Super little is known of Dowland's early life, however these are typically thought he was innate around London or possibly Dublin. These are known that he attend Paris around 1580 where he was in service to the ambassador to the French court. He became the Roman Catholic at this time, which he claimed led to him non existence offered the post at Elizabeth I's Protestant court. He worked instead for numerous years at a court of Christian IV of Denmark. He returned to England within 1606 and in 1612 secured a post when one of James I of England's lutenists. He died around London.

Virtually all of Dowland's music is for his have instrument, a lute. It include many books of solo lute works, lute songs (for one voice & lute), a portion-songs using lute accompaniment, & many pieces for viol consort with lute. His better known act is the lute song "Flow My Tears", a number one verse of which diarrhea:

He late wrote what is probably his better known subservient function, Lachrimae or even Seaven Teares Estimated around Seaven Passionate Pavans, the placed of septenary for 5 viols & lute, to each one according to "Flow My Tears." It became one of a better knhave pieces of consort music inside his own period. His pavane, "Lachrymae antiquae" was also one of a large hits of the seventeenth century.

Dowland's music typically displays a melancholia that was so fashionable within music at that instance. He wrote a consort piece by owning the wordplay title Semper Dowland, semper dolens (universally Dowland, universally mournful), which can be said to total higher tremendously of his operate.

Dowland's song, Are Impenetrable Sleepe, a Image of True Demise, was a inspiration for Benjamin Britten's Nocturnal after John Dowland for guitar, written around 1964 for the guitar player Julian Bream. This operate consists of eight variations, altogether according to theme drawn from either the song or even its lute accompaniment, eventually resolving into a guitar setting of the song itself.

Dowland's lute music occurs as revenant theme in Philip K. Dick's science fiction.

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