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ENGLISH MADRIGALISTS

The all-conquering vogue of the madrigal during the last twenty years of Elizabeth's reign and the early years of the next had precedents - the native tradition of part-song writing and the occasional traces of Italian influence from the 1550s which had prepared the ground for the English passion for the madrigal-but it suddenly gathered momentum after 1588, following Nicholas Yonge's Musica Transalpina published in that year. In his preface Yonge indicates that he had been led to edit and publish the collection because the group of amateur singers to which he belonged were regular and enthusiastic performers of Italian madrigals. There is plenty of evidence that Italian madrigals had been circulating in England in increasing numbers for at least the last fifteen years. Almost immediately the English composers began to produce their own madrigals. But these were by no means slavish imitations of their models. The English madrigal was generally lighter and gayer in mood than the Italian; despite the magnificent riches of contemporary English poetry the composers either preferred to use Italian madrigal texts or turned to minor English writers, whereas one of the distinguishing features of the Italian school had been its preference for texts of great literary merit. Unlike the Italians, however, the English composers were writing for an almost entirely amateur public, for whom the generally undemanding sentiments and comparatively simple technical demands were ideally suited. As Gustave Reese has said in his monumental Music in the Renaissance: "In every way the English madrigal was a less esoteric and more popular movement" (than the Italian). Of more than thirty talented composers the great names are Morley, Weelkes, Wilbye, Tomkins and Gibbons, while Byrd also produced notable if few

examples.

From: The Larousse Encyclopedia of Music

"THE BRITISH ORPHEUS"

Henry Purcell, England's greatest composer, was born in the year 1659. Despite the most recent and intensive research, little is known of his life. He was for a time in the choir of the Chapel Royal. He received lessons from John Blow, who in 1680 surrendered his position of organist at Westminster Abbey to his brilliant young pupil. Although little is known of this "British Orpheus", perhaps no English composer before or since enjoyed such acclaim and admiration from his contemporaries. At the age of eighteen he had

been engaged as a composer at the court of Charles II, and five years later he became organist in the Chapel Royal and keeper of the king's instruments. Throughout his life Purcell devoted his immense talents to commissions which would now be regarded as beneath the notice of a serious composer: mediocre theatrical productions, royal birthdays, and official celebrations of all kinds. Yet it is obvious that he himself found nothing untoward in such work, and although we may regret that the society he served gave no scope for the full genius of a composer obviously capable of the finest flights of operatic composition, we have no cause to be discontented with the superb body of music that he left us. It is typical of the man that Dido and Aeneas, which despite its brevity is the first major English opera, was written to the commission of a friend for performance by his pupils at a school for girls in Chelsea. The grace, gaiety and humour of much of the score is well suited to its occasion, but the great dramatic moments are not avoided or rendered with a conventional pathos. The lament of Dido, written to that most typically Purcellian device is one of the most deeply felt and moving moments in opera. His instrumental compositions also include the magnificent fantasies for viols and the sonatas for three and four parts for violins, bass viol and continuo, with which Purcell proclaimed his intention of introducing the Italian style to the English. All these works reveal a unique and poignant sense of harmony which, if it derives in part from the English tradition of the golden age and perhaps also from the Italian madrigalists at the beginning of the 17th century, is nevertheless unmistakably his own. His chamber compositions for instruments include, besides, a number of fine keyboard pieces.



In addition to his one true opera Dido and Aeneas (1689), Purcell wrote five semi-operas which, like the earlier masque, employ spoken as well as sung passages. All these works contain much fine music. They are: Dioclesian, with a text by the actor Thomas Betterton after Beaumont and Fletcher; King Arthur, by John Dryden; The Tempest, adapted from Shakespeare; The Fairy Queen, a reworking of his Midsummer Nights Dream; and the Indian Queen, to which Dryden also contributed.

Purcell excels in every sphere - operas, music for plays, cantatas, church and chamber music, and keyboard music. His vocal works far exceed his instrumental compositions in number, although the quality of his instrumental music is equally high. His premature death, as much as the ungrateful period in which he lived, have prevented him from being recognized at his true worth as one of the greatest composers of all time. Purcell, like many a great artists, was not a creator of musical form and had to content himself with the scanty resources which England at the close of the 17th century offered him, from the hybrid semi-opera to the trio sonata in its early stages.

His receptive genius enabled him to fuse the most diverse and

contradictory influences in the crucible of his feverish personality. His fantasies for strings, his full anthems, and a thousand details in the writing of his other compositions, reveal his attachment to the great English masters of the past. But at the same time, he was open to the new trends from the continent. From the French he learned the art of the overture à la française, the chaconne, the colour of his orchestration and his conception of theatrical ensembles; from the Italians his use of concertato style, the trio sonata, his expressive use of chromatics (he had studied Monteverdi) and his dramatic recitatives and da capo arias. Yet all unite in a style full of grace, power and poetry, in which unpredictable gaiety, akin to traditional folk music, rubs shoulders with poignant melancholy. An interpreter of every human passion, Purcell could write with great power while at other times his music is imbued with a profound sadness.

From: The Larousse Encyclopedia of Music


Date: 2015-12-11; view: 969


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