On one point we may be quite certain. It is the greatest pity that Purcell wasted so much time on these Restoration shows. When the English people revolted against Puritanism, and gave the incorrigible Stuarts another chance, Charles the Wanderer returned to find them in a May-Day humour. They thrust away from them for a little while the ghastly spiritual hypochondria of which Puritanism was a manifestation, and determined to make merry. But, heigh-ho! the day of Maypoles was over and gone. From the beginning the jollity and laughter were forced, and the new era of perpetual spring festival soon became an era of brainless indecency. Even the wit of the Restoration was bitter, acid, sardonic (as Charles's own death-bed apology for being an unconscionable time a-dying). Generally it was ill-tempered, and employed to inflict pain. And there was not even wit in most of the plays. It is hard to see what even the worst age could discover to laugh at in Shadwell's Libertine, the story of Don Juan told in English, and, in a sense, made the most of.
Because of their nastiness, often combined with stupidity, the Restoration dramas will never be resurrected. There is another reason. The glorious Elizabethan era and spirit were gone; the eighteenth century was coming on fast. Dryden and his fellows had noble rules for the construction of plays, and nobler ones for the language that might or might not be used. They derived all their rules, if you please, from "the ancients." Like Voltaire, they reckoned Shakespeare a barbarian with native wood-notes wild. They took his plays and "made them into plays." They improved The Tempest, Timon of Athens, The Midsummer Night's Dream, and goodness knows how many more. Davenant, in search of material for entertainments, began it; Dryden continued it; even Shadwell had his dirty fingers in it. And this matters to us, for some of Purcell's most glorious songs, choruses and instrumental pieces were composed for these desecrations, and can never again be listened to under the conditions he had in his mind.
According to some authorities ("The Dictionary of National Biography" amongst them), the first play handled by Purcell was Lee's Sophonisba; or, The Overthrow of Hannibal; according to others, the first was Theodosius; or, The Force of Love. Both, however, date not later than 1685, which is near enough for either when there is nothing like conclusive evidence as to which had the priority. The music for the first plays is in no way bound up with the plays. It consists of instrumental pieces and songs literally interpolated. It is likely enough that tunes written for one play were often enough used for another. The pieces were brief, but the unmistakable Purcellian mingling of strength and sweetness is to be found even in such trifles. In 1690 and later Purcell took full advantage of masques which were inserted, the interpolations being sometimes as long as the rest of the play, and artistically of infinitely greater value. For the present he confined himself to less imposing forms, which was certainly what he was engaged to do.
The finest example of the odes of the period is the so-called Yorkshire Feast Song (1689). Many of the others are not, for Purcell, extraordinary. They were written for such special occasions, for instance, as the King's return all the way to London from Windsor, or even Newmarket, or the birthday of a Queen, and in one case the birthday of a six-year-old Duke. They consist of overtures, songs, choruses, etc. With one or two exceptions, the structure is Purcell's ordinary. What that structure was we shall see (once for all) in examining some of the later compositions, the only difference observable in the later works being, on the whole, an increased richness and greater breadth of scheme. They are nearly always brilliant, often incisive; there are most lovely melodies; and there are numerous specimens of Purcell's power of writing music, endless in its variety of outline and colour and changing sentiment, on a ground-bass—i.e., a bass passage repeated over and over again until the piece is finished. The instrumentation must have been largely dictated by the instruments placed at his disposal, though we must remember that in days when it was an everyday occurrence for, say, an oboist to play from the violin part save in certain passages, even an apparently complete score is no secure guide as to what the composer meant, and as to how the piece was given under his direction. This remark applies to the scoring of much of the theatre music. The Theatre Ayres contain only string parts, and it is nonsense to suppose that in the theatre of that time Purcell had only strings to write for. Purcell wrote in all twenty-two sonatas—twelve in three parts, ten in four. So far as the number of parts is concerned, there is little real difference. In the three-part works one stave serves for both the string bass-player and the harpsichordist; in the four-part ones there are two separate staves, with trifling variations in the two parts. The twelve three-part sonatas were issued, as has been said, in 1683. They are pure, self-sustaining music, detached from words and scenic arrangements; nothing approaching them had been written by an Englishman, nor anything so fine by an Italian. Indeed, in their own particular way they are matched only by the composer's own four-part sonatas published after his death. We must not look for anything like form in the sense that word conveys nowadays; there is no unalterable scheme of movements such as there is in the Haydn symphony, and within each movement there is no first subject, second subject, development and recapitulation. All that had to be worked out nearly a century later. The set forms of Purcell's day were the dances. The principle of Purcell's sonata form is alternate fast and slow movements. Nothing more can be perceived; there is nothing more to perceive. Sometimes he commences with a quick piece; then we have an adagio or some slow dance; then another quick piece. In other cases the order is reversed: a slow movement may be followed by a slower movement. He makes great use of fugue, more or less free, and of imitation, and, of course, he employs ground-basses. The masculine strength and energy, the harsh clashing discords, are not less remarkable than the constant sweetness; and if there is rollicking spring jollity, there are also moments of deepest pathos. There is scarcely such a thing as a dry page. It is true that Purcell avowed that he copied the best Italian masters, but the most the copying amounts to is taking suggestions for the external scheme of his sonatas and for the manner of writing for strings. He poured copiously his streams of fresh and strong melody into forms which, in the hands of those he professed to imitate, were barren, lifeless things. Many of these sonatas might almost be called rhapsodies; certainly a great many movements are rhapsodical. In set forms one has learnt from experience what to expect. In the dance measures and fugues, after a few bars, one has a premonition (begotten of oft-repeated and sometimes wearisome experience) of what is coming, of the kind of thing that is coming; just as in a Haydn or Mozart sonata one knows so well what to expect that one often expects a surprise, and may be surprised if there is nothing to surprise one. But in many of Purcell's largos, for example, the music flows out from him shaped and directed by no precedent, no rule; it flows and wanders on, but is never aimlessly errant; there is a quality in it that holds passage to passage, gives the whole coherence and a satisfying order. Emerson speaks of Swedenborg's faculties working with astronomic punctuality, and this would apply to Purcell's musical faculties. Take a scrappy composer, a short-breathed one such as Grieg: he wrote within concise and very definite forms; yet the order of many passages might be reversed, and no one—not knowing the original—would be a penny the wiser or the worse. There is no development. With Purcell there is always development, though the laws of it lie too deep for us. Hence his rhapsodies, whether choral or instrumental, are satisfying, knit together by some inner force of cohesion.
During these ten years several children were born to Purcell. He had six children altogether. Four died while still babies; two, Edward and Frances, survived him. Edward lived till 1740, leaving a son; Frances married one Welsted, or Welstead, and died in 1724. Her daughter died two years later. Before the end of the eighteenth century the line of Purcell's descendants seems to have terminated. In 1682 Purcell became an organist of the Chapel Royal, whilst remaining organist of Westminster Abbey. As has already been said, the musicians of this age were pluralists—they had to be in order to earn a decent living, for the salaries were anything but large, and punctuality in payment was not a feature. In 1684 there was a competition at the Temple Church, not between organists, but between organ-builders. The authorities got two builders to set up each an organ, and decided which was the better by the simple plan of hearing them played by different organists and deciding which sounded the better. To any but a legal mind the affair would seem to have resolved itself mainly into a competition between organ-players; but we know how absolutely lost to all sense of justice, fairness, reason and common sense the legal mind is. So Purcell played for Father Smith, and inevitably the organ built by Father Smith was thought the finer. This easy way of solving a difficult problem, though it has so much to recommend it to the legal mind, has fallen into desuetude, and is abandoned nowadays, even in that home of absurdities, the Temple. For the coronation of James II., Purcell superintended the setting-up of an extra or special organ in the Abbey; and for this he was granted £34 12s. out of the secret-service money. In 1689, at the coronation of the lucky gentleman who superseded James, no such allowance appears to have been made; and Purcell admitted the curious to the organ-loft, making a charge and putting it in his pocket. This was too much for the clergy. They regarded the money as theirs, and as Mr. Gladstone, that stout Churchman, said, the Church will give up rather its faith than its money. The Abbey authorities never thought of giving up either, but they threatened Purcell with terrible penalties unless he gave up the money. Almost with a pistol at his head they asked him to give up his money or his post. How the squabble ended no man knows; the conjecture that he 'refunded' the money—i.e., gave it to those it did not belong to—is unsupported.
These are the only scraps of veracious history that come down to us; the other choice bits I take to be exercises in prosaic romance.
