Flow My Tears

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Flow My Tears was originally a lute song written by the Elizabethan composer John Dowland , which also found its way into the English vocabulary as a poem.

Before becoming the most famous of Dowland's works, this lute song was originally published as an instrumental work under the title Lachrimae Pavane in 1596 .

It is believed that Dowland himself wrote the text. The melancholy that bears the lyrics was in vogue in Elizabethan times, and so the play became one of the most famous works in the English language.

About the song

The song consists of three short musical sections (A, B, C), each of which is repeated immediately:

AA (verses 1 and 2), BB (verses 3 and 4), CC (verse 5 is repeated on the same melody). The music composed by Dowland increases the mood of sadness through its slow tempo, the use of the minor key and its descending four-note melody pattern, which is supposed to represent falling tears. This descending pattern also shapes the entire song through changes in pitch and rhythm.

The text expresses the intense melancholy of a person whose happiness has been abruptly destroyed and who no longer wants to be rescued from this dark despair, which conjures up ideas of darkness and neglect.

The lyrics begin with a call to mourn and cry, a visual language that is very much appreciated by the courtly audience. However, it was not a song that was aimed at people who really grieved, but rather a fashionable accessory, which, however, does not weaken its simple and powerful imagery.

The poem

text translation

Flow, my tears, fall from your springs!
Exiled for ever, let me mourn;
Where night's black bird her sad infamy sings,
There let me live forlorn.

Flow, my tears, flow from your sources,
Banished forever: let me mourn.
Where the black bird of the night
sings its dark song, there let me be lonely.

Down vain lights, shine you no more!
No nights are dark enough for those
That in despair their last fortunes deplore.
Light doth but shame disclose.

Go out, you dim lights, shine no more!
No night is dark enough for those who
desperately mourn their lost happiness,
The light only reveals their shame.

Never may my woes be relieved,
Since pity is fled;
And tears and sighs and groans my weary days, my weary days
Of all joys have deprived.

My suffering can never be alleviated
Since all pity has disappeared,
And tears and sighs and laments have
robbed my difficult days of all joy.

From the highest spire of contentment
My fortune is thrown;
And fear and grief and pain for my deserts, for my deserts
Are my hopes, since hope is gone.

From the highest peak of contentment
my happiness has been plunged down
And fear and grief and pain in this loneliness
are my hopes because hope is gone

Hark! you shadows that in darkness dwell,
Learn to contemn light
Happy, happy they that in hell
Feel not the world's despite.

Listen, you shadows who dwell in the dark,
learn to despise the light!
Happy, happy are those who
do not feel the torments of this world in hell !

reception

The piece was enthusiastically received and adapted by Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck , Melchior Schildt and William Randall , as well as partly used by the German band Subway to Sally in the song Syrah. The band Qntal has released a version of "Flow My Tears" on their album "Qntal IV - Ozymandias".

literature

  • Keith Roberts: Pavane or the momentous assassination of Elizabeth I . Heyne, Munich 1977, ISBN 3-453-06224-8 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Roger Kamien: Music: An Appreciation , Brief: "Flow My Tears expresses the intense melancholy of someone whose happiness has been abruptly shattered." ( Online , seen December 15, 2015).
  2. ^ Qntal IV. Ozymandias / Qntal. In: http://www.sonusantiqva.org . Retrieved May 17, 2020 .