The greatest English composer of lute music and lute songs, John Dowland was famous throughout Europe. Born around 1563, he became one of the most celebrated lutenists of his time but, perhaps because of his volatile character and rumoured Catholicism, he failed to secure a position at the English court until 1612, and therefore spent much of his career as a travelling virtuoso in France, Germany and Denmark. Although his 100 or so lute solos remained unpublished, Dowland printed four collections of songs between 1597 and 1612. The First Booke of Songes (1597) caused a sensation, going on to be reprinted five times and ushering in a craze for lute songs. Dowland’s later music is tinged with a characteristic Jacobean trait—melancholia—as in his pavan Semper Dowland semper dolens (“Dowland the ever-doleful”). Above all it was his Lachrimae, which brought Dowland his greatest fame. Appearing first as a lute solo, then as the song “Flow My Tears”, it finally formed the starting point for Lachrimae or Seaven Teares (1604)—a remarkable set of “seven passionate pavans” for lute and five viols all based on the same four-note descending theme. Dowland died in 1626 with a measure of the recognition long accorded him abroad.