enry Purcell has caused no little consternation among his Fairest Isle descendants and to many others, it must be said, who have found consistent cultural nourishment in the intellectual and esthetic environment that that small but special place has spawned. The source of this consternation? Who among the native-born of any generation could rightfully claim pride of place in the search for a successor to this truly incomparable genius? How mean of him to be so good? The twentieth century finally found an answer in Benjamin Britten. Now that the gates are open and there are so many signs of creativity astir in the younger generation, perhaps a new age of British imperialism not, blessedly, of the political kind is at hand. One hopes; for the standard Purcell set was so high!

Purcell was a prolific creator of music for the theater, notably in the great semi-operas based on adaptations of Shakespeare and others, but also as a composer of incidental music, both instrumental and vocal, for a large number of late seventeenth-century English dramatic works. Abdelazer, or The Moor's Revenge is one such. Purcell's music for the revival in 1695 of Mrs. Aphra Behn's gory shocker is an exceptionally attractive example of contemporary theatrical practice, even if the play itself is not. Curtis Price calls it, "perhaps the bloodiest of all Restoration plays. To call it a tragedy is to dignify the protaganist's crimes: he commits adultery with Queen Isabella of Spain, poisons her husband, solicits lovers for his own wife, deceives everyone, and utters unremitting contumely. His Julius Caesar-like assassination in Act V is long overdue." Fortunately, Purcell's music makes no attempt to characterize events in the drama. Many will recognize the d minor Rondeau theme from its use by Benjamin Britten in his A Young Person's guide to the Orchestra. After Purcell's death the music was re-ordered into the suite played here and published, along with a number of his other theater pieces, in "A Collection of Ayres...for the Theatre."

The Funeral Sentences with March and Canzona for the Funeral of Queen Mary have achieved status in recent years because of the profundity of emotion they evoke in their totality and in the beauty of their separate parts. This is unquestionably powerful music, set to texts of remarkable eloquence from the burial office in the Book of Common Prayer. However, it is not easy to verify their inclusion or position in the obsequies honoring a beloved queen with whom they are traditionally associated. It does seem clear though that a few months later Purcell's settings were performed at his own funeral, and in the same location, Westminster Abbey. Several versions of each of the Sentences exist dating from early to the late days of Purcell's career. He was an inveterate reviser of his own work. The versions sung at this performance provide, especially in their use of wrenching dissonances, an almost embarrassingly intimate view of the composer's response to the text. The March was adapted from theatrical usage in a play called The Libertine, not, contextually at least, a promising source. Exactly how the instrumental and vocal elements were integrated at Mary's funeral, if they were, is unclear. Acknowledging all of that, it must be said that a performance tradition has arisen surrounding this music that has a compelling integrity to it. We will perform the music antiphonally. The instrumental group, at the rear of the church, consists of trumpet and three sackbuts (predecessors of the modern trombone) and timpani. Purcell likely would have used four slide trumpets (even rarer these days than sackbuts) and perhaps untuned drums.

Purcell's association with the Abbey as a chorister and organist and his royal appointment offered him many opportunities to write music for the Anglican Church both in its grand public offices and for the more intimate climate of the Chapel Royal. We will perform anthems from both venues. Drawing on a long-standing tradition, Purcell created many of his church works in the form known as verse anthems, that is, works where soloists, alone or in various groupings with other soloists, sing in alternation with the full chorus. English church architectural tradition required that the choir be divided into two equal sections (decani and cantoris), facing each other, each fully staffed with all four parts and each with its own designated soloists on either side of the forward section of the church, i.e. between the nave and the high altar. Purcell experimented quite liberally with the stereophonic possibilities inherent in this arrangement, some aspects of which you will in this performance. O all ye people, clap your hands is a brilliant example of the extraverted Italianate vocal style which swept Europe in the early sixteenth century. It is scored for two sopranos, tenor and bass (no altos), a distribution of parts Purcell used several times in his anthems for the Chapel Royal. Jehova quam multi sunt hostes is one of only a few anthems to Latin texts Purcell wrote. It makes rather elaborate use of verse anthem technique with two extended solos for tenor and bass. Blow up the trumpet in Sion is another brilliant work scored for ten(!) voice parts. It is a call for sinners to turn to God in the face of danger from the heathen. Purcell scholar Peter Holman suggests it may have been composed for a state occasion, and perhaps in response to a string of French military and naval victories which caused great alarm in England.

Both the English singer and the English song went through substantial changes during Purcell's lifetime as Italian influences migrated throughout Europe and crossed the Channel. An eager participant in those changes was the composer himself, but only to the extent to which he could give his music through its native interpreters a uniquely English accent. During the 1660s and 70s a number of Italian singers settled in London bringing the latest styles in Italian music and its performance with them. Some elements of this new style included an expanded melodic expressivity; an advanced use of chromaticism; exploration of wider tessituras, especially exploiting the high voice; a mixing of florid passagework with long held notes; and a new vocabulary of ornaments and graces. What was also brought along were a few examples of Italian castrati but, as Peter Holman says, "They remained an exotic novelty: there was no attempt to produce an English race of geldings, nor to assimilate Italian castrati into the mainstream of musical Life." The countertenor, either as an independent virtuoso vocal category or as an upper extension of the tenor voice, gained new prominence and increasing attention from composers and voice trainers alike. (The prevailing pitch standard of A=406, quite low by our standards, may also have contributed to upper range extension of tenors.)

All of the solos we will hear in this concert, save one, are drawn from Orpheus Britannicus, a two volume collection of Purcell's songs published three years after his death. The songs come from a variety of sources although fully half of them were created as incidental music for the playhouse.

If music be the food of love dates from 1695, and is one Purcell's best loved songs. This is the more elaborate and extended of two versions he made of this song. Tis Nature's voice, a verse in praise of music in nature, is a stanza from Purcell's last ode honoring St. Cecilia, first performed on St. Cecilia's day, November 22, 1692. She loves and she confesses too may have been Purcell's critical response to composer Pietro Reggio's rather more awkward setting of the same text over the same ground bass. Sweeter than roses (1695) was written for inclusion in the tragedy Pausanius: an "aphrodisiac" air, says Price. It is filled with the kinds of words that never fail to inspire Purcell's melodic imagination: roses... Evening's breeze... dear kiss... trembling... freeze... shot like fire. The fatal hour comes on apace is a tragic and deeply personal soliloquy about impending separation. Celemene, pray tell me, one of Purcell's final works, is a comic dialogue between two pruriently curious children. It was inserted into a play, Oroonoko, with a complicated plot involving slavery, seduction, duplicity, and other unsavory elements set in the West Indies. The comic possibilities inherent in the subject of sexual awakening was one which Purcell savored.

Thomas Shadwell adaptation of Shakespeare's Timon of Athens for the London stage was first presented in 1678. (See sidebar for Professor Evett's discussion of Timon and its history.) Purcell's contributions in the form of an overture, masque, and curtain tune were composed for a revival in May or June 1695. And they are from the top drawer. The masque is a dialogue between love (Cupid) and the self indulgent lifestyle represented by Bacchus. From the opening brief Symphony of Pipes and sparkling duet Hark! how the songsters, we know that we are in that special land of fancy that Purcell inhabited more fully than any other composer before or since. Because it meets the needs of the play (probably of real life as well) there is no real winner in this discourse. Cupid and Bacchus decide to coexist, and the masque ends indecisively but satisfactorily.

The Boston Cecilia performed this program at All Saints Parish in Brookline on April 7, 2002.

© 2004 Donald Teeters. All rights reserved.