Three Lamentations (Excerpt) - "A Cascading Waterfall of Tears"

Following the death of my first real love Mandy Morris in 2002, I was finding it difficult to compose, or do much else for that matter. Towards the end of the year, I turned to one of my favorite composers – one who relished in writing music with a melancholy theme. This was the renaissance composer John Dowland. Using his music as inspiration, I filtered my own personal pain through his, and created a concerto of lamentations for alto flute and strings. Stylistically, I imagined the string orchestra as one giant consort of viols, and they are asked to mimic the play style and sound as closely as possible.

The second movement (from which this excerpt is taken) was inspired by Dowland’s work for lute, Semper Dowland, Semper Dolens (which translates to Always Dowland, Always Doleful). In this piece, Dowland uses a recurring motif of a two voice, falling canon. I expanded on that idea, creating falling canons of ever greater numbers, culminating in a giant crescendo, aurally depicting a cascading waterfall of tears. The piece also uses many distorted quotations from the Dowland piece itself, as if seen through a foggy, clouded memory.