During the Renaissance, lutes and similar plucked string instruments were as common and essential to domestic life as the piano was in the 19th century. John Griffiths estimates there are probably between 20,000 and 30,000 extant pieces of music for such instruments.
''The instrument in the domestic environment fulfilled the same role as a CD player or radio does today. If you want to fill the space with sound, you have to do it yourself if you haven't got a machine to do it for you,'' the Australian lutenist and academic says.
He and Dunedin countertenor Christopher Clifford will give a concert of songs by John Dowland, ''Homage to Dowland'', in Dunedin on Wednesday, September 18, as part of a New Zealand tour celebrating the 450th anniversary of the Elizabethan composer's birth.
Regarded as a world expert on Spanish Renaissance music for plucked instruments, Griffiths is fascinated by delving into the past and finding music ''composed four or five hundred years ago that still does as much for the soul now as it did then''.
''A lot of the music is very sophisticated. Some is very approachable. The fact the instruments have a resonance about them evokes a simpler world,'' he said.
Much of the music, especially on solo instruments, would have been played for the player's own enjoyment as much as for others to listen to, he said.
''It was understood that music was good for the soul and, at a deeper level, playing solo instruments and getting that sense of understanding the profundity of the music was the way humanistic society reconciled the philosophy and science of the ancient Greeks, who were pagans, and Christianity.''
Princes were taught to play the lute, not only to show off their artistic skills but also to make them better humans, more in tune with the world and so better at dispensing justice fairly, he said.
According to Renaissance notions of psychology, all the parts of the cosmos and universe were related to one another in simple ratios, so the idea of the perfection of the human was to have a one-to-one ratio between the body and the soul. You got that by playing music because that helped you understand the balance of the bigger world, he said.
As an academic, formerly of the University of Melbourne but now with honorary positions there, at Monash University and at Centre d'Etudes Supérieures de la Renaissance in Tours, France, he publishes erudite papers in scholarly journals, but loves being able to put his findings directly into practice.
''Performing for non-specialist audiences and making it work so it moves their hearts and souls, not just in an academic way but in a human way, is a wonderful complement.''
The concert next week celebrates the music of John Dowland (1563-1626), known for his intimate, melancholy music such as Lachrimae (Tears), Flow my tears, and Come heavy sleep, although the concert includes jolly songs too.
The idea of melancholy was important in Renaissance culture. For them, melancholy was a moment when you could transcend life, touch your God if you were a Christian, or when the body and soul were united in harmony for pagan humanists. Griffiths describes it as like the wonderful movement in concerts at the end of a delicate piece of music when there is a stillness and nobody wants to clap for a moment, he said.
''John Dowland wrote many melancholy songs. It wasn't so much that he was a poor melancholy person by nature but it was very much a cultivated thing. He set texts that were about night, that were about darkness, that were about sorrow, and those things were to cultivate melancholy so listeners got that experience.''
In the 16th and 17th centuries, lutenists often accompanied themselves, but today they more often accompany another singer.
''If the voice is louder than one of the strings of the instrument then the balance and proportion between them is lost, so you have to find a particular way of making it work.
''Even though it's sung, the voice has to speak rather than sing because plucked notes do that too, because they die away and have their decay and singers try to match that.
''Lutenists composed their music as if the instrument was a little mini-choir of soprano, alto, tenor and bass, all done in a very horizontal way, so the voice, when you do a lute song, is just another voice and has to interact with the other ones on the lute.''
Hear it, see it
''Homage to John Dowland'' with John Griffiths, lute, and Christopher John Clifford, countertenor, is in St Paul's Cathedral, Dunedin, on Wednesday, September 18, at 7pm. The concert is a taster for the New Zealand International Festival of Early Music from March 1-9 in Dunedin next year.
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