So far I have spoken of his music generally, and now I come to deal
(briefly, for my space is far spent) with the orchestral, choral, and
chamber music and songs; and first with the choral music. I begin to
fear that by insisting so strongly on the distinctive sweetness of
Purcell's melody, I may have given a partially or totally wrong
impression. Let me say at once, therefore, that delicate as he often
was, and sweet as he was more often, although he could write melodies
which are mere iridescent filaments of tone, he never became flabby
or other than crisp, and could, and did, write themes as flexible,
sinewy, unbreakable as perfectly tempered steel bands. And these
themes he could lay together and weld into choruses of gigantic
strength. The subject and counter-subject of "Thou art the King of
Glory" (in the "Te Deum" in D), the theme of "Let all rehearse," and
the ground bass of the final chorus (both in "Dioclesian"), the
subjects of many of the fugues of the anthems, are as energetic as
anything written by Handel, Bach or Mozart. And as for the choruses he
makes of them, Handel's are perhaps loftier and larger structures, and
Bach succeeds in getting effects which Purcell never gets, for the
simple enough reason that Purcell, coming a generation before Bach,
never tried or thought of trying to get them. But within his limits he
achieves results that can only be described as stupendous. For
instance, the chorus I have just mentioned--"Let all rehearse"--makes
one think of Handel, because Handel obviously thought of it when he
wrote "Fixed in His everlasting seat," and though Handel works out the
idea to greater length, can we say that he gets a proportionately
greater effect? I have not the faintest wish to elevate Purcell at
Handel's expense, for Handel is to me, as to all men, one of the gods
of music; but Purcell also is one of the gods, and I must insist that
in this particular chorus he equalled Handel with smaller means and
within narrower limits. It is not always so, for Handel is king of
writers for the chorus, as Purcell is king of those who paint in
music; but though Handel wrote more great choruses, his debt to
Purcell is enormous. His way of hurling great masses of choral tone at
his hearers is derived from Purcell; and so is the rhetorical plan of
many of his choruses. But in Purcell, despite his sheer strength, we
never fail to get the characteristic Purcellian touch, the little
unexpected inflexion, or bit of coloured harmony that reminds that
this is the music of the open air, not of the study, that does more
than this, that actually floods you in a moment with a sense of the
spacious blue heavens with light clouds flying. For instance, one gets
it in the great "Te Deum" in the first section; again at "To thee,
cherubim," where the first and second trebles run down in liquid
thirds with magical effect; once more at the fourteenth bar of "Thou
art the King of Glory," where he uses the old favourite device of
following up the flattened leading note of the dominant key in one
part by the sharp leading note in another part--a device used with
even more exquisite result in the chorus of "Full fathom five."
Purcell is in many ways like Mozart, and in none more than in these
incessantly distinctive touches, though in character the touches are
as the poles apart. In Mozart, especially when he veils the poignancy
of his emotion under a scholastic mode of expression, a sudden tremor
in the voice, as it were, often betrays him, and none can resist the
pathos of it. Purcell's touches are pathetic, too, in another
fashion--pathetic because of the curious sense of human weakness, the
sense of tears, caused by the sudden relaxation of emotional tension
that inevitably results when one comes on a patch of simple naked
beauty when nothing but elaborate grandeur expressive of powerful
exaltation had been anticipated. That Purcell foresaw this result, and
deliberately used the means to achieve it, I cannot doubt. Those
momentary slackenings of tense excitement are characteristic of the
exalted mood and inseparable from it, and he must have known that they
really go to augment its intensity. All Purcell's choruses, however,
are not of Handelian mould, for he wrote many that are sheer
loveliness from beginning to end, many that are the very voice of the
deepest sadness, many, again, showing a gaiety, an "unbuttoned"
festivity of feeling, such as never came into music again until
Beethoven introduced it as a new thing. The opening of one of the
complimentary odes, "Celebrate this festival," fairly carries one off
one's feet with the excess of jubilation in the rollicking rhythm and
living melody of it. One of the most magnificent examples of
picturesque music ever written--if not the most magnificent, at any
rate the most delightful in detail--is the anthem, "Thy way, O God, is
holy." The picture-painting is prepared for with astonishing artistic
foresight, and when it begins the effect is tremendous. I advise
everyone who wishes to realise Purcell's unheard-of fertility of great
and powerful themes to look at "The clouds poured out water," the
fugue subject "The voice of Thy thunders," the biting emphasis of the
passage "the lightnings shone upon the ground," and the irresistible
impulse of "The earth was moved." And the supremacy of Purcell's art
is shown not more in these than in the succession of simple harmonies
by which he gets the unutterable mournful poignancy of "Thou knowest,
Lord," that unsurpassed and unsurpassable piece of choral writing
which Dr. Crotch, one of the "English school," living in an age less
sensitive even than this to Purcellian beauty, felt to be so great
that it would be a desecration to set the words again. Later composers
set the words again, feeling it no desecration, but possibly rather a
compliment to Purcell; and Purcell's setting abides, and looks down
upon every other, like Mozart's G minor and Beethoven's Ninth upon
every other symphony, or the finale of Wagner's "Tristan" upon every
other piece of love-music.