Purcell | Page 7

Clarke. This apparent passion or mania for
resigning posts in favour of gifted pupils might easily have led to a
pernicious custom amongst organists. However, since Dr. Blow's time
the organist of Westminster Abbey has always been a more
business-like person, though rarely, if ever, a fine artist. Dr. Blow,
living amongst men of such genius, caught a little--a very little--of
Humphries' and Purcell's lordly manner in the writing of music; but no
sweet breath of inspiration ever blew his way. Burney, unfortunate
creature, found fault with his harmonies, and these have been defended
as "spots on the sun." As a matter of fact, the harmonies are good

enough. There are no spots--only there is no sun. His claim to have
taught Purcell is a claim for such immortality as books give. Purcell's
teacher will be remembered long after the composer of anthems has
been crowded out of biographical dictionaries.
I have said that our knowledge of Purcell consists very largely of
speculations, hypotheses and inferences. These have led the
biographers into wasting some highly moral reflections on Purcell's
early doings. We are told, for example, that he composed music for the
theatre until he became organist of Westminster Abbey, after which
date he applied his energies wholly to the service of the Church. Had
the biographers not kindly followed the blind Hawkins and Burney, and
hearsay generally, those reflections might have been saved for a more
fitting occasion. It was long held that Purcell wrote the incidental music
for _Aureng-Zebe_, Epsom Wells, and The Libertine about 1676, when
he was eighteen, because those plays were performed or published at
that time. It used to be said that the music, though immature, showed
promise, and was indeed marvellous for so young a man. But unless
one possesses the touchstone of a true critical faculty and an intimate
acquaintance with Purcell's music and all the music of the time, one
should be cautious--one cannot be too cautious. The music for these
plays was not composed till at least fifteen years later. The biographers
had also a craze for proving Purcell's precocity. They would have it that
Dido and Aeneas dated from his twenty-second year. If they had boldly
stuck to their plan of attributing the music to the year of the first
performance of the play to which it is attached, they might easily have
shown him to have been a prolific composer before he was born. The
prosaic truth is that Purcell came before the world as a composer for the
theatre in the very year of his appointment to Westminster Abbey, and
during the last five years of his life he turned out huge quantities of
music for the theatre. It is easy to believe that his first experiments
were for the Church. He was brought up in the Church, and sang there;
when his voice broke he went on as organist. Some of his relatives and
most of his friends were Church musicians. But Church and stage were
not far apart at the Court of Charles, and, moreover, the more nearly the
music of the Church resembled that of the stage, the better the royal
ears were pleased. Pepys' soul was filled with delighted approval when

he noticed the royal hand beating the time during the anthem, and, in
fact, Charles insisted on anthems he could beat time to. Whilst "on his
travels" he had doubtless observed how much better, from his point of
view, they did these things in France. There was nothing vague or
undecided in that curious mind. He knew perfectly well what he liked,
and insisted on having it. He disliked the old Catholic music; he
disliked quite as much Puritan psalm-singing--that abominable
cacophony which to-day is called "hearty congregational singing." He
wanted jolly Church music, sung in time and in tune; he wanted secular,
not sacred, music in church. But his taste, though secular, was not
corrupt--the music-hall Church music and Salvation Army tunes of
to-day would probably have outraged his feelings. His taste coincided
with Purcell's own. Along with some of the old-fashioned genuine
devotional music, Purcell must have heard from childhood a good deal
of the stamp he was destined to write; he must often have taken his part
in Church music that might, with perfect propriety, have been given in
a theatre. All things were ripe for a secular composer; the mood that
found utterance in the old devotional music was a dead thing, and in
England Humphries had pointed the new way. Purcell was that secular
composer.
One spirit, the secular, pagan spirit, breathes in every bar of Purcell's
music. Mid-Victorian critics and historians deplored the resemblance
between the profane style of the stage pieces and the sacred style of the
anthems and services. Not resemblance, but identity, is the word