TILLBAKA TILL DISKOGRAFI

A Treatise of Melancholie

This remarkable work sits at the experimental nexus of
early music and new music. Inspired by a deep love
and admiration for 16th-and 17th-century English
music, composer David Gorton has developed a
practice that creates new works by infusing older
works with what he calls “compositional interventions”,
exploring “an aesthetic of the uncanny”. The backbone
of this album is a series of excerpts from a 16thcentury medical treatise on melancholy, illustrated with
Gorton's interventions into well-known art songs from
the same period. The result is eerie and unsettling:
medical melancholy as Alfred Hitchcock might have
drawn it.

Introduction
1. Now let us consider
Chapter I
2. Putting the parts
3. After John Dowland, In Darkness Let Me Dwell
4. After William Byrd, Come Woeful Orpheus
Chapter II
5. Of all the actions
6. After John Dowland, Love Those Beams
7. After Thomas Morley, O Grief Even on the Bud
Chapter III
8. So irksome it is
9. After John Dowland, Stay Time Awhile Thy
Flying
10. After John Ward, Come, Sable Night
Chapter IV
11. Here as pleasant pictures
12. After Thomas Morley, In Nets of Golden Wyers
13. After John Dowland, Were Every Thought an
Eye
Chapter V
14. Whereby we are in heavinesse
15. After John Bennet, Weep, O Mine Eyes
16. After John Dowland, Disdain Me Still
Chapter VI
17. In sleep I say
18. After John Wilbye, Draw On, Sweet Night
19. After John Dowland, Go Nightly Cares
Conclusion
20. Thus I commend the blessing
Spoken texts taken from A Treatise of Melancholie by
Timothy Bright (1586)
A winner of the Royal Philharmonic Society
Composition Prize, David Gorton’s music has been
widely performed and recorded. His large-scale works
include pieces for the BBC Symphony Orchestra, the
London Sinfonietta, and Ensemble Exposé. He was a
student at Durham University, King’s College London,
and the Royal Academy of Music, studying
composition with Harrison Birtwistle and Simon
Bainbridge. He teaches at the Royal Academy of
Music, where