Blessed Echoes by Ensemble Près de votre oreille

Blessed Echoes was conceived in 2018 while preparing Près de votre oreille’s first album, Come Sorrow. Exploring Elizabethan repertoire led to the discovery of numerous song editions for voice with lute and viol, inspiring the idea of a large musical panorama devoted to the English Lute Song. After examining over a hundred works, a careful selection shaped this new program.  

Between 1597 and 1615, countless Lute Songs were published, their texts ranging from spiritual to playful, often written by composers or major dramatists such as Ben Jonson or Shakespeare. Their popularity extended far beyond courtly settings, reaching public theatres and domestic music-making. While influenced by Italian madrigals, these songs retain a distinctly English harmonic identity.  

Beyond John Dowland’s celebrated works, many lesser-known Elizabethan and Jacobean gems have coexisted over time, for one to four voices. Près de votre oreille seeks to revive this repertoire using period instruments, Renaissance lute, viols, virginal, and cittern, augmented by newly written lyra-viol parts. Collections by Thomas Ford, Robert Jones, Tobias Hume, and Alfonso Ferrabosco II guided the reconstruction of polyphonic accompaniments.  

These arrangements offer insight into forgotten practices and immerse performers in the creative world of late-16th-century English song. Since 2017, Près de votre oreille has developed an original artistic identity, recording several acclaimed albums and performing internationally. Blessed Echoes premiered in 2020, and its recording took place in 2021 at Saint-Sauvant, in partnership with the Abbaye aux Dames.

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