White as Lilies - English Renaissance Song

Music & lyrics by John Dowland, vocals & arrangement by Farya Faraji, starring my man Christophe Chapleau. This is another song by renowned 16th century English composer John Dowland, a composer who excelled in the polyphonic forms of Western European music popularised in his day and age. The arrangement consists of violas, a flute and a lute, playing the entire polyphonic arrangement below the vocals, who support the main monophonic vocal line. You will find other versions of this song employing the full polyphony with the vocals, but the practice of using the polyphonic parts as instrumental supports for the main melody was still common historically, and this arrangement will provide an alternative insight into the many ways this song would have been performed in its day and age. I didn’t have time to learn this era’s pronunciation so I chose to go with the conventional pronunciation used by English singers of the Early Music repertoire—a sort of heightened version of Received Pronunci