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Henry Purcell by Peter Holman; Purcell Remembered by Michael Burden; Purcell Studies by Curtis Price Review by: Mark A. Radice Notes, Second Series, Vol. 53, No. 3 (Mar., 1997), pp. 791-795 Published by: Music Library Association Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/899732 . Accessed: 14/06/2014 19:05 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp . JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. . Music Library Association is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Notes. http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded from 188.72.96.115 on Sat, 14 Jun 2014 19:05:09 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

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Page 1: Henry Purcellby Peter Holman;Purcell Rememberedby Michael Burden;Purcell Studiesby Curtis Price

Henry Purcell by Peter Holman; Purcell Remembered by Michael Burden; Purcell Studies byCurtis PriceReview by: Mark A. RadiceNotes, Second Series, Vol. 53, No. 3 (Mar., 1997), pp. 791-795Published by: Music Library AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/899732 .

Accessed: 14/06/2014 19:05

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

.

Music Library Association is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Notes.

http://www.jstor.org

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Page 2: Henry Purcellby Peter Holman;Purcell Rememberedby Michael Burden;Purcell Studiesby Curtis Price

Book Reviews

SEVENTEENTH CENTURY

Henry Purcell. By Peter Holman. (Oxford Studies of Composers.) Ox- ford: Oxford University Press, 1994. [xvii, 250 p. ISBN 0-19-816340-1. $48.00.] Purcell Remembered. By Michael Burden. Portland, Ore.: Amadeus Press, 1995. [xxv, 188 p. ISBN 1- 57467-003-4 (pbk.). $17.95.] Purcell Studies. Edited by Curtis Price. Cambridge: Cambridge Univer-

sity Press, 1995. [xii, 305 p. ISBN 0- 521-44174-9. $64.95.]

The tercentenary of Henry Purcell's death in 1695 has occasioned the publica- tion of a surprising number of first-rate studies devoted to various aspects of Pur- cell's life and works. In addition to the three books reviewed here, there are three others that are complementary, being the work of the same authors and editors: Henry Purcell: The Origins and Development of His Musical Style by Martin Adams (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995), Performing the Music of Henry Purcell, edited by Michael Burden (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996), and The Purcell Companion, ed- ited by Michael Burden (Portland, Ore.: Amadeus Press, 1995). Furthermore, the novelist Maureen Duffy considered the composer in Henry Purcell (London: Fourth Estate, 1994).

Peter Holman's intention in writing Henry Purcell was to establish "a context for the various genres to which Purcell con- tributed" (p. viii). This contextual picture of Purcell and his music recalls-albeit in a mercifully more concise manner-the general approach taken by Philipp Spitta in his classic biography of J. S. Bach. The six chapters are packed with telling details of politics, culture, economics, and other fac- ets of seventeenth-century life. These de- tails are not trivial: in every discussion, the pebbles of information combine to form a genial pathway that leads to a greater ap- preciation of Purcell's art. Seventy-two di- verse music examples, many of them quite extensive, complement Holman's prose, and point up distinctive features in Pur- cell's music and in the pieces that served as his models.

In the opening chapter, "Purcell's Mu- sical World," Holman paints a vivid picture of the newly restored court of Charles II and its music organizations. Purcell's in- volvement with the court, his interactions with John Blow, Christopher Gibbons, Pelham Humfrey, and Matthew Locke are also treated briefly. Information concern- ing Purcell's manuscripts, the sources of his music, instrument builders, and the annual occasions associated with court, church, and theater round out the portrait.

The following chapter, "Domestic Vocal Music," is essentially a chronological over- view of Purcell's song literature. The in- fluence of Continental models, especially of Italian models, is examined. Formal aspects of the songs are explained as are the affects associated by seventeenth-century English musicians with particular keys. Informa- tion concerning performance practice is in- troduced throughout the discourse. These tidbits, often drawn from primary sources, sometimes lead us to reconsider Purcell's works as we know them from performances and recordings. Concerning the basso con- tinuo, for example, Holman states: "One should not assume that the bass viol was used [with the harpsichord] ... as it tends to be today: the continuo group of key- board and a stringed instrument is char- acteristic of eighteenth- rather than seven- teenth-century England" (p. 36).

"Instrumental Music," the subject of the third chapter, is one of Holman's strongest areas: his earlier study Four and Twenty Fiddlers: The Violin at the English Court, 1540-1690 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993) established the background into which Purcell and his works are placed with admirable precision. Materials for this chapter and for chapter 6 also have been drawn from his study of consort music in The Purcell Companion. Holman's efforts to clarify the identity of the "fam'd Italian Masters" imitated by Purcell in his own string sonatas are particularly helpful: Maurizio Cazzati, Giovanni Battista Vitali, Giovanni Legrenzi, Lelio Calista, and Carlo Ambrogio Lonati (string composers largely of the generation before Arcangelo Corelli) are shown to be the principal models. Moreover, features that are dis- tinctively English-and especially distinc- tively Purcellian-are pointed out. A brief

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NOTES, March 1997

overview of the keyboard works concludes the chapter.

In the fourth chapter, Holman turns to the "Church Music" and shows that Purcell, in preferring the verse anthem, reflected the tastes of Charles II. He goes on to sug- gest that the paucity of full anthems from Purcell's pen during Charles's reign "sug- gests that Purcell wrote less for Westmin- ster Abbey than has been thought" (p. 110). Structures, harmonic features, the use of formal counterpoint, and other features of the anthems are examined. Especially interesting-and useful for those who per- form Purcell's anthems-are Holman's comments concerning the influence of the physical features of the chapel at Whitehall on the size and disposition of the perform- ing forces for the anthems (p. 127). Pri- mary sources for the anthems, personnel of the Chapel Royal, and other issues relating to performance practice are also addressed concisely yet meaningfully.

Purcell's "Odes," the topic of chapter 5, have recently been the focus of much schol- arly debate. Purcell wrote court odes on a regular basis from about 1680 until his death in 1695; in all, twenty-four odes sur- vive. These scores are preserved in various sources, of which two at the British Library, Add. MS 33287 (containing nine of Pur- cell's odes) and R.M. 20.h.8 (containing nine of Purcell's court odes from the reigns of Charles II and James II in chronological sequence) are the most important. The odes therefore offer "an unparalleled opportu- nity to observe successive changes in Pur- cell's style between 1680 and the last few months of his life" (p. 144). Holman helps us to place the repertory by casting broad categories of odes: (1) odes for the New Year; (2) "welcome odes" that served to "greet the monarch on his return to White- hall after a period of absence"; (3) birthday odes; and (4) odes for St. Cecilia's Day (i.e., 22 November).

The discussion of the odes identifies the origins of the genre (p. 145), its expansion from the 1660s to the 1690s (p. 150), and ultimately, its influence on the formation of the Handelian oratorio style (pp. 183- 87). Of special interest is Holman's expla- nation of the influence on Purcell of Gio- vanni Battista Draghi's ode of 1687 From Harmony, from Heavenly Harmony. Holman concludes that Purcell "could not have writ-

ten 'Hail, bright Cecilia' without studying it" (p. 170).

The relationship of literary and musical forms is neatly explored. Without noticing it, the reader is given a snapshot of seven- teenth-century literary fashions. In that picture, the figures of Abraham Cowley, John Dryden, and Nahum Tate occupy po- sitions of importance beside the musicians. Here, particularly in his interesting com- ments concerning Cowley, Holman has subtly suggested a potentially fertile area for future investigation.

Purcell's final years were devoted prin- cipally to composition of music for the theater, the subject of the sixth and final chapter of Holman's monograph. Holman surveys this confoundingly complex topic with elegance and insight. The sharing of royal musicians with the "public" compa- nies, the gradual shift from "royal musi- cians" to "professional" musicians, the use and constitution of the basso continuo, and a host of other critical issues are examined.

Some of Holman's conclusions, especially his assertion that Purcell's instrumental en- sembles "were not too large to be accom- modated in small galleries above the pro- scenium arch or at the side of the stage" (p. 190) are unconvincing, since they seem to be based more on intuitive reaction rather than upon a careful survey of the surviving documents. The remarks in this chapter concerning performance practice are fewer than in other chapters, perhaps because Holman is less secure in this area.

The chapter includes discussions of Pur- cell's most important stage works: Dido and Aeneas, The Prophetess, King Arthur, The Fairy Queen, Timon of Athens, The Indian Queen, and Bonduca. The space devoted to Dido is disproportionate-at least by the standards of Purcell's time. This Italianate "opera" -admittedly a masterpiece-was a freak in the composer's oeuvre. It was sung throughout; it had the smallest orchestra that Purcell ever used for any of his "op- eratic" works; it was probably produced privately rather than in the public London theater (i.e., Dorset Garden); it copied the three-act, Italian plan rather than the more typical five-act plan of the "dramatick op- eras"; in terms of duration, it is, at best, about a third as long as the other large- scale stage works; and it apparently con- tained no spoken play in its original form.

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Book Reviews

The space devoted to Purcell's more "typ- ical" operas is skimpy by comparison.

Although the chapter is rounded off with a discussion of the theatrical suites that ap- peared in various published arrangements of the seventeenth century, we are still con- fronted with a very basic question: By what standards shall Purcell's work be evaluated? Either present-day aesthetics may be held as benchmarks, or, we may judge by seven- teenth-century standards. Either perspec- tive has its merits, and-particularly for those coming fresh to Purcell, his music, and his world-it may be that Holman's decision was a prudent one.

Each chapter includes an abundance of notes. Holman's bibliography, divided into "Books and Articles" and "Scores," is a use- ful one. The index is likewise subdivided: pages 241-44 list Purcell's works by Zim- merman catalogue numbers and refer the reader to the pages containing discussion of those works; this index is followed by a general index, but no "see" reference to the works is given under Purcell's name.

All in all, the book is an exemplary piece of scholarship. Holman manifests a stag- gering intimacy with his subject; yet he presents his findings in a simple, direct, and unpretentious way. The prose style is engaging, and one truly cannot put the book down. The only distractions in the text were the too numerous errors in ed- itorial detail: several abbreviations are omitted from the table of abbreviations in the front matter (p. xvii); word strings that were moved hither and yon in order to find the most genial flow sometimes re- main in their several experimental posi- tions (p. 46); tempo sequences of "slow- fast-flow-fast" appear (p. 92); words are omitted from sentences (pp. 158, 159); and some unlovely-and downright humorous -wordings appear: "An obvious candidate is the recently discovered Staircase Over- ture in Z" [recte: Bb] (p. 63).

A scholar must finally be responsible for his or her prose, and, perhaps the"key of Z" was a deliberate trick to make the slack- ing reader smile; but a responsible editor would probably have pointed out this and other curiosities that appear here and there throughout the book. Oxford University Press may also be chided for the book's too narrow margins and its lack of running heads.

Purcell Remembered is one in a series of "Remembered" books that originate with Faber and Faber in England and often are published in the United States by Amadeus Press. The beauty of Purcell Remembered is that it presents "a portrait of the composer both in his time and since, using diaries, letters and official and published writings from the seventeenth to the twentieth cen- turies" (back jacket).These documents are prefaced by a chronology and introduced with lively commentaries-a format that is common to all "Remembered" volumes. Consequently, these books are extraordi- narily engaging both for the scholar and the amateur.

Documents within the Purcell volume are grouped into broad categories: "Early Life and the Chapel Royal"; "Singers, Singing and a Celebration of Music"; "The Sonnata's of III Parts and a Battle for an Organ"; "Two Coronations and a Revolu- tion"; "Publishing, Pedagogy and a Passing; Purcell on the Stage"; "'O Mourn, Ye Sa- cred Muses, Mourn' "; "From Beyond the Grave"; "'The Devine Purcell'-Purcell Recalled"; and "Composers on Purcell- Purcell Regain'd." Michael Burden's edi- torial remarks are helpful, interesting, and carefully researched. (I noticed only one error, where he asserts that the 1683 pub- lication of Purcell's Sonatas was delayed by "the fact that it was the first music pub- lication engraved on a copperplate to ap- pear in England" [p. 41]. In fact, Orlando Gibbons [d. 1625] had published his col- lection of Fantasies of Three Parts with the announcement on the title page that they are "cut in copper, the like not heretofore extant.") The text is complemented by sev- enteen black-and-white illustrations (be- tween pp. 68 and 69). Notes and a general index appear at the back of the volume.

Curtis Price served as both contributor to and editor of Purcell Studies. In his preface, Price points out that these essays are in- tended as "a sequel and complement to Henry Purcell (1659-1695): Essays on His Music [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1959]" (p. xi). He notes, too, that forensic studies of Purcell's manuscripts; of his compositional technique as evidenced by primary music sources (i.e., sketches, drafts, revisions, etc.); of reception history; and of performance practices in seven- teenth-century England are all necessary.

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NOTES, March 1997

The most important essays in the volume address these issues, and they do so in a manner comparable in its exactitude to the inquiries that have already been under- taken in conjunction with the life and works of J. S. Bach.

Robert Thompson's opening essay, "Pur- cell's Great Autographs," is a study of three principal sources: Cambridge, Fitzwilliam Museum Music MS 88, and two items in the British Library, Add. MS 30930 and R.M. MS 20.h.8. Thompson comments on Pur- cell's handwriting; distinctive features of his orthography that change over time; the chronology of works appearing in these sources; and the significance of copies made by Purcell of works by other com- posers. He skillfully discusses the nature of each source-as, for example, an outline score for performance, as a personal score for study, and so on. The usefulness of such critical source evaluation is demon- strated in Thompson's discussion of the so- natas appearing in MS 30930: those in- volved in source evaluation may well look to this expose (pp. 14-16) as a model. Ul- timately, he says, these sources offer "a privileged insight into Purcell's working life as both performer and composer" (p. 20). A series of tables offering data concerning the physical characteristics of these sources as well as a listing of the contents of R.M. MS 20.h.8, Christ Church MS Mus 628, and Fitzwilliam Museum Music MS 117 (anthem section only) concludes the essay.

The second essay, by Robert Shay, picks up on an issue raised in the first. "Purcell as Collector of 'Ancient' Music" takes a closer look at Fitzwilliam MS 88, a double- barreled collection largely in Purcell's hand, including anthems of Purcell's own composition and anthems that he viewed as worthy of his study. William Byrd, Matthew Locke, and Orlando Gibbons are among those represented in the collection. At this point, Shay asks the telling question: What were the exemplars from which Purcell copied? His answer takes us on a tour of curiosities that required correction in Pur- cell's score. The nature of the anomalies suggests that Purcell copied from parts rather than from a full score. By isolating distinctive errors in printed partbooks and Purcell's reactions to these in making his score, Shay argues convincingly (pp. 44- 48) that John Barnard's First Book of Selected

Church Musick was the source. The essay concludes with an inventory of the manu- script.

Rebecca Herissone's essay, "Purcell's Re- visions of His Own Works," looks at the sources for the purpose of explicating com- positional method. Though the analysis of revisions is revealing, the use of terminol- ogy is sometimes unclear. Is there any dif- ference, for example, between "draft," "rough draft," and "working draft" (pp. 54, 63)? When the author states that "Purcell stuck paper over the original score" (p. 70), does "stuck" mean that it was glued, pinned, or sewn? The particular method used to affix the paper would leave an equally particular type of evidence behind were the overleaf removed. A more concise use of terminology would have made this admittedly informative essay still more useful.

Price wrote the fourth essay, "New Light on Purcell's Keyboard Music" at the elev- enth hour after learning of the so-called Lisa Cox Manuscript, an autograph manu- script of Purcell's keyboard music. The es- say is not a detailed study, but rather an announcement of an important find that "will probably cause a reassessment of this part of the composer's output and may also shed new light on the last years of his life" (p. 87).

Holman's essay entitled "Purcell and Roseingrave: A New Autograph" tries to solve an enigma: "Why would [Daniel] Roseingrave have needed Purcell to copy out his own anthem [Lord, Thou Art Become Gracious]?" The study is of interest largely because of its methodological strategies.

Bruce Wood takes up the question of John Blow's influence on Purcell in the sixth chapter, "Only Purcell E're Shall Equal Blow." By comparing a goodly num- ber of Blow's works with replicas composed by Purcell, Wood reveals at once the most important features of Blow's compositional style-in itself a worthy subject-and the differences between his music and Pur- cell's. Though the chapter title would not suggest it, the influence of Giovanni Bat- tista Draghi is also examined in consider- able detail.

Ian Spink's essay on "Purcell's Odes: Pro- paganda and Panegyric" contains much of the same information as chapter 5 of Hol- man's monograph. The chronological list

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Book Reviews

of Purcell's odes that concludes the chapter is a useful tabulation giving the titles as they appear in R.M. MS 20.h.8, together with those from other early sources, identity of the poet, performance date, Zimmerman number, and solo vocalists who sang in the premieres.

In "Purcell, Blow and the English Court Ode," Martin Adams takes up the student- teacher relationship again, but this time within the context of the court ode, which, as we have seen, is a highly controlled con- text owing to our more detailed knowledge of chronology. The essay is useful since it expands upon Rosamond McGuinness's English Court Odes, 1660-1820 (London: Oxford University Press, 1971) and pro- vides a particular context for the assess- ment of Blow's and Purcell's occasional pieces of this type.

A. Margaret Laurie's "Continuity and Tempo in Purcell's Vocal Works" is more directly related to performance practices than any essay in the collection. Because Purcell's "large" works frequently consist of many smaller subsections, the tempo, rhythm, and meter of each section has a direct bearing on the structure of a work as a whole. On the basis of primary sources (especially Christopher Simpson, Compen- dium of Practical Musick, John Playford, In- troduction to the Skill of Musick, Thomas Mace, Musick's Monument, Thomas Dean, Complete Tutor for the Violin) the author ex- plains Purcell's time signs, their significance in determining tempos, their application within specific genres (such as overtures and sinfonias), and the use of Italian and English time words in conjunction with time signs. Anyone who performs Purcell's music will want to read this essay.

Katherine T. Rohrer contributed the tenth essay, "Poetic Metre, Musical Metre, and the Dance in Purcell's Songs." By her own assessment, the essay focuses attention "on the links between poetic and musical metres ... [suggesting] that dance types were much more prominent in the com- poser's vocal works than has been previ- ously noted" (p. 240).

The last two essays, Andrew Pinnock's "King Arthur Exposed: A Lesson in Anat- omy" and Ellen T. Harris's King Arthur's Journey into the Eighteenth Century" are complementary. Pinnock takes the some- what radical view that "there is probably a

lot less missing music for King Arthur than many authorities have supposed" (p. 254). The conventional view suggesting missing music results largely from the unfocused and perplexing dramatic progress of the Act V masque. Pinnock, on the other hand, proposes that Dryden, thinking that his successions of songs, choruses, and diverse episodes would provide Purcell with op- portunities for wonderful music, actually worked against the composer, who re- quired a more concise playbook.

Harris's essay evaluates the dramatic cu- riosities from a different perspective, spe- cifically, through the eyes of David Garrick and Thomas Arne, who revised King Arthur extensively for production in 1770. Harris notes the growing importance of music his- tory as a discipline in the second half of the eighteenth century, and she points espe- cially to Garrick and Arne as collaborating revivalists. She then calls attention to var- ious aesthetic problems that Purcell's score might have caused in the eighteenth cen- tury: gender problems with countertenor parts now sung by women; the model of Continental operas that had become well known by then in England; and changes in musical styles. She shows that Arne sought to bring Purcell's music up-to-date by (1) slowing harmonic rhythm, (2) truncating long scenes built over ground basses, and especially by (3) creating recitative-aria pairs, either by using new text, by rewriting Dryden's, or both. Harris concludes the es- say by raising a fundamental issue: Is the current earlier-than-thou thinking perhaps a one-sided view? Adaptations of older works of art may be viable art works in their own right, and, therefore, worthy of our consideration. If nothing else, such ad- aptations can reveal much about the aes- thetics of a particular era.

The book includes an introduction by Price, an afterword by Janet Snowman, and an extensive index. The few illustrations in the book are primarily samples of music notation included to show idiosyncratic fea- tures of orthography. The book is a must for serious Purcell scholars.

MARK A. RADICE Ithaca College

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