Sting and the Classical Guitar — Songs from the Labyrinth
Most people picture Sting with a bass guitar, fronting The Police. But across his solo career — and in one extraordinary recording project — he became one of pop's most prominent champions of early music and the nylon-string guitar, and his 2006 album Songs from the Labyrinth introduced the lute songs of John Dowland to an audience of millions who would never otherwise have encountered Renaissance music.
A Musician with Classical Roots
Born Gordon Sumner in Wallsend, near Newcastle, in 1951, Sting developed an early love of music that was broader than his rock career suggested. He studied music in school, was an avid listener across genres, and has spoken throughout his career of his love for Renaissance and Baroque music — the pre-modern vocal and instrumental repertoire that preceded the development of the symphony orchestra and the piano. This is not a casual interest: Sting has given multiple interviews over several decades describing his fascination with the polyphony of the Renaissance and the emotional directness of its melodies.
The nylon-string guitar features prominently in his solo catalogue, both through his own playing and through the work of his long-time guitarist Dominic Miller, who joined Sting's band in 1990 and has been central to his sound ever since. Miller plays nylon-string guitar on much of Sting's most intimate and personal material — most notably on "Fragile" (from ...Nothing Like the Sun, 1987) and "Shape of My Heart" (from Ten Summoner's Tales, 1993) — and it is Miller's sound as much as Sting's own playing that defines the nylon-string dimension of Sting's music.
Songs from the Labyrinth (2006): Dowland for the World
In 2006, Sting released Songs from the Labyrinth — an album of lute songs by the English Renaissance composer John Dowland (1563–1626), performed in collaboration with the Bosnian lutenist Edin Karamazov. The album contained fifteen of Dowland's songs plus instrumental pieces, with Sting singing and Karamazov providing the lute accompaniment in arrangements faithful to the Renaissance original while accessible to a contemporary listener.
Dowland's lute songs are among the most beautiful pieces of vocal music in the Western tradition. Written in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, they set English poetry of the period — by Shakespeare's contemporaries, by Dowland himself — to melodies of extraordinary lyricism and harmonic depth. The most famous, "Flow My Tears" (published 1600), became one of the most widely distributed pieces of music of its era. "Come Again, Sweet Love Doth Now Invite," "Fine Knacks for Ladies," and many others are part of a repertoire of poignant, intimate, deeply felt music that has never lost its power.
Why Sting and Dowland Work
The pairing of Sting with Dowland was not merely a celebrity stunt. Sting's vocal quality — his clarity of tone, his ability to project intimacy without sacrificing projection, his sense of text — was genuinely suited to this material. Dowland's songs are settings of melancholy, longing, and unrequited love: emotional territory that Sting had explored in his own songwriting throughout his career. The move from his own words to Dowland's text was a natural extension, not an act of self-reinvention.
Edin Karamazov's lute playing on the album is scholarly and sensitive: he understood both the historical performance practice context and the need to communicate with a contemporary popular music audience. The combination produced an album that was commercially successful — reaching significant chart positions in several countries — and critically well-received in both the classical music and popular music press.
The Lute, the Guitar, and the Connection
The lute — Dowland's instrument — is the ancestor of the modern classical guitar. Both are plucked string instruments with a fingerboard, both produce their sound acoustically from a hollow resonating body, and both are primarily instruments of intimacy and polyphony rather than power and projection. The classical guitarist who approaches the Dowland repertoire is engaging with music that was originally conceived for an instrument closely related to their own, and much of Dowland's lute music has been transcribed for classical guitar and sits naturally on the instrument.
Sting's Songs from the Labyrinth brought this repertoire to an audience that had never thought about the connection between the lute and the guitar, between Renaissance song and contemporary popular music, between Dowland and rock. It planted seeds that some listeners undoubtedly followed further — into the early music repertoire, into classical guitar, into the broader world of pre-modern string music. That is the album's gift to the guitar world, beyond its own considerable musical merits.
Explore more about early music and guitar history through our guide to famous classical guitar pieces, or browse the Siccas Guitars collection.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is Songs from the Labyrinth?
A 2006 album by Sting featuring lute songs by the Renaissance composer John Dowland (1563–1626), performed in collaboration with Bosnian lutenist Edin Karamazov. It introduced Dowland's music to a mainstream popular audience.
Does Sting play classical guitar?
The nylon-string guitar is prominent in Sting's solo music, largely through the playing of his long-time guitarist Dominic Miller. On Songs from the Labyrinth, the accompaniment is on lute (played by Edin Karamazov) rather than modern guitar. Sting has spoken repeatedly of his love for Renaissance and Baroque music.
Who was John Dowland?
An English Renaissance composer and lutenist (1563–1626), the most celebrated lute songwriter of his era. His Flow My Tears (1600) was one of the most widely distributed pieces of music of the late Renaissance, and his songs remain among the most beautiful in the Western vocal tradition.
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