John Dooland Music Analysis

The act of interpreting music boils down to a subjective standpoint. Multiple people may listen to the same musical work and interpret the tone, mood, and theme of the work in different terms. Typically, authors knew what kind of emotions they wanted to evoke in their listeners. However, without leaving a strict manuscript for his listeners, John Dowland allows for his audience to categorize the genre that his works fall under. By leaving room for interpretation, “Sting,” an English musician and rock band member, took to Dowland’s work and categorized Dowland’s music as pop. Learning about art music in class while also growing up surrounded with pop music leads me to believe that Dowland’s works not only fall under the category of pop, but also art music, unlike the Eastern Standard Trio which …show more content…
Most artists fall under one distinct genre of music and very slightly relate to other genres. When listening to Dowland’s music, a repetitive chorus carried throughout each piece. Sting himself performed the vocal parts of the work occasionally juxtaposed with his own lute playing, while his companion Edin Karamazov plays the lute. Eventually the lute went “out of style” according to Sting, however in Dowland’s day the lute symbolized a specialized instrument for those talented enough to strum each of its fifteen strings.
Dowland’s music as a whole contains a melancholy, but also uplifting mood. The music almost sounds similar to Baroque opera in regard to the low pitch and the use of multiple pauses and dragging of the lyrics. In addition to categorizing Dowland’s music as pop music, Sting claims that Dowland’s pieces have an economic feeling to them. According to Sting, economic music means a very organized and spare approach to the dynamics of each work. Dowland’s music falls under both categories of art and pop music in regard to the way it is performed and the composition behind each