second Booke of Songes" published in 1600.

Answer: Sting's voice

The letter is an authentic letter penned by John Dowland himself and written to Sir Robert Cecil, who was in Nuremberg in 1595. The letter is dated 10 Novemeber 1595.

In 1594, Dowland had petitioned Queen Elizabeth I for the position of court lutenist after the musician John Johnson died and left the position vacant. However, Dowland was denied and was quite bitterly disappointed because he believed he was "most worthiest", as the letter written to Sir Robert Cecil explains. In fact, he is so full of despair that he quite pitifully expresses his belief that "any mygt have preferment but I". The letter is a lengthy one filled with flattery for Cecil and the queen and with apologies and explanations for some of his past activities that he is worried have created an obstacle to his finding employment at Elizabeth's court. For example, he explains that while in Paris at an earlier time of his life, he had converted to Catholicism after witnessing a Protestant attack on Catholics that tore at his heart. On another occasion, he mentions how while in Florence he was approached by English Catholics who offered him a pension from the Pope. He assures Cecil that he never accepted the offer, and he is worried that Cecil and others might think him a traitor to Elizabeth and England.

Sir Robert Cecil was during Elizabeth's time the most powerful courtier in England, and he served as Secretary of State and was essentially a spymaster in possession of a great number of state secrets.

Answer: Ben Jonson

Ben Jonson lived from 1572 to 1637. He began his career as a bricklayer, but as he detested this work, he abandoned it for a career in the military. After a few battles on the European mainland, he returned to England and began a career as a literary critic, poet, playwright, and actor. His first successful play was "Every Man and His Humour", published in 1598, and he followed it with a few others, including "Volpone, or The Fox" in 1606 and "The Alchemist" in 1610. He also found great fortune and patronage under King James I, for whom Jonson composed 24 masques with the musician Inigo Jones.

Jonson's life was filled with controversy. His first attempt at being a playwright was as a co-author of "The Isle of Dogs", which resulted in his being imprisoned because of its lewdness. Upon his release, he almost immediately found himself back in trouble with the law after killing a man in a duel. He managed to escape execution by hanging by pleading benefit of clergy, a very old loophole within the law that allowed people who could read Latin to sidestep a sentence of execution (as the Bible was written in Latin, readers of Latin were needed for the priesthood). However, while he was in prison this second time, he converted to Catholicism, a radical move in a nation of people who harbored animosity toward Catholics. In 1605, Jonson was accused of being involved in the Gunpowder Plot, an attempt by Catholic sympathizers to assassinate James I. Jonson managed to escape execution once again by volunteering to serve as a spy for the Protestant government and report on goings on within the Catholic world. Finally, in a move of arrogance, Jonson published all of his writing in one volume he called "Works of Ben Jonson". Not only was a compilation of one's work not published in this society until after one was dead, but James I had just recently published his own writings under the title "Works".

Answer: In Darkness Let Me Dwell

An earlier version of "In darkness let me dwell" appears in John Coprario's 1606 song collection "Funeral Teares". However, Dowland took the first verse of the song and set those lyrics to a much more complex piece of music he had written. This version appears in Dowland's 1610 book of songs "A Musicall Banquett" and is, of course, the version that Sting and Edin Karamazov perfrom on "Songs of the Labyrinth".

Of this song, Sting wrote the following words in the booklet that accompanies the "Songs of the Labyrinth" album: "It is a remarkable piece of work, with its anguished text and complex contrapuntal lute part, its surprising and theatrical ending. Though the song's profundity and complexity may suggest that it's unique, it takes its place among the other great soliloquies of the Elizabethan Age . . .".

Sting chose to place this song at the end of the album so that he and Karamazov might end with the piece which he feels they in some way began. It is "In darkness let me dwell" that Edin Karamazov asked Sting had he ever heard when the two met backstage at one of Sting's concerts. Sting responded that he was not familiar with the piece, and Karamazov remarked, "The greatest song ever written in the English language".