What we know of Purcell's life is nothing, or next to nothing; what is
written as his life is conjecture, more or less ingenious inference, or
pure fiction. In that we know so little of him he is blessed, but the
blessedness has not as yet extended to his biographers. At one time a
biographer's task was easy: he simply took the hearsay and inventions of
Hawkins, and accepted them as gospel truth whenever they could not be
tested. The fact that whenever they could by any means be tested they
were found to be false--even this did not dismay the biographer.
Hawkins's favourite pastime was libelling the dead. He libelled Dr.
Johnson, and Boswell promptly and most vigorously dealt with him; he
libelled Purcell grossly--he deliberately devised slanderous tales of
him. The biographers, with simple, childlike credulity, went on whenever
possible repeating his statements, for the obvious reason that this
course was the easiest. Hawkins knew nothing of Purcell. He can be
proved to be wrong, not merely about this or that detail, but about
everything. He is said to have known one Henry Needler, a pupil of
Purcell, and also Gostling, the son of the singer of the same name for
whom Purcell wrote; but neither acquaintance seems to have profited him
aught. His anecdotes are the product of inborn wickedness and an
uncouth, boorish imagination. When we have cleared away his garbage,
there remains only a skeleton life, but at any rate we have the
satisfaction of knowing that is pure fact.
Henry Purcell was born (probably) about the end of 1658, and (probably
also) in Westminster. Some of his family were musicians before him. His
father, Henry Purcell the elder, was a Gentleman of the Chapel Royal
(that is, a singer in the choir, and in many cases organist as well),
and was master of the choristers at Westminster Abbey for three years.
He held various posts in the "King's Musick," sharing the duties of
"lute and voyce" for a time with one Angelo Notari. The latter appears
to have died in 1663; but strangely enough after his death he asked for
arrears of salary for 1661 and 1664. However, in 1663 Henry Purcell the
elder seemed to have taken over the whole duties of their joint post;
and he, Purcell, died in 1664. If Henry the younger was six years old at
the time of his father's death, then he must have been born in 1658 or,
at latest, the early part of 1659; if he was born in 1658 or the early
part of 1659, then he must have been six years old at the time of his
father's death. So much we know positively; anything more is
supposition--that is, the whole affair is supposition; but this
supposition has one merit: it cannot be very widely wrong. Pepys knew
Henry the elder, and refers to him in his Diary; and it may be remarked
in passing that those who wish to grow familiar with the atmosphere in
which Purcell was brought up, and lived and worked, must go to Pepys,
who knew all the musicians of the period, and the life of Church, Court,
and theatre. Thomas Purcell, brother of Henry the elder, was also a
Gentleman of the Chapel Royal. He succeeded Henry Lawes as Court
lutanist, and held other positions, and evidently stood high in favour.
This Thomas certainly adopted Henry the younger at the death of Henry
the elder, and afterwards he wrote of him as "my sonne." Young Henry
seems to have become a choir-boy as a mere matter of family custom. He
joined as one of "the children" of the Chapel Royal, with Captain Cooke
as his master. Cooke must have been a clever musician in spite of the
military title he had gained while fighting on the Royalist side in the
Civil War. He had an extraordinarily gifted set of boys under him, and
he seems to have trained them well. When some of them tried their
infantile hands at composition he encouraged them. Pepys heard at least
one of their achievements, and records his pleasure. And it must be
remembered that Pepys was a composer and connoisseur--he would go many
miles to hear a piece of music. Cooke died in 1672, and Pelham Humphries
became master of "the children." He was born in 1647, and therefore was
eleven years older than Purcell; he, too, had been a child of the
Chapel Royal. In 1664 Charles sent him abroad to study foreign methods.
In the accounts of the secret-service money for 1664, 1665, and 1666
stand sums of money paid him to defray his expenses; yet in 1665 the
accounts of the "King's Musick" show that Cooke received £40 "for the
maintenance of Pelham Humphryes." In less than a year's time he was
appointed musician for the lute--in the "King's Musick"--in the place of
Nicholas Lanier, deceased. Two months after this entry the appointment
is confirmed by warrant. He undoubtedly did go abroad. He got, at any
rate, as far as Paris, and came back, says Pepys, "an absolute
monsieur"--very vain, loquacious, and "mighty great" with the King. Most
of the musicians of the time were vain. Cooke must have been
intolerable. Perhaps they learnt it from the actors with whom they
associated--many of them, in fact, were actors as well as musicians.
Humphries had worked under Lulli. It is not known that he had any other
master in Paris or in Italy, or whether he ever got as far as Italy. Up
to that date no opera of Lulli's seems to have been produced, but he was
none the less a master of music, and he could hand on what he had learnt
of Carissimi's technique. Humphries, highly gifted, swift, returned to
England knowing all Lulli could teach him. He had not Purcell's rich
imagination, nor his passion, nor that torrential flow of ever-fresh
melody; but it cannot be doubted that he was of immense service in
indicating new paths and new ways of doing things. He had--at second
hand we must admit--Carissimi's methods and new impulse; and, at the
very least, he saved Purcell the trouble of a journey to Paris. It was a
misfortune for English music that he died so early. These Restoration
geniuses had a way of dying early. He distinctly had genius, a very
different thing from the plodding industry of Dr. John Blow, who
succeeded him in 1674. Dr. Blow afterwards claimed to have been
Purcell's master, and, as Purcell was certainly his pupil, there seems
no reason for doubting him. Purcell was, of course, sixteen years of age
when Humphries died, and no longer a mere choir-boy; but he remained
attached to Westminster Abbey and the Chapel Royal. According to the
records of the "King's Musick," on June 10, 1673, there is a "warrant to
admit Henry Purcell in the place of keeper, maker, mender, repayrer and
tuner of the regalls, organs, virginalls, flutes and recorders and all
other kind of wind instruments whatsoever, in ordinary, without fee, to
his Majesty, and assistant to John Hingston, and upon the death or other
avoydance of the latter, to come in ordinary with fee." So late as 1683,
when Purcell had been organist of Westminster Abbey for about three
years, he was appointed to be "organ-maker and keeper in the place of
Mr. Hingston, deceased." The conjecture of Rev. Henry Cart de
Lafontaine, editor of these records (published by Novello) seems to be
correct: Purcell must have been apprenticed to Hingston and afterwards
succeeded him. In later warrants he is authorised to buy wood, metal and
Heaven knows what else--he can buy what he likes as long as he keeps the
instruments in order and in tune. Charles II. had a good ear. In 1676
Purcell was appointed "copyist" of Westminster Abbey, whatever post that
may have been. In 1677 "Henry Purcell" is "appointed composer in
ordinary with fee for the violin to his Majesty, in the place of Matthew
Lock, deceased." I fancy that his tuition from Dr. Blow must have been
mainly in organ-playing, in which art Dr. Blow was an esteemed master.
At the same time, we must not forget that we have Purcell's own word for
it that Blow was one of the greatest masters of composition in the
world. Purcell spoke of Dr. Blow's technical mastery of the tricks of
canon-writing, which Purcell himself was much addicted to, and greatly
enjoyed. Dr. Blow may have taught Purcell something of the older
technique; that of Lulli and the Italians he must have learnt from
Humphries, for Dr. Blow knew next to nothing about it. Dr. Blow was born
in 1648, and was one year younger than Humphries, and ten older than
Purcell. In 1669 he became organist of Westminster Abbey. He, like
Humphries, and, indeed, all the foremost musicians of the period, was a
bloated pluralist, and held other positions. It is said that he resigned
Westminster Abbey in 1680 in Purcell's favour. Whether the resignation
was voluntary or not, Purcell assuredly took his place at that date.
After Purcell's death in 1695 Dr. Blow took the position again, and
retained it until his own death, in 1708. It is also said that he
resigned another place to make way for another pupil, Jeremiah Clarke.
This apparent passion or mania for resigning posts in favour of gifted
pupils might easily have led to a pernicious custom amongst organists.
However, since Dr. Blow's time the organist of Westminster Abbey has
always been a more business-like person, though rarely, if ever, a fine
artist. Dr. Blow, living amongst men of such genius, caught a little--a
very little--of Humphries' and Purcell's lordly manner in the writing of
music; but no sweet breath of inspiration ever blew his way. Burney,
unfortunate creature, found fault with his harmonies, and these have
been defended as "spots on the sun." As a matter of fact, the harmonies
are good enough. There are no spots--only there is no sun. His claim to
have taught Purcell is a claim for such immortality as books give.
Purcell's teacher will be remembered long after the composer of anthems
has been crowded out of biographical dictionaries.
I have said that our knowledge of Purcell consists very largely of
speculations, hypotheses and inferences. These have led the biographers
into wasting some highly moral reflections on Purcell's early doings. We
are told, for example, that he composed music for the theatre until he
became organist of Westminster Abbey, after which date he applied his
energies wholly to the service of the Church. Had the biographers not
kindly followed the blind Hawkins and Burney, and hearsay generally,
those reflections might have been saved for a more fitting occasion. It
was long held that Purcell wrote the incidental music for _Aureng-Zebe_,
_Epsom Wells_, and _The Libertine_ about 1676, when he was eighteen,
because those plays were performed or published at that time. It used to
be said that the music, though immature, showed promise, and was indeed
marvellous for so young a man. But unless one possesses the touchstone
of a true critical faculty and an intimate acquaintance with Purcell's
music and all the music of the time, one should be cautious--one cannot
be too cautious. The music for these plays was not composed till at
least fifteen years later. The biographers had also a craze for proving
Purcell's precocity. They would have it that _Dido and Aeneas_ dated
from his twenty-second year. If they had boldly stuck to their plan of
attributing the music to the year of the first performance of the play
to which it is attached, they might easily have shown him to have been a
prolific composer before he was born. The prosaic truth is that Purcell
came before the world as a composer for the theatre in the very year of
his appointment to Westminster Abbey, and during the last five years of
his life he turned out huge quantities of music for the theatre. It is
easy to believe that his first experiments were for the Church. He was
brought up in the Church, and sang there; when his voice broke he went
on as organist. Some of his relatives and most of his friends were
Church musicians. But Church and stage were not far apart at the Court
of Charles, and, moreover, the more nearly the music of the Church
resembled that of the stage, the better the royal ears were pleased.
Pepys' soul was filled with delighted approval when he noticed the royal
hand beating the time during the anthem, and, in fact, Charles insisted
on anthems he could beat time to. Whilst "on his travels" he had
doubtless observed how much better, from his point of view, they did
these things in France. There was nothing vague or undecided in that
curious mind. He knew perfectly well what he liked, and insisted on
having it. He disliked the old Catholic music; he disliked quite as much
Puritan psalm-singing--that abominable cacophony which to-day is called
"hearty congregational singing." He wanted jolly Church music, sung in
time and in tune; he wanted secular, not sacred, music in church. But
his taste, though secular, was not corrupt--the music-hall Church music
and Salvation Army tunes of to-day would probably have outraged his
feelings. His taste coincided with Purcell's own. Along with some of the
old-fashioned genuine devotional music, Purcell must have heard from
childhood a good deal of the stamp he was destined to write; he must
often have taken his part in Church music that might, with perfect
propriety, have been given in a theatre. All things were ripe for a
secular composer; the mood that found utterance in the old devotional
music was a dead thing, and in England Humphries had pointed the new
way. Purcell was that secular composer.
One spirit, the secular, pagan spirit, breathes in every bar of
Purcell's music. Mid-Victorian critics and historians deplored the
resemblance between the profane style of the stage pieces and the sacred
style of the anthems and services. Not resemblance, but identity, is the
word to use. There is no distinguishing between the two styles. There
are not two styles: there is one style--the secular style, Purcell's
style. Let us pause a moment, and ask ourselves if any great composer
has ever had more than one style. Put aside the fifth-rate imitators who
now copied Mozart, and now Palestrina, and could therefore write in as
many styles as there were styles to copy, and not one of them their own.
There is no difference between the sacred motets and the secular
madrigals of the early polyphonists. Bach did not use dance-measures in
his Church music, but in the absence of these lies the entire
distinction between his Church and his secular compositions; the
structure, manner and outlines of his songs are precisely alike--indeed,
he dished up secular airs for sacred cantatas. The style of Handel's
"Semele" and that of his "Samson" are the same; there is no
dissimilarity between Haydn's symphonies and the "Creation"; Mozart's
symphonies and his masses (though the masses are a little breezier, on
the whole); Schubert's symphonies or songs and his masses or "The Song
of Miriam"; Beethoven's Ninth Symphony and the great Mass in D.
Purcell's style is largely a sort of fusion of all the styles in vogue
in his lifetime. The old polyphonic music he knew, and he was a master
of polyphonic writing; but with him it was only a means to the carrying
out of a scheme very unlike any the old writers ever thought of--the
interest of each separate part is not greater than the general harmonic
interest. Then, as he admitted, he learnt a great deal from the
Italians. From Lulli, through Humphries, he got declamatory freedom in
the bonds of definite forms, not letting the poet's or the Bible words
warp his music out of all reasonable shape. The outlines of his tunes
show unmistakably the influence of English folk-song and folk-dance.
There was an immense amount of household music in those days--catches,
ballads, songs and dances. The folk-songs, even if they were invented
before the birth of the modern key-sense, were soon modified by it: very
few indications can be found of their having originated in the epoch
when the modes had the domination; and the same is true of the dances.
The sum of these influences, plus Purcell's innate tendencies, was a
style "apt" (in the phraseology of the day) either for Church, Court,
theatre, or tavern--a style whose combined loftiness, directness, and
simplicity passed unobserved for generations while the big "bow-wow"
manner of Handel was held to be the only manner tolerable in great
music.
By 1680 Purcell's apprenticeship was at end. Early compositions by him
had been published in Playford's "Choice Ayres" in 1676 and 1679; in
1677 he had been appointed "composer (to the King) in ordinary for the
violin, in the place of Matthew Lock, deceased"; but none of the highest
official posts were his. And we must remember that official position was
a very different thing in Restoration times from what it is to-day.
Nowadays the world is bigger and more thickly populated, and men of
intellect and genius scorn Court appointments and official appointments
generally. These are picked up by Court toadies, business-headed
persons, men belonging to well-connected families--the Tite Barnacles of
the generation. The men of power appeal to the vast public direct. In
Purcell's day there was no vast public to appeal to. Concerts had
scarcely been devised; no composer could live by publishing his works.
The Court, the theatre, the Church--he had to win a position in one or
other or all of these if he wished to live at all. So in 1680 Purcell
the master passed over the head of his teacher, Dr. John Blow, to the
organistship of Westminster Abbey--that is, he was recognised as the
first organist living. In the same year he composed the first theatre
pieces he is known to have composed--those for Lee's _Theodosius_. (I
disregard as fatuous the supposition that in his boyhood he wrote the
_Macbeth_ music attributed, perhaps wrongly, to Locke.) It was not for
some time that he gained the supremacy at the theatre which he now held
in the Church. That very trustworthy weathercock John Dryden, Poet
Laureate, continued to flatter others for many long days to come. In
this same year he composed the first of a long series of odes of
welcome, congratulation or condolence for royal or great personages, and
about this year he married.