It is impossible to touch on more than a few characteristic examples of
Purcell's achievement. There are many charming detached songs; the
_Harpsichord Lessons_ contain exquisite things. There is also a quantity
of unpublished sacred and secular music of high value.
When Purcell died, on November 21, 1695, he was busy with the music for
Tom d'Urfey's _Don Quixote_ (part iii.), being helped by one Eccles, who
enjoyed a certain mild fame in his day. The last song, "set in his
sicknesse," was a song supposed to be sung by a mad woman, "From rosy
bowers." The recitative is magnificent; two of the sections in tempo are
fine, especially the second; the last portion is meant to depict raving
lunacy, and does so. It is by no means one of Purcell's greatest
efforts, and he apparently had no notion of making a dramatic exit from
this world. If the doctors knew what disease killed him, they never
told. The professional libeller of the dead, Hawkins, speaks of
dissipations and late hours: and he would have us believe that he left
his family in poverty. As a matter of fact, Mrs. Purcell was left quite
well off, and was able to give her son Edward a good education. She had
also property to bequeath when she died in 1706. Purcell worked so hard
that he cannot have had time for the life of tavern-rioting that Hawkins
invented. All we know is that he died, and that his death was a tragic
loss to England. A few days later he was buried in Westminster Abbey, to
the sound of his own most solemn music. A tablet to his memory was
placed near the grave, and the inscription on it is said to have been
written by the wife of Sir Robert Howard, author of the _Indian Queen_
and other forgotten master-works. The light of English music had gone
out, though few at the moment realised it, for Dr. Blow and Eccles and
others went on composing music which was thought very good. But the
light had gone, and it was not Handel who extinguished it. Handel did
not come to England for fifteen years, and during that fifteen years not
a single composition worthy of being placed within measurable distance
of Purcell's average work fell from an English pen. Purcell was by no
means forgotten all at once. The four-part sonatas were issued in 1697,
the _Harpsichord Lessons_ in 1696; the _Choice Ayres for the
Theatre_--selections from the stage music--came out in 1697; the first
book of the _Orpheus Britannicus_ appeared in 1698, and a second edition
of it in 1706; the second book of the same appeared in 1702, and a
second edition in 1711; while a third edition of both books was
published as late as 1721, when Handel had been settled in England some
years. The fame of our last great musician survived him for quite a
long time, as things go. That the re-issue of his works was not due
alone to the energy of his widow is clear, for she died in 1706.
It is indeed mournful to contemplate the havoc disease and death play
with the might-have-beens of men and of causes. Pelham Humphries, an
unmistakable genius, was carried away at twenty-seven; Henry Purcell,
one of the mightiest of the world's masters of music, died at the age of
thirty-seven, only two years older than his peer in genius, Mozart. Yet
he left a glorious record, and his days must have been glorious. Men
like Purcell do not create music such as theirs by blind instinct, as a
cat catches mice. A mighty brain and mightier heart must have worked
with passionate energy, the fires must have burnt at an unbroken white
heat, to produce so much unsurpassable music in so short a time. The
qualities we find in the music were in him before they got into the
music; all that we can enjoy he enjoyed first. He had, too, a high
destiny to work out, and he knew it. Thomas Tudway said he was ambitious
to exceed everyone of his time. To the last he laboured unceasingly, and
if he died, as has been suspected, of consumption, there is no trace of
the fever of ill-health nor any morbidness in his creations. They are
charged with energy--often elemental, volcanic energy that nothing can
resist; and at its lowest, the energy is the energy of robust health and
a keen appetite. That energy carried him far beyond the modest goal he
thought of, exceeding his fellows. He won the topmost heights within the
reach of man. The old polyphonists he never tried to rival, but in the
style of music he wrote no composer has gone or can go higher than he. A
wiseacre has said that he left a sterile monument. It may be that
monuments in the British Museum blow and blossom and reproduce their
kind: outside they do not. If the wiseacre meant that Purcell did not
leave, as Haydn and Mozart undoubtedly did, a form in which dullards may
compose until the world is sick, then the wiseacre is right But the
inventors and perfecters of forms have not always wrought an unmitigated
good. If Haydn left a fruitful monument in the symphony, and Handel in
his particular form of oratorio, and if we thankfully praise Haydn and
Handel for these their benefits, must we not also blame Haydn for the
dull symphonies that nearly drove Schumann and Wagner mad, and Handel
for the countless copies of his oratorios that rendered stupid, dull,
and insensible to the beauty of music those generations that have
attended our great musical festivals? The spirit of Purcell's work and
its technique did not die with Purcell: the spirit of much of Handel's
music, and certainly of his masterpiece, _Israel in Egypt_, is
Purcell's; and eighteenth-century contrapuntist though Handel was, much
of his technique came from Purcell. Rightly regarded, Purcell's monument
is anything but sterile. Felix Mottl, worried to exasperation by stale
laments for Mozart's premature death, once lifted up his voice and
thanked God for Mozart, the Heaven-sent man. In the same spirit we may
be thankful for Purcell. In his music we have the full and perfect
expression of all that was fair and sweet and healthy in this England of
ours; "all thoughts, all passions, all delights," that our English
nature is capable of find a voice in his music--if only we will take the
trouble to listen to it. He is neglected, it is true, but he is
immortal: time is nothing: he can wait. If our age neglects him, his age
neglected Shakespeare. Shakespeare's time came; Purcell's cannot be for
ever delayed.
LIST OF WORKS.
Music for over fifty dramas, including _Dioclesian_ (1690), _King
Arthur_ (1692), _Bonduca_, _The Indian Queen_, and _The Tempest_ (1695).
Over two hundred songs, duets, catches, etc.
Twelve sonatas of three parts (1683), ten of four parts (published
1697). _Harpsichord Lessons_ (published 1696). A number of fantasias for
strings.
About one hundred anthems; a quantity of sacred music apparently not for
Church use; _Te Deum_ and _Jubilate in D_; complete service in B flat;
evening service in G minor.
BELL'S MINIATURE SERIES OF MUSICIANS
COMPANION SERIES TO
Bell's Miniature Series of Painters
_Each volume 6-1/4 X 4 inches, price 1s. net; or in limp leather,
with photogravure frontispiece, 2s. net_.
EDITED BY
G.C. WILLIAMSON. LITT.D.
_NOW READY_.
BACH. By E.H. THORNE.
BEETHOVEN. By J.S. SHEDLOCK, B.A.
BRAHMS. By HERBERT ANTCLIFFE.
CHOPIN. By E.J. OLDMEADOW.
GOUNOD. By HENRY TOLHURST.
GRIEG. By E. MARKHAM LEE, M.A., MUS.D.
HANDEL. By W.H. CUMMINGS, MUS.D., F.S.A.,
Principal of the Guildhall School of Music.
HAYDN. By JOHN F. RUNCIMAN.
MENDELSSOHN. By the late VERNON BLACKBURN.
MOZART. By EBENEZER PROUT, Professor of
Music, Dublin University, B.A., Mus.D.
PURCELL. By JOHN F. RUNCIMAN.
ROSSINI. By W. ARMINE BEVAN.
SCHUMANN. By E.J. OLDMEADOW.
SULLIVAN. By H. SAXE WYNDHAM, Secretary
of the Guildhall School of Music.
TCHAIKOVSKI. By E. MARKHAM LEE, M.A., Mus.D.
VERDI. By ALBERT VISETTI.
WAGNER. By JOHN F. RUNCIMAN.
_Others to follow_.
LONDON: GEORGE BELL & SONS.