Make it rhyme!
Haven’t you always felt uncomfortable singing all those rhymes that simply don’t rhyme in all those exquisitely refined Elizabethan madrigals and the lute-songs of Dowland and his contemporaries – rhymes like “die/sympathy”, “love/prove/move”, “speak/break”, “good/blood”, to name just four out of so many?
Well take heart, because once you have learned the vibrant sounds of what is now commonly called “Original Pronunciation” or simply “OP”, you will have the joy of finding that ALL these rhymes really do rhyme!
Having spent more than 25 years studying, singing and teaching my mother tongue, following its development from the famous Agincourt Carol at the beginning of the 15th century to the masterpieces of Henry Purcell and John Blow at the end of the 17th century, I feel ready at last to respond to the exhortation of several colleagues to create a website in order to share with as many singers as possible the fruits of this long experience and my passion for the sounds and colours of Early Modern English – sounds which are still very much alive today in certain regions of the British Isles, particularly in the North.
Try it! I’m sure you won’t regret it.