Old Scores and New Readings | Page 3

in London, and all things were fair and clean.
It is old-world music, yet it stands nearer to us than most of the music
written in and immediately after Handel's period, the period of dry
formalism and mere arithmetic. There is not a sign of the formal
melodic outlines which we recognise at once in any piece out of the
contrapuntal time, not an indication that the Academic, "classical,"
unpoetic, essay-writing eighteenth century was coming. The formal
outlines had not been invented, for rules and themes that would work
without breaking the rules were little thought of. Byrde evades the rules
in the frankest manner: in this Mass alone there are scores of evasions
that would have been inevitably condemned a century afterwards, and
might even be condemned by the contrapuntists of to-day. The
eighteenth-century doctors who edited Byrde early in this century did

not in the least understand why he wrote as he did, and doubtless would
have put him right if they had thought of having the work sung instead
of simply having it printed as an antiquarian curiosity. The music does
not suggest the eighteenth century with its jangling harpsichords, its
narrow, dirty streets, its artificiality, its brilliant candle-lighted rooms
where the wits and great ladies assembled and talked more or less
naughtily. There is indeed a strange, pathetic charm in the eighteenth
century to which no one can be indifferent: it is a dead century, with the
dust upon it, and yet a faint lingering aroma as of dead rose petals. But
the old-world atmosphere of Byrde's music is, at least to me, something
finer than that: it is the atmosphere of a world which still lives: it is
remote from us and yet very near: for the odour of dead rose petals and
dust you have a calm cool air, and a sense of fragrant climbing flowers
and of the shade of full foliaged trees. All is sane, clean, fresh: one
feels that the sun must always have shone in those days. This quality,
however, it shares with a great deal of the music of the "spacious days"
of Elizabeth. But of its expressiveness there is not too much to be found
in the music of other musicians than Byrde in Byrde's day. He towered
high above all the composers who had been before him; he stands
higher than any other English musician who has lived since, with the
exception of Purcell. It is foolish to think of comparing his genius with
the genius of Palestrina; but the two men will also be reckoned close
together by those who know this Mass and the Cantiones Sacræ. They
were both consummate masters of the technique of their art; they both
had a fund of deep and original emotion; they both knew how to
express it through their music. I have not space to mention all the
examples I could wish. But every reader of this article may be strongly
recommended at once to play, even on the piano, the sublime passage
beginning at the words "Qui propter nos homines," noting more
especially the magnificent effect of the swelling mass of sound
dissolving in a cadence at the "Crucifixus." Another passage, equal to
any ever written, begins at "Et unam Sanctam Catholicam." There is a
curious energy in the repetition of "Et Apostolicam Ecclesiam," and
then a wistful sweetness and tenderness at "Confiteor unum baptisma."
Again, the whole of the "Agnus" is divine, the repeated "miserere
nobis," and the passage beginning at the "Dona nobis pacem,"
possessing that sweetness, tenderness and wonderful calm. But there is

not a number that does not contain passages which one must rank
amongst the greatest things in the world; and it must be borne in mind
that these passages are not detached, nor in fact detachable, but integral,
essential parts of a fine architectural scheme.

OUR LAST GREAT MUSICIAN (HENRY PURCELL, 1658-95)
I.
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