LACHRYMAE

With mythological origins, the pan flute takes its name from the Greek demigod Pan, often depicted as a faun, who seduced the nymphs with his sounds. The harpsichord, however, knew its splendour in the noble and courtly circles of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. These are very different worlds, and yet we aim to blend them successfully. For human lament is not written for any specific instrument. Weeping arises spontaneously and does not seek a path; so too do dances and songs of joy, all of them so often expressed with recorders in seventeenth-century England, in the exquisite pages of Purcell, Dowland or William Byrd.