Purcell is too commonly written of as "the founder of the English
school" of music. Now, far be it from me to depreciate the works of
the composers who are supposed to form the "English school." I would
not sneer at the strains which have lulled to quiet slumbers so many
generations of churchgoers. But everyone who knows and loves Purcell
must enter a most emphatic protest against that great composer being
held responsible, if ever so remotely, for the doings of the "English
school." Jackson (in F), Boyce and the rest owed nothing to Purcell;
the credit of having founded _them_ must go elsewhere, and may beg a
long time, I am much afraid, in the land of the shades before any
composer will be found willing to take it. Purcell was not the founder
but the splendid close of a school, and that school one of the very
greatest the world has seen. And to-day, when he is persistently
libelled, not more in blame than in the praise which is given him, it
seems worth while making a first faint attempt to break through the
net of tradition that has been woven and is daily being woven closer
around him, to see him as he stands in such small records as may be
relied upon and not as we would fain have him be, to understand his
relation to his predecessors and learn his position in musical
history, to hear his music without prejudice and distinguish its
individual qualities. This is a hard task, and one which I can only
seek to achieve here in the roughest and barest manner; yet any manner
at all is surely much better than letting the old fictions go
unreproved, while our greatest musician drifts into the twilight past,
misunderstood, unloved, unremembered, save when an Abbey wants a new
case for its organ, an organ on which Purcell never played, or a
self-styled Purcell authority wishes to set up a sort of claim of part
or whole proprietorship in him.