Scan 15
Musical Courier 1895-12-25: Vol 31 Iss 825, 1895
41 lines. Read by computer on 26 September 2026. Printed page 16. See the scan on archive.org.
1Henry Purcell.
2The Two Hundredth Anniversary of His Death.
4England has just commemorated the bicentenary of the death of Henry Purcell. The homage rendered to the great musician was most deserved, for he was not only the first really national composer of England, but likewise one of the great composers, whose place, quite apart from all national feeling, is marked in the history of music. His work has remained unshaken through centuries.
6To estimate his just value we must remember that at the period of his death the two composers who were to obscure his glory the most, Johann Sebastian Bach and George Frederic Händel, were then still children, and that Purcell, like Mozart and Schubert, died in the bloom of youth, without having been able to display the full measure of his genius.
8Nothing is more curious than the apparition of Henry Purcell in an environment and at a time that seemed so little propitious to the development of musical art. When the door of life opened for Henry Purcell it had just closed on Oliver Cromwell, the great and sinister politician whose calculated Puritanism crushed implacably all the flowers that budded in England from the renaissance of art under the last scion of the Tudors, Queen Elizabeth, to the day when the hapless son of the Stuarts laid his head on the scaffold erected before the magnificent palace of Whitehall, which he had decorated by Rubens.
10The ancient Chapel Royal, so brilliant under Charles I., was scattered. It was a miracle that the organ of Westminster, destined soon to revive under the fingers of Purcell, escaped the Puritans, whose stern leaders detested the "instrument of Belial."
12With the accession of Charles II., when the Chapel Royal was reopened, not a single choir boy could be found in the immense city, where musical instruction had entirely ceased, and it was necessary to have the soprano and contralto parts executed by old musicians who sang in falsetto, supported by wind instruments. Happily Charles II. took an interest in music, ordered the reorganization of the Chapel Royal, and brought a group of violinists to London, who formed, as it were, the kernel of the modern orchestras of England. It is to a French musician, Robert Cambert, who had retired to England to escape rivalry with Lulli, the great favorite of Louis XIV., that English music owes its reconstitution under Charles II.
14Henry Purcell enrolled his name therein at the very first. Born, probably, in 1658, and son of a musician of the same name, he was brought up, after the premature death of his father in 1664, by his uncle, Thomas Purcell, a lute player attached to the Chapel Royal, who enjoyed the favor of the king and his court. The young orphan was admitted among the children of the chapel, and their director, Henry Cooke, one of the old musicians of Charles I., gave him an excellent musical education. At the age of nine the little Purcell had already composed a very pretty melody, Sweet Tyranness, and in 1670, in his eleventh year, he set to music the complimentary ode which the children of the chapel presented to the king on the occasion of his fête. Many anthems, still sung in our days, and some music for Macbeth, were composed by Purcell before 1674. In this year the musical instruction of the little prodigy was interrupted; after 1672, on the death of Cooke, Pelham Humfrey continued to give him lessons for two years. We can form some idea of the value of these lessons from the fact that there has been found an anthem by Pelham Humfrey corrected by his pupil, to the great advantage of the composition.
16Meanwhile the voice of the lad obeyed the laws of physiology and he had to quit his function as contralto. The new master of the children, Dr. Blow, then procured for him a copyist's place in Westminster Abbey, and Purcell, still living with his uncle, began to compose music for the theatre, but in 1678 resigned his position as copyist to consecrate himself exclusively to composition.
18Before the age of seventeen he had already written the music of three theatrical pieces, and before the age of twenty he acquired so considerable a reputation that the managers of theatres began to apply to him. Purcell's music for The Libertine, a poor comedy, by Shadwell, was very successful; the subject is a kind of variant of Don Juan. Purcell likewise supplied the music for another piece, taken from Don Quixote. Gostling, the celebrated basso of the Cathedral of Canterbury, whose exceptional voice descended easily to D below, asked Purcell to set to music an anthem on words taken from the Psalms, which Gostling wished to sing to Charles II. in celebration of the coronation of James II., in 1685 he was occupied with the installation of an organ at Westminster, and wrote two anthems; after the coronation of William and Mary, in 1689, he presided at the organ at Westminster and composed several royal odes.
20Among his works of secular music we may quote the Yorkshire Feast, the Tempest, the Massacre of Paris, Amphitryon and Diocletian. This last named work had such a success that Purcell published the score by subscription, with a preface and an announcement that he corrected with his own hand all the copies sent to subscribers. His glory was henceforth consecrated. The greatest poet of the age, John Dryden, supplied him with the libretto of King Arthur, an opera the success of which at the Queen's Theatre was no less brilliant than that of its successor, the Indian Queen.
22Not the whole of these scores is yet antiquated; more than one air, nay, even more than one recitative, proves that Purcell was justified in saying in the preface to Diocletian that music was the "exaltation of poetry," and, again, that "music by herself alone, and poetry by herself alone, might be excellent, but they gained enormously when associated, for then nothing is wanting to them, and they appear like spirit and beauty reunited in the same person."
24An old English critic, Dr. Burney, says, not without justice, in his General History of Music that "in the accents of passion and in the musical setting of an English text the music of Purcell is superior to that of Händel, as an original is superior to a copy." In this sense Purcell is the most important national composer of England. Händel, whom she claims also, always remained German in this respect as in so many other points of view. But the twenty works which Purcell composed for the theatre do not constitute the most essential part of his artistic equipment. Purcell is, as Burney correctly remarks, as a composer so classic in the form of his works that the licenses of his harmony may lead young pupils into error.
26The licenses of Purcell seem very moderate to-day be-
28Organist at Westminster Abbey in favor of Purcell, who in the following year married Frances Peters. In 1682 he was named organist of the Chapel Royal, and the period of his great fecundity as composer began. We may cite his opera Dido and Aeneas, the first of the English operas written for a girls' school, and truly astonishing for the period when it saw the light.* Like Richard Wagner, 150 years later, Purcell gave the words all the importance due to them, and his declamation is remarkable from a metrical point of view. In his melodies, as well as in his harmony, there are presentiments of Bach and Händel. A short time afterward Purcell published his first collection of sonatas for violin, bass and clavecin, which is important not only for the excellence of the music, but likewise for the youthful portrait of Purcell that adorns it, and for the sagacious and interesting observations in the preface. Purcell there expresses publicly his ideas on music, as Gluck did later, and Wagner after Gluck.
30During the last twelve years of his life Purcell displayed an activity which can be compared only to that of Mozart and Schubert. Geniuses doomed to die in the flower of their age instinctively press on their production. In spite of his artistic work at Westminster Abbey and the Chapel Royal, and his duties as teacher of composition, Purcell did not cease to write for the church and the theatre; he even supplied "occasional" compositions for the court and the festivals of Saint Cecilia. At the coronation of James II., in 1685 he was occupied with the installation of an organ at Westminster, and wrote two anthems; after the coronation of William and Mary, in 1689, he presided at the organ at Westminster and composed several royal odes.
32Among his works of secular music we may quote the Yorkshire Feast, the Tempest, the Massacre of Paris, Amphitryon and Diocletian. This last named work had such a success that Purcell published the score by subscription, with a preface and an announcement that he corrected with his own hand all the copies sent to subscribers. His glory was henceforth consecrated. The greatest poet of the age, John Dryden, supplied him with the libretto of King Arthur, an opera the success of which at the Queen's Theatre was no less brilliant than that of its successor, the Indian Queen.
34Not the whole of these scores is yet antiquated; more than one air, nay, even more than one recitative, proves that Purcell was justified in saying in the preface to Diocletian that music was the "exaltation of poetry," and, again, that "music by herself alone, and poetry by herself alone, might be excellent, but they gained enormously when associated, for then nothing is wanting to them, and they appear like spirit and beauty reunited in the same person."
36An old English critic, Dr. Burney, says, not without justice, in his General History of Music that "in the accents of passion and in the musical setting of an English text the music of Purcell is superior to that of Händel, as an original is superior to a copy." In this sense Purcell is the most important national composer of England. Händel, whom she claims also, always remained German in this respect as in so many other points of view. But the twenty works which Purcell composed for the theatre do not constitute the most essential part of his artistic equipment. Purcell is, as Burney correctly remarks, as a composer so classic in the form of his works that the licenses of his harmony may lead young pupils into error.
38The licenses of Purcell seem very moderate to-day be-
40* Purcell never saw an opera, An Italian, Nicola Mattheis, who went to England in 1672, had merely made him acquainted with some Italian scores.
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