Biography
In the sphere of English lute performance and composition, practitioners of Danyel's stature remained scarce. Tomkins dedicated several madrigals to Danyel and Dowland alike, thereby linking him with the foremost lutenist of the period. Danyel produced an array of lute works that took shape as duets, songs, and mixed ensembles scored for lute, viol, and voice. He reached audiences both through theatrical productions and as a royal musician attached to the court. Danyel outlived James I by only a brief interval. By deploying accidentals together with ascending and descending scales, he succeeded, within the limits of his era, in rendering textual meaning through musical means. Across these pieces the lute operated chiefly as an accompanying instrument, a role Danyel respected without deviation. The lute lines he devised typically stood in strict counterpoint to the principal melodic thread. Although contemporary notices of the man himself are few, Danyel was regarded as a player of exceptional ability—an estimation drawn from the technical demands of his music and from Tomkins's decision to name him in the same breath as Dowland.