CHAPTER XIII
THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY
The musicians of the century—Henry Purcell and music in England—Italy: Alessandro Scarlatti; Arcangelo Corelli; Domenico Scarlatti—The beginnings of French opera: the Ballet-comique de la reine; Cambert and Perrin—Jean Baptiste Lully—Couperin and Rameau—Music in Germany: Keiser, Mattheson, and the Hamburg opera; precursors of Bach.
Three-quarters of the seventeenth century produced hardly more than experimental music. The enthusiasm of the Italians found on every hand new ways for the development of music and they were in every branch the innovators and the bold discoverers. In every country of Europe their influence was felt, their guidance followed. They were the models for the time. And, at the end of the century, what they had sown bore fruit, both in their own country and in England, Holland, Germany, and France. At the end of the century lasting achievement takes the place of experiment, there are a dozen composers in every branch of music who no longer speak with hesitation but with certainty, whose music is well built and clear and free in style. Their activities pass well into the next century, but they are firmly rooted in the seventeenth, and their work should be regarded as the harvest of that time of sowing. Growing among them were the greatest of all composers, John Sebastian Bach, and his great compeer Georg Friedrich Handel.
I
England alone produced a truly great composer whose lifetime fell within the century, Henry Purcell.
Henry Purcell.
After an old engraving.
The date of his birth has not been exactly determined. He died on the 21st of November, 1695, at the age of only thirty-seven years. As a boy he sang in the choir of the Chapel Royal, and when his voice broke he was still retained as a supernumerary. In 1680 he succeeded Dr. John Blow as organist of Westminster Abbey and held the post until his death. He began to compose when very young and in his brief life set his stamp upon almost every form of music then known, though he found the first expression of his remarkable genius in music for the stage and incidental music for plays. In this branch his opera ‘Dido and Æneas’ (1689-1691) maintains the highest excellence. What is most striking in it, and, indeed, is most striking in all Purcell’s music, is the genuineness of feeling. He gave his music lasting life. There is little trace of empty formalism or of arid conventionalism which stifled the music of so many opera composers of his day. Its freshness is in no way stale to-day. His use of harmony as a means of emotional expression is far ahead of any of his contemporaries, and he had a gift of spontaneous melody which has never been excelled by any other save perhaps Schubert. The death song of Dido in the opera just mentioned is nearly as startling in relation to the time in which it was written as Monteverdi’s ‘Lament of Ariadne.’ A few measures of most expressive recitative lead to the song, which, characteristically English, is indeed a song and not the stiff aria of the day. It is a striking example of Purcell’s skill in working over a ground bass, in this case a descending chromatic phrase full of melancholy and pathos. ‘Dido and Æneas’ is the only English opera in the strict sense of the word. Unhappily the rich promise of a national school of English opera which it contains was never fulfilled. Almost immediately after the death of Purcell Italian opera invaded London and in 1711 was firmly established there by Handel.