I think you're going to find me a bit of a Sting advocate here.

A couple of points to ponder:

Question. Should the label "classical" be applied to these songs? Highly questionable. They do not come from what most musicologists and "classical" musicians regard as the Classical Period, which runs roughly for 1750 to 1850 and includes composers such as Mozart, Haydn, and Beethoven. Following that is what is referred to as the Romantic Period, with such composers as Schubert, Chopin, and Tchaikovsky, along with opera composers such as Verdi, Puccini, Gounod, and Bizet.

Prior to the Classical Period was the Baroque period, with Vivaldi and Handel, early opera composers like Monteverdi (Handel taking a shot at it, too), with J. S. Bach pretty much the giant of the period. The lute and lute-like instruments were giving way to keyboard instruments.

But before that was the Renaissance Period, with Dowland and the Elizabethan era right smack in the middle. A golden age of music for the lute. And before that, the Medieval Period. Gregorian Chants, early church music, and such. And the Troubadours.

So strictly speaking, Dowland was not a composer of "classical music." As far as style of singing is concerned, the higher voices tended to be favored, hence the nasty practice of castrating young males with particularly good singing voices to keep their voices from changing—the castrati—with the nearest thing in sound to that kind of voice these days is the counter-tenor. But not every singer in those days was a tenor, counter-tenor, or castrato. There were basses and baritones just as there are now (incidentally, every male voice can be put into one of these catagories, whether trained or not, that's just the way it is:   Pete Seeger and Burl Ives are tenors, Ed McCurdy was a baritone, Gordon Bok is a bass, Bob Dylan is a . . . uh . . . er—   Well, moving right along, then), so I'm sure these songs were sung by lower voices as well.

We're used to hearing these songs sung by people like tenor Peter Pears or counter-tenor Alfred Deller. I do not believe I have ever heard them sung by any of the lower male voices—baritone or bass. But there is no reason why they couldn't be. There would be the matter of having to transpose the lute accompaniment to other keys more suitable to the ranges of lower voices, and although I assume that what I have seen represented as the accompaniments Dowland wrote for the songs, I'm not sure that they are really what Dowland wrote. What I usually see is a piano version of the lute accompaniment. What I am sure of is that lutenists in those days were quite adept at transposing and improvising, so even if they couldn't sing the songs in the keys as written, they could have changed keys and worked out perfectly acceptable accompaniments in those other keys, just as modern singers of folk songs do.

One thing that really stood out for me in the link to YouTube that MCgrath of Harlow posted above (by the way, thanks, Kevin) is that Sting is obviously enjoying singing the song. He's giving life to it.

Sting does not have a "classical" voice, but I've heard him a fair amount, singing things other than his original foray into rock. And the sucker can sing. I'm really glad he's giving this material a shot and that Deutsche Grammophon has the guts—and quite probably, the foresight—to go along with this.

Don Firth

P. S. And again, Kevin, thanks for posting that last one from YouTube. "La Rossignol" sounded familiar, and lo and behold! I have the music for the duet (cobbled for two guitars) in the back of The Christopher Parkening Guitar Method, Vol. 2. I have a guitar student who's playing her way through the Parkening method now. We're going to have to give this a shot!