The city of Norwich (pronounced “Nor-itch”) is in the County of Norfolk, East Anglia butting up against the North Sea. It is a Great Place – having evolved into its current form over almost a thousand years and having implemented many of the most important elements recognized over the last fifty years as making great places. Hundreds of years of history, something American cities don’t have the benefit of, help to make places interesting and enable them to change. They evolve over time to become what people look for in the place they want to live.

We had a similar experience in a trip to Aix-en-Provence a couple of weeks earlier – whose Cours Mirabeau has long been my exemplar for a great street experience (although since my last trip there thirty years ago, it has actually had its vibrancy marred by a poorly executed pedestrianization). Aix also is a well-preserved centuries old city – although one that has done less well adapting to the 21^st Century, as well as a place with an overabundance of tourists.

In Shakespeare, the Duke of Norfolk is often among the most powerful figures. From the time of the Norman Conquest until the Industrial Revolution, Norwich was England’s second and wealthiest city. That wealth was derived from raising, weaving and trading in wool. There were settlements on either side of the River Wensum in early English history, followed by Anglo-Saxon settlements on nearby sites.

The Normans established an outpost in Norwich immediately following the conquest, building an impressive keep on the highest point (which they raised), and a major Cathedral down the hill near the River Wensum. The cathedral was built from stone brought over from France by ship, moved upriver and then through a canal. It is unusual for an English cathedral not to be built on a city’s highest point – but it was certainly easier to build the Cathedral with French stone without dragging it up the hill. The local stone is flint and the city’s wealth is reflected in the 25 medieval parish churches one finds across the city – England’s largest collection. This has left Norwich with the foundation of a well-preserved, dense architectural fabric – and an abundance of churches to be adaptively reused.

The River Wesum is slow moving, given the flatness of East Anglia, so when the Industrial Revolution came along, Norwich lacked the water power of northern cities, and became something of a backwater, although a wealthy one. At the end of the 19^th century the manufacturing of shoes became a major industry, moving from workshops to factories. The shoe business needed skilled workers and established a technical college in the city, which morphed over time in a college of the arts, giving the city a funky twist.

In 1977, Norwich pedestrianized it high street, London Street, transforming the city into a regional retail center. Most of the middle of the city has now been pedestrianized. The remaining streets are mostly one way – making it one of the most walkable places I have experienced (and much easier for an American to navigate, given the habits arising out of left side driving). The shoppers appear to be local, as Norwich is a rather minor tourist destination – but the center bustles from morning until night – and night arrives rather late in the summer, given the high latitude. Norwich reportedly has around 120 pubs, also contributing to its vibrancy in the evening. There are five department stores, including a local one! 300 independent shops have been inventoried in the town. Both of these statistics are remarkable by American standards.

The place is both beautiful and it hums. There are no tall modern office or apartment buildings, and as the modern structures are low rise and non-descript, they tend to blend into the background behind their retail frontage. The center of town is more than simply charming – it is delightful.

The shopping district is enhanced by a fine Victorian Royal Arcade (1899) and a central market (which is kind of shabby, but popular). Since the city is built on the partly Norman-made hill there is a good deal of up and down walking, and the side streets are winding and narrow. Elm Hill is particularly well preserved. Norwich’s last big fire was early in the Tudor period. As result, unlike many other English cities, it has many well-preserved Tudor buildings, in addition to its medieval character.

While London Street is the main drag, there are several other major commercial corridors in a city of only 150,000. The downtown has an awful lot of jewelry stores and stock brokerages for a small place, which tells you something about it’s wealth. I was told that the local economy was built on small scale farming of grains and vegetables. I have read that while the quality of life is high, the labor market is slack – although unemployment is low.

Over its history, Norwich has been feisty. It has generally been against just about everything and gone its own way; notably Kett’s Rebellion in 1549 which was about – well, actually, who knows? During the Spanish occupation of the Netherlands, Dutch protestants moved right across the North Sea to Norwich, binging state of the art weaving and printing technologies along with them. They also transported canaries. Norwich remains a center of canary breeding. Its football club is the Canaries. The birds were used by the Dutch to bring a little cheer to their dark wool weaving workshops.

I went to Norwich to attend the Dowland 400 Festival, commemorating the 400^th anniversary of the death of John Dowland, one of Britain’s two or three most important composers. Dowland composed mostly for the lute or for lute and voice. Being a student of the renaissance lute and having made an epistolatory relationship with a couple of the leaders of the UK Lute Society, I was encouraged by them to attend. The festival was comprised of concerts, lectures, a little lute playing and a considerable amount of (warm) beer drinking.

Dowland is the most important composer for the lute. His music is the backbone of the lute repertoire. But his influence goes beyond that. His tunes are woven into the fabric of British, and therefore Anglo-American, music. As the lute evolved into the guitar, the lute song evolved into the pop song, and Dowland led directly to The Beatles. Really. Sting recorded some of Dowland’s most enduring songs. Dowland lived at around the same time as Monteverdi was beavering away inventing Western harmony in Venice. Dowland was trying to accomplish something similar – foregrounding poetry accompanied by music. In the late 16^th Century art music, which meant music for the church, was polyphonic and incredibly complex (as well as beautiful), but both melody and words were subsumed in that complexity. In Italy that meant Palestrina, in England that meant Tallis and Byrd. The church fathers noted this and in the mid-16^th Century the church in reaction to the Reformation decreed that liturgical music should once again make the text intelligible to the people in the pews.

Dowland was an accomplished poet as well as a composer and wrote songs accompanied by lute. Those accompaniments include polyphonic elements, but the conveyance of text and the shading of its meaning through music were his compositional goals. His pieces were entirely secular. Much of his music (but not all) communicated deep melancholy. He was also a celebrated performer. But not that celebrated.

He had an independent spirit and was a Catholic, and Elizabeth I didn’t cotton to him. Her court lutenist was the somewhat less gifted, but still important, John Johnson, who also supplied music for the plays of William Shakesspeare. Dowland traveled all over Europe. The longest stretch of Dowland’s career was as the court lutenist in Denmark (and speaking of Shakespeare, that court was located in Elsinore, the setting of Hamlet – a place Shakespear never visited). He returned to Britain and upon the death of Johnson, spent the last nine years of his life as lutenist to James I. Dowland was a sophisticated, literate, well-educated person, who wrote well and performed some diplomatic functions in his frequent travels. His music is not only sublime and enduring, but was highly influential in creating the Western musical world we live in today.

The Festival presented almost a dozen concerts at the highest musical and historical standards. Most striking to me was a group called “Dowland’s Foundry” which performed Dowland’s music as part songs, with four voices and lute from his several published song books. https://www.dowlandsfoundry.com/listen. Their two performances were pitch perfect, well balanced between lute and among voices and moving in affect. Yes, those songs mostly took on the lachrymose character, as did the sterling concert by the viol concert Fretwork with lutenist Liz Kenny. Linda Sayce’s group, Cardophony, provided an upbeat contrast in song arrangements by Sayce.  She noted both at the concert and her subsequent talk that the entire surviving repertoire for lute ensemble consists of half a printed page of music. She more than made do. It was notable that so many women were highlighted in both the concerts and lectures.

Dowland, by the way, has no known association with Norwich, but the early music scene there is vibrant and includes a number of Lute Society stalwarts. The Cathedral does have an active music program, including daily evensong. As in most places, the Cathedral choir takes the summer off. The morning I spent wondering around the close, a visiting choir from Pennsylvania was ironically rehearsing a work by Stephan Paulus for that day’s service. Also worth noting is that the Cathedral’s cloister is the largest I’ve ever seen.

I want to acknowledge how welcoming and warm the Festival participants were to a stranger from across the Atlantic. David Van Edwards, the President of the Lute Society, and an instrument maker who lives in Norwich is someone whose writing I have admired for many years. https://www.lutesociety.org/pages/lute-news-back-issues. The Society’s Lute News usually carries a cover artwork which includes a lute in its iconography with a scholarly and entertaining analysis of the work by David. I look forward to receiving each issue. In person, David turns out to be a simply remarkable person – kind, generous, broadly knowledgeable and smart. The trip was worthwhile simply to meet David.

As is obvious, I greatly enjoyed my five days in Norwich. I learned a lot from my lesson with an American lutenist long resident in England, Jacob Heringman (I met a number of interesting, highly educated American ex-patriots, a number of whom had chosen Norwich for a home). The way in which the city has put people ahead of cars and preserved its architectural heritage was heart lifting. The music of Dowland continues to move us after hundreds of years. I certainly look forward to returning.