Old Scores and New Readings | Page 5

minds of those who are readier at all times to indulge in the
luxury of weeping than to feel the thrill of joy in a life greatly lived.
Purcell might have achieved more magnificent work, but that is a bad
reason for forgetting the magnificence of the work he did achieve. But I
myself am forgetting that the greatness of his music is not admitted,
and that the shortness of his life is merely urged as an excuse for not
finding it admirable. And remembering this, I assert that Purcell's life
was a great and glorious one, and that now his place is with the high
gods whom we adore, the lords and givers of light.
III.
Before Purcell's position in musical history can be ascertained and
fixed, it is absolutely necessary to make some survey of the rise of the
school of which he was the close.
In our unmusical England of to-day it is as hard to believe in an
England where music was perhaps the dominant passion of the people
as it is to understand how this should have been forgotten in a more
musical age than ours. Until the time of Handel's arrival in this country
there was no book printed which did not show unmistakably that its
writer loved music. It is a fact (as the learned can vouch) that Erasmus
considered the English the most given up to music of all the peoples of
Europe; and how far these were surpassed by the English is further
shown by the fact that English musicians were as common in
continental towns in those days as foreign musicians are in England

nowadays. I refrain from quoting Peacham, North, Anthony Wood,
Pepys, and the rest of the much over-quoted; but I wish to lay stress on
the fact that here music was widespread and highly cultivated, just as it
was in Germany in the eighteenth century. Moreover, an essential
factor in the development of the German school was not wanting in
England. Each German prince had his Capellmeister; and English
nobles and gentlemen, wealthier than German princes, differing from
them only in not being permitted to assume a pretentious title, had each
his Musick-master. I believe I could get together a long list of
musicians who were thus kept. It will be remembered that when Handel
came to England he quickly entered the service of the Duke of Chandos.
The royal court always had a number of musicians employed in the
making or the performing of music. Oliver Cromwell retained them and
paid them; Charles the Second added to them, and in many cases did
not pay them at all, so that at least one is known to have died of
starvation, and the others were everlastingly clamouring for arrears of
salary. It was the business of these men (in the intervals of asking for
their salaries) to produce music for use in the church and in the house
or palace; that for church use being of course nearly entirely
vocal--masses or anthems; that for house use, vocal and
instrumental--madrigals and fancies (_i.e._ fantasias). As generation
succeeded generation, a certain body of technique was built up and a
mode of expression found; and at length the first great wave of music
culminated in the works of Tallis and Byrde. Their technique and mode
of expression I shall say something about presently; and all the
criticism I have to pass on them is that Byrde is infinitely greater than
Tallis, and seems worthy indeed to stand beside Palestrina and
Sweelinck. Certainly anyone who wishes to have a true notion of the
music of this period should obtain (if he can) copies of the D minor
five-part mass, and the Cantiones Sacræ, and carefully study such
numbers as the "Agnus Dei" of the former and the profound "Tristitia et
anxietas" in the latter.
The learned branch of the English school reached its climax. Meantime
another branch, not unlearned, but caring less for scholastic perfection
than for perfect expression of poetic sentiment, was fast growing. The
history of the masque is a stale matter, so I will merely mention that
Campion, and many another with, before, and after him, engaged

during a great part of their lives in what can only be called the
manufacture of these entertainments. A masque was simply a gorgeous
show of secular ritual, of colour and of music--a kind of Drury Lane
melodrama in fact, but as far removed from Drury Lane as this age is
from that in the widespread faculty of appreciating beauty. The music
consisted of tunes of a popular outline and sentiment, but they were
dragged into the province of art by the incapacity of those who wrote or
adapted them to touch anything without leaving it lovelier than when
they lighted on it.