John Dowland’s Lachrimae cycle is among the finest surviving instrumental dance music of the turn of the seventeenth century. This long awaited recording with the Capriccio Stravagante Renaissance Orchestra features new a instrumentation by Skip Sempé: 6 viols, 5 recorders, 2 cornetti, 3 trombones, 2 virginals and harpsichord. Skip Sempé’s new performance order of the twenty-one Lachrimae dances revives the tradition of Pavan and Galliard pairs, rather than treating them as isolated movements.

The idea of a ‘Renaissance Orchestra’ in which all the different instrumental consorts are brought together is the overlooked message of these sixteenth- and seventeenth-century publications. Large ensembles, for large or commemorative occasions, were every bit as much the ‘composer’s intention’ as were smaller, intimate groups. This missing link has been proposed and provided by the concerts and recordings of the Capriccio Stravagante Renaissance Orchestra since the first years of the twenty-first century, and is one of their remarkable achievements in ‘cutting through the noise’.