Sam Brown intermediate lesson: Mr Dowland's midnight

Added: 2026-05-15

[00:00:02]Hello and welcome to another Loot Society online intermediate loot lesson.

[00:00:08]As always, it's a pleasure to be giving this lesson.

[00:00:12]This year being all things Daland in the 400th uh year since his death. Today we're going to be having a look at a piece by Darland, one of his most famous and most iconic little gems, uh, Midnight, or as it's, uh, charmingly entitled in the Margaret Bour Loop book where it appears, Mr. Darlin's Midnight.

[00:00:36]Immediately from the title, we receive a great deal of the information um, of the mood of this piece. Darland is entering the um imagery or making use of the imagery of the uh insomniac uh melancholy lutinist who is unable to sleep sitting up with their loot. Um, as Burton points out, a melancholy man cannot sleep over much and the loot and its association with nighttime. Um, for this reason is a very very long association. As the Bowwell teacher um, tutor book points out to us, it is a faithful companion that watchth amidst the darkness. So there's a lot of reference material, a lot of imagery here associated with the loot and nighttime. And uh Daland here as in uh as elsewhere in his um uh output seems to be making a great deal of that connection. Um many of the songs in A Pilgrim Solace, for instance, concern this kind of nocturnal identity of the loot.

[00:01:52]There should be a couple of copies of the score available in the uh video links. Uh one uh unadulterated and one with a few fingering marks in it. It's worth pointing out that Midnight is a very short piece only 16 bars. And it is very much at the shall we say early intermediate stage of playing. However, as with so many uh such pieces, it really rewards closer study. And there are, you know, this is still a work of a genius. There are many very fine uh and very nuanced subtleties to be found in this piece which make it very rewarding and very worth our our careful attention. So with that in mind, let's have a look through the score from the air. The very first thing of course should be to take a look at the score and see what information we can and to have a shot at tapping out the rhythm of the piece. Um, you'll see there's no time signature. We're clearly in a sort of dupal time. I would be counting four and so the first bar I'd be counting one 2 and 3 4. Uh as always we put the um uh digit on the beat and on the quavers and uh oneander, two eander and so on on any semiquavers that we find.

[00:03:26]And as that first bar tells us so uh kindly we are automatically in pavan territory. This is the iconic pavan rhythm. And so we're very much in this pavine world, a stately, very often very somber mood. It's very appropriate for what we are aiming at. As we can also see directly from the page, we are looking at a very balanced piece of music. There's a perfect 4 + 4, 4 plus 4. We have chunk A, divisions on chunk A, chunk B, divisions on chunk B. So we're seeing something in miniature and we're seeing something very slowm moving.

[00:04:06]Now slow movement is the watch word of this piece and there are a lot of tricks that Darland employs in order to create this quite static quite heavy and quite brooding atmosphere that we encounter in the piece. Uh and they're very brilliant compositional techniques that he employs. Let's take a look and see what those are.

[00:04:32]Within the first bar, we have a great deal of information available to us. We know already that this is a pavan rhythm. So, we are thinking 1 2 and 3 and.

[00:04:48]Now, the first chord that we encounter in this piece is an open fifth. We're in the world of what we would today call D minor.

[00:04:59]We have our home note and we have the fifth. We have no third in this chord.

[00:05:06]In other words, we cannot tell yet whether we are in major or minor territory. That information is withheld us until the third beat of the bar.

[00:05:18]And there's the third we've been looking for. This is a common trick for Dalant.

[00:05:21]He employs it in his preludium and also in his setting of fortune where in other words we have an identity for this motif as something that's associated with quite slow movement um expansive movement and a kind of melancholy. And there are good reasons for this.

[00:05:51]um the amount of information that we receive is spread out over the first three beats of the piece. Uh in many instances, we know from the space of our first chord what our harmony is, what our landscape is, and that creates a sense of immediacy. Here we're being denied that information or it's being spread out so that we feel the sense of slow movement in the piece. The amount of information we usually receive in one beat is being spread out over three. Um, and this goes some way towards the, as I say, this static and slowm moving uh atmosphere in the piece.

[00:06:43]As we come into the second bar, we'll also notice that um we have three voices present to us at the moment. Um and the bass is tremendously static.

[00:07:00]It's really not going anywhere at all.

[00:07:03]Um we're holding this D for all of the first bar.

[00:07:12]This is an exercise in in finger dexterity. And then in the second bar, we hold it for three quarters of the bar only moving on the on the fourth beat. And again, if we can hold this finger down, this is uh very effective for us. It's very we see this happening where we take a finger away. Um we will lose some harmony there.

[00:07:43]will also help us to stress a little bit the C sharp. Um remember this is our home harmony. It needs no justification to be here. Whereas this carries some harmonic weight. It's a dissonant note and wants to be stressed a little. So alto together we'll have This creates the the first um two bar phrase of the piece. Um here in bar two, I'm using a fourth finger on the top and then moving down to either two or three.

[00:08:28]Uh one and four is a very lovely spacing for tenths and I I do recommend it. I find it tremendously comfortable.

[00:08:35]Now, in the third bar, we'll notice pretty much a verbatim repeat with with a with a small change. Um, and this repetition of material gives us this sense of slow movement that as I say we are creating. So, economy of means very little movement elsewhere.

[00:09:05]As we move into the fourth bar, what we encounter is a frigian cadence where we have a stressed and released chord here. Um, so press on the B flat and release on the uh A major. We very often hear it the other way round.

[00:09:34]But this is uh um not elegant phrasing.

[00:09:39]Um we'll notice also here that we've encountered another voice throughout the first phrase. We have been playing in three voice territory. And when we come to the the final chord of the phrase, suddenly we have a fourth voice introduced, which seems unusual. However, there's very good reasoning for it. In terms of our voice arithmetic, we can imagine that the tenor and alto voices, the inner voices have been sharing the A that's been held throughout the phrase throughout bar one, bar two, bar three, and then in bar four, sharing that B flat and then splitting into a C sharp and an E. So the the the mathematics checks out and there is a good reason for Dalin to include um a fourth voice in that final harmony. More on that in a moment.

[00:10:44]As we encounter the the divisions on this phrase, the first few bars don't really seem to warrant the name. There's only a change of one note.

[00:10:59]the inclusion of our our if you're playing seven chorus loot our low D um or lowest string.

[00:11:12]So again the we are creating a sense of depth of space and we're creating a sense of something very slowm moving very static a sort of oppressive sense of darkness is being created using this total economy of means. Something else that's well worth observing in the first phrase and indeed the second phrase is that the majority of this phrase does not extend beyond the compass that we heard within the first three beats. It doesn't go much further than that minor third.

[00:11:53]This is still the highest note we've seen. And it's only in the very last bar to take the divisions that we see um any moving outside of that third.

[00:12:11]Again, this creates a small compass for the first couple of phrases of this piece.

[00:12:22]funnily enough, um, uh, Howard Shaw employs exactly the same technique in his, uh, music for the Lord of the Rings. Um, if there are any fans, uh, watching this video, um, all of the themes concerning The Hobbits are within the compass of a a major third or built around that compass. Um, it's a small interval and it's happy just like the the Hobbits and it reflects the the narrow horizons of their world. And here we're seeing something similar. We are being invited into a musical space which has a very narrow sense of compass. We are we're brought into um a small quite brooding world. We're not seeing wide musical horizons here.

[00:13:10]the division in the fourth bar of this section of of uh A1 where we see a um a rising scale. Um traveling upwards carries with it some of the physicality of going up a hill.

[00:13:32]And therefore we can in order to phrase this we can slow up very slightly. Um and this will be very effective phrasing again stressing the B flat in the friian cadence and releasing onto the A.

[00:13:56]Now the reason for this um fourpart chord that we have just resolved on is uh made clear to us when we look at the next section the B section because what we see here is a again a very common trick for Dalon to employ. In the first bar of this phrase Darland entirely omits the bass. we have only uh the alto tenner and soprano voices and he'll employ this trick quite frequently. Um, think of the it's it's very obvious from the loot song repetry and if you have a listen to the fourpart version of go crystal tears there's a tremendously effective introduction of the bass um only after the first phrase um the entirety of the first sentence go crystal tears um is given to us only by the high voices tenner alto soprano and it creates a wonderful sense of color and contrast.

[00:15:01]And here we might be as we see this trick employed by Daland the instrumentalist but still thinking in terms of Daland the the songwriter the fourpart air writer. Um, we might draw a comparison between this choice and the effect that was being explored at the same time in the world of art of kiarosuro, the use of dark and light in high contrast. Um, we've certainly seen in the second phrase, um, our darkest notes on the loot.

[00:15:49]And now we have a bar of our highest textures. So, this seems to be a convincing description of what might be going on here.

[00:16:00]At the end of that bar, uh the start of the next bar, we see the in the reintroduction of the bass voice in on this this G, the uh tenor and alto voices having joint joint forces uh onto the D.

[00:16:21]Now, as we move forwards here, overholding becomes the uh the motto for this uh section. Um we in an ideal world will keep hold of the bases in this section. This B flat here which is quite a stretch.

[00:16:42]Uh an important note as we move the first finger across here. Take off the little finger otherwise we'll find ourselves with too many voices being sustained.

[00:16:56]I personally in the third bar of this section, this is bar um bar 11 um will be playing this chord using fingers two and four. And the reason for this is in order to keep hold of a finger on this F, the alto voice is singing here.

[00:17:29]So, we'll want to, if it is at all possible, keep hold of it. Um, there's a slight bit of jiggory pokery here.

[00:17:37]Putting a third finger on the top.

[00:17:45]Again, notice the first finger getting overheld here.

[00:17:52]Um, and here in bar 12, let's make this quite a throwaway cadence.

[00:17:58]We're not seeing very much harmonic information here. The melody is simply giving us red.

[00:18:05]So, a very soft resolution and a very sparse harmony in the bass.

[00:18:12]So, it doesn't warrant much of grandiosity.

[00:18:18]Now um a crucial point to make here is that um we have just had the end of phrase and the tablete C belongs to the next phrase and sets us up for some really quite wonderful divisions.

[00:18:48]The shape of these divisions um takes us first down and then back up.

[00:18:59]So if we we may wish to phrase it putting a tiny bit of weight on the chords like so.

[00:19:16]Now this tablete a is the breaking of a pattern. This is worth remembering. We have and then whenever we break a pattern we create a sense of energy in music. And so here we can take that energy and use it to push us forwards into the cadence. Um and again very throwaway light cadence here.

[00:20:05]I think this is about all we have time for today. So thank you very much for uh going with this going with me. um and going through this piece um with me. I hope that this may give some ideas uh for us as we tackle the piece going forwards. Um as always, any questions, comments, thoughts, please do drop me a line. I look forward to hearing from you. And uh happy playing. And if you are of a melancholy, insomniac nature, may this piece bring a great deal of solace.