Dowland most likely composed Tarletones Riserrectione as a tribute to the English comic actor Richard Tarleton, who died in 1588. This would make it a very early work and it may not be the only piece Dowland composed with the clown, Tarleton, in mind.

Tarleton's Jigge, listed as No. 81 in Basil Lam and Diana Poulton's The Collected Lute Music of John Dowland, is an anonymous work, possibly by Dowland, that may be a setting of a jig melody associated with Tarleton during his career. The piece is very like Dowland's other jigs and the composition of Tarletones Riserrectione suggests the composer knew, or at least admired, Richard Tarleton. Appropriately, Dowland's Tarletones Riserrectione is in 6/8 meter, which would come to be associated with the lighthearted Irish jig.

A very brief piece, Tarletones Riserrectione is tightly knit and delicately wrought. The bass line continuously conveys the meter with a trochaic pattern as the melody moves in groups of three notes; usually the first of the three is dotted. Chromatic inflections color the piece from the very beginning, both in an affective manner (an added B flat changing almost immediately to a B-natural) and to create cadences (such as one on the dominant, G major, in the third measure). Only about one and a half lines long in the manuscript (now at Yale), Tarletones Riserrectione features a melody that rises almost continuously, possibly suggesting the resurrection of the subject. Only the bass and uppermost voice move with any consistency, while the two inner voices fill in harmonies, which surprisingly look forward to later tonal practice in their movement.



© All Music Guide