Abbey – Dr. John Blow – Purcell as composer of dramatic music – Te Deum and Jubilate for St. Cecilia's Day – His death and epitaph.
With Henry Purcell we come to the last and greatest of the early English composers.
Born before the traditions and influence of the ancient school of ecclesiastical music had actually died out, and yet after other and conflicting influences had become supreme, he had the extraordinary power that enabled him to seize on what was best in either and blend them in a style that, had there been successors of sufficient genius and independence of thought, might have proved the foundation of a school of English music sufficiently elastic to encourage every possible development and yet remaining absolutely national in character.
Unfortunately, he had no such successors, and foreign musicians soon asserted that supremacy in the country they have held ever since, until the memorable events of the last decade sounded its death knell.
The Writing on the Wall has appeared. Many think they have read it.
Purcell was one more of that large number of men of genius who have died in early manhood. This fate seems to have been peculiarly conspicuous among musicians and poets. To cite only a few: Purcell, Mozart and Mendelssohn; Shelley, Keats and Chatterton. The list could, alas, be largely extended.
It may be truly said that, seeing how short his life was, his achievements were amazing, both in extent and significance. He advanced the art of music in every direction, to such a degree indeed, that one can only regard his latest works with astonishment at their modernity.
Such combinations of voices and instruments as had hitherto been tried were quite primitive in character, and were simply confined to the support of the voice parts. The illuminating genius of Purcell, however, enabled him to see, even if dimly, the infinite possibilities the combination held out to the composer, and he set himself to give effect to it. The crude efforts of his predecessors became in his hands a tremendous artistic force, and when he died the way had been paved for Handel and other of his illustrious successors. The same originality is displayed in his harmonies. He cast off all the shackles of convention and indulged in progressions and discords that would, doubtless, have shocked the earlier writers. Many of his cadences16 are altogether too discordant for modern ears. In fact, the extreme harshness of some of them is rather calculated to make one doubt their authenticity. But it is, nevertheless, perhaps in his harmony and its extraordinary beauty that his genius is most conspicuously displayed.17
His melodies were bold and unconventional to the point, as regards rhythm, of seeming wilfulness on occasion. Yet many were lovely and full of intense feeling, and all characterised by a genius at once independent and conscious of its power.
His precocity was amazing, even in the history of an art that has produced so many extraordinary specimens of this particular gift.
Some of his anthems were written while still a chorister boy, and his earliest essays in dramatic music at the age of fourteen.
That in some of his later works in which voices were combined with organ and orchestra, he anticipated Handelian effects is undoubted, and that the great German master was influenced by them, I think, equally so.
If an account of the orchestra with which he had to deal would read strangely at the present time, it is at least not without interest to think that, even so tremendous a genius as Handel made little advance on it. It has been shewn elsewhere that the genesis of the modern orchestra is of a later date.
Handel was only ten years of age when Purcell died.
It is an irrepressible conjecture of what might have been, if the latter had lived thirty years longer. He then would have failed to reach the age at which the former died. The acting and re-acting of the genius of each one on the other might have produced results of profound importance to English music – might, indeed, have saved it.
Fate, however, on this occasion, probably displayed more kindness than is usually attributed to her. The contest would have proved unequal.
The great German genius, giant in body, overwhelming in energy and ever thirsting for new worlds to conquer (and succeeding), would have been no fitting opponent to the other, frail in physique and already a prey to the terrible disease that has cut off, prematurely, the lives of such countless thousands of men whose possibilities of attainment were barely given time to indicate.18
Purcell entered the choir of the Chapel Royal at the age of six, and while there became acquainted, in the best of all possible ways, with such of the masterpieces of the ancient English school as had escaped destruction, by taking part in their performance. At the age of eighteen19 he became organist of Westminster Abbey, by the voluntary act of Dr. John Blow, who relinquished the post in favour of his illustrious pupil. This fact is immensely suggestive. It shews that not only was his genius universally recognised, but that his personality was already sufficiently developed to justify his appointment to the most important position to which any musician could attain.
Many theories have been ventilated as to Dr. Blow's action on this occasion, some suggesting that, so far from being a voluntary act, he was dismissed. This seems to me to be without the least justification, seeing that he was re-appointed after Purcell's death. At this early age, too, Purcell seems to have been attracted by the influence of the theatre, as records shew that he was constantly writing music for the stage.
That his genius for this class of composition was, in every respect, equal to that he displayed in any other field open to him, is shewn by his music to "Dido and Æneas," which was not only masterly, but as much in advance of anything that had preceded it, as most of his other work proved to be. The same can be said of his music to "King Arthur," in which he collaborated with Dryden.
If the word "opera," in its modern significance, can scarcely be applied to it, there is not the slightest doubt that the genius was there to give inspiration and guidance to those who were to come after him.
He wrote upwards of twenty works of this kind. For some years he was a "composer to their Majesties," and in fulfilment of his duties in this connection wrote many odes for use on official occasions. These do not count among his best works. He was a voluminous writer of instrumental music, and his sonatas are in advance of any previously written. He wrote, practically for all instruments then extant, but that by which he is principally known as an instrumental composer is his harpsichord music, this instrument having by this time superseded the virginals.
One of his last, and perhaps the greatest of his works, was the magnificent "Te Deum and Jubilate" for St. Cecilia's Day.
This was for many years sung at the annual Festival of the Sons of the Clergy, but was for some reason or other relinquished in favour of Handel's Dettingen Te Deum. Purcell died when his genius was at the highest point of power and splendour, leaving behind him a name of imperishable memory and a fame that has seldom been eclipsed.
His death took place in 1695, the 37th year of his age. He was buried in Westminster Abbey. Over his grave was inscribed the following epitaph:
Plaudite, felices, superi, tanto hospite, nostris
Præfuerat, vestris addite illa choris:
Invida nec vobis Purcellum terra reproscat.
Questa decus secli, deliciasque breves.
Tam cito decessisse, modo cui singula debet
Musa, prophana suos religiosa suos.
Vivat so vivat, dum vicina organa spirant,
Dumque colet numeris turba canora Deum.
CHAPTER IV
THE DECLINE OF ENGLISH MUSIC
Three principal causes leading to decline – Reformation the principal one – The plain-song and the people – Gradual transition in mode of living – Effect of Calvinistic teaching – Excesses of the Commonwealth soldiery – Facts as to life of Calvin – Effects of change of dynasty – The Stuarts and music – The