Michael Butten joined the Musicians' Company Young Artists' Programme after he was awarded our Ivor Mairants Guitar Award in 2016. Here he performs John Dowland's Frog Galliard and Farewell. Michael says: "I am a British guitarist based in High Wycombe. I studied at the RAM with Michael Lewin (Immediate Pastmaster of the Musicians' Company), where I was the first guitarist to win the RAM Club Prize. Other prizes include: 2nd prize at the 2019 GFA ICAC, 1st prize at the Pleven International Guitar Competition, Bach prizes at the 2018 and 2019 Hubert Kappel International Guitar Competitions in Koblenz, and 1st prize in the Ivor Mairants Guitar Award 2016. One of my particular interests is guitar music of British composers, British renaissance lute repertoire and the link often found between the music of both eras. The two pieces I’ve chosen to play today for you are by the English renaissance lutenist and composer John Dowland. His numerous lute songs, as well as his solo lute works, are known for the deep sense of melancholy that was the fashion during the first Elizabethan age, a feeling which seems pervasive now while we try work out what the 'new normal' may be. The first piece is Frog Galliard, which is a dance that is closely based on Dowland’s own lute song ‘Now, O now, I needs must part’. The poetry speaks of the pain of parting from loved ones, something that we are all having to deal with when we are apart from our family and friends during quarantine. The words from the second verse most succinctly frame this: Dear, when I am from thee gone, Gone are all my joys at once. I loved thee and thee alone, In whose love I joyed once. And although your sight I leave, Sight wherein my joys do lie, Till that death do sense bereave, Never shall affection die. The second piece is called Farewell and is one of Dowland’s most expansive fantasias. The piece is the most perfect example of pain and loss that I know, and I’d like to dedicate my performance of this piece to the families of anyone who has experienced loss as a result of Covid-19." -------------------------------------------------- Musicians' Company Profile - http://www.wcom.org.uk/yeoman/michael-butten About our Ivor Mairants Award - http://www.wcom.org.uk/awards/ivor-mairants-guitar-award Michael's Website - http://www.michaelbutten.co.uk Michael's Facebook - http://www.facebook.com/michaelbuttenguitar Michael's Instagram - http://www.instagram.com/michaelbutten Michael's Twitter - http://twitter.com/butten_michael Michael's YouTube - http://www.youtube.com/user/hellow326 -------------------------------------------------- Join our weekly #MiddayMusic e-news at http://eepurl.com/dv0ccr #MiddayMusic is supported by funds from the Musicians' Company’s Prince’s Prize which received a generous endowment in 2015 from The Eranda Rothschild Foundation and Rothschilds Bank, in memory of Leopold de Rothschild, a Liveryman of the Musicians’ Company for over 50 years. Donate to support The Musicians' Company Young Artists - http://www.justgiving.com/musicianscompanyfund