Manafonistas

in the liner notes for the ECM recording of modern interpretations of lachrymose sixteenth-century composer John Dowland’s songs, In Darkness Let Me Dwell, composer Robert White notes the connection between Dowland’s fascination with the lachrimal, accompanied by the larger Elizabethan celebration of melancholy, and our current preoccupation with depression, saying, „What his age knew, and we sometimes lose sight of, is that meditating on a beautiful expression of sadness can help to provide a thoroughly uplifting sense of consolation.