A Pilgrimes Solace 1612 (1993)

"JOHN Dowlands last publication, A Pilgrimes Solace (1612), was perhaps the finest of his four songbooks. In it, he sought to unite the traditional approach to composing with the new music emanating from Italy. There is a touch of sardonic humour in his only setting of Italian poetry in a scherzo, Lasso vita mia: the poem self-consciously plays with the traditional gam-ut syllables (la, so, fa, mi, re etc.), but has the mindless Cantor, who is not familiar with the teaching of the previous 800 years, crying out Mi fa morire on the wrong hexachord pitches. This complicated humour is typical of Dowlands dilemmahe was at once a conservative and a progressivewhich is why, perhaps, his music has universal appeal"