Romance Cast Its Spell Over Elizabethans Too : Concert: Lutanist Michael Eagan and his group will play a program of period love songs today in Irvine.

Everybody, it seems, wants to correct lutanist Michael Eagan’s spelling. He sent out press releases announcing upcoming concerts by his Elizabethan music group, “A Musicall Dreame,” only to watch newspapers regularize the spelling to “Musical Dream.”

But the two Ls and the extra E are correct--and intentional, he says.

“We took our name from the title of a book of airs by (Elizabethan lutanist) Robert Jones, actually one of five books of lute songs he wrote,” Eagan said in a recent phone interview from his West Los Angeles home. “He gave the fourth book this fanciful title. It’s Elizabethan spelling.”

Drawing from this book and others of the period, the four-member group will play a program of Elizabethan loves songs today at the First Christian Church of Irvine. The first half will focus on songs about earthly love. The second half, Eagan said, will “tell a more abstract story of love on a spiritual plane.”

Jones’ books were part of an explosion of interest in lute music that lasted a mere quarter-century, from 1597-1622.

“It was totally astounding and totally unparalleled in English music,” Eagen said. “There was also a similar poetic explosion, with Spenser and Shakespeare and other great English poets, who inspired the lutanists to create this phenomenal body of work.”

More than 500 songs were written during that period by composers such as Thomas Morley, John Dowland and John Danyel, brother of the court poet Samuel Daniel. There’s another example of variety in Elizabethan spelling, incidentally.

“Dowland set the standard right from the beginning,” Eagen said. “The harmonies of ‘In Darkness let me dwell’ totally presage jazz chords in a extremely emotional evocation of the text.”

The music books were printed in such a way that the various parts faced out in four directions so that the musicians could play from the book as they sat around it at a table.

What killed the lute song was the influx of the overriding Baroque music movement, which began in Italy.

“It put the focus back on the singer but reduced the complexity of the accompaniment,” Eagan said.

Eagen, a native Californian, grew up in San Francisco and went to Holland in the 1970s to study lute because that was “the only place you could at that time.” He graduated from the Royal Conservatory of Music in The Hague, the Netherlands, with the school’s highest award, the solo diploma.

“There aren’t that many lutanists” today, he said. “So we have to do our meager best to spread the word.”

Interpreting the music of this period is not as controversial as interpreting Baroque music because “lute tablature is an extremely precise form of notation,” he said.

“It’s precise in many ways that other notation systems are not,” he explained. “The lutanist always knows exactly where and when to put his fingers.

“I don’t expect all this stuff to catch on immediately. But it should be better known. We have the towering genius of the English language in Shakespeare, and the love song composers are absolutely the high point of English song repertoire.”

A Musicall Dreame will play a concert of Elizabethan love songs at 8 p.m. today at the First Christian Church of Irvine, 4849 Alton Parkway, Irvine. Tickets: $12, general; $8, students and seniors. (310) 838-3496. Also Feb. 20 at 8 p.m. at the Pasadena Presbyterian Church, 54 North Oakland St., Pasadena.