John Dowland

Dowland wrote the finest lute songs in English and made a career out of melancholy, which he seems to have found both genuine and marketable.

The songs — Flow My Tears, Come Again, In Darkness Let Me Dwell — were published in a form that lets them be sung as a solo with lute or as a four-part consort, printed so the singers could sit around one table and read from different sides of the page. Modern editions usually give voice with either lute tablature or a keyboard realisation.

For guitarists, the lute solos transfer well and are among the most rewarding early music available, though the tuning differs from the guitar and editions handle that in different ways: some transpose, some retune the third string. Check which before you start learning.