Giovanni Coprario was actually an English composer named John Cooper who devised an Italian version of his name in an effort to garner some good PR. His rediscovery has been slow, perhaps because he is not much associated with the madrigal, the genre through which most listeners come to the music of the English Renaissance. This fine French release shows what many have been missing. At the center of the program are two sets of lute songs, the Songs of Mourning (1613) and the Funeral Teares (1606). Despite their similarity of function, the two are different in flavor. The Songs of Mourning were written after the death at age 18 of Prince Henry of Wales. They are public in form, with the individual songs addressed to figures from King James on down; the last two are directed to "most disconsolate Great Britain" and "to the World," respectively, with the final "O poor distracted world" delivering the Christian message just as the King James Bible was being prepared. These are profound and moving expressions of melancholy, with a somber mood unbroken by displays of compositional virtuosity such as highly chromatic treatment. It would be easy to guess Dowland as the composer if you didn't know otherwise. The Funeral Teares, for a lesser nobleman, are more in the nature of a warm recollection, with sober melodies underlaid by livelier instrumental parts (harp and viol are added at times to the lute accompaniment). Interludes are provided by the incidental pieces from The Masques of Squires (1614) and a pair of viol fantasies interpolated into the Songs of Mourning. The English pronunciations of soprano Anne Delafosse-Quentin and countertenor Paulin Bündgen may seem odd, with "nature" pronounced "NAH-ture" in the dour "Fortune and Glory" (track 4), among other examples, but the performers are relying on a theoretical reconstruction of the sounds of English in the time of King James. All texts are given in French and English, and the booklet offers two separate short essays, one practical, the other a more philosophical reflection on melancholy and its place in the British world at the time. An altogether absorbing release, if a downbeat one.
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