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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 December 2020
The study of any choral lyric, properly so called, and designed to be sung and otherwise performed by a group of executants on a specific public occasion, must be considerably hampered when its original musical setting is not at hand. Indeed the appreciation of such a poem as Alexander's Feast can be only partial at best if the text is read with the comparatively simple apparatus that one usually brings to bear upon a sonnet by Sidney. When the music to a choral ode was no afterthought but rather an integral part of the whole performance, the divorcement of the words from their setting results in an inevitable loss of understanding and of proper response. The ideal way to absorb any choral lyric, whether it be by Pindar, the author of the Book of Judges, or Dryden, would be to hear, if not to participate in, the complex display of sound through which its author intended it to be proclaimed. And since one cannot be present at the original performance of any save contemporary compositions of the kind, it becomes imperative to reconstruct, through the vigorous use of both study and imagination, the original circumstances and the original music which accompanied the poem.
1 William Henry Husk, An Account of the Musical Celebrations on St. Cecilia's Day. (London: Bell & Daldy, 1857).—A complete text of the odes is reprinted on pp. 143–236. See also “An Index to the Songs and Musical Allusions in The Gentleman's Journal, 1692–94,” The Musical Antiquary (Oxford Univ. Press, 1911), ii, 231–234.
2 For the text, critically edited, see The Works of Henry Purcell, Purcell Society edition, x, (London: Novello, 1899), p. (1).
3 The score is found in The Works of Henry Purcell, x, 1–25.
4 I.e., a symphony in the older sense of the term, meaning merely an instrumental prelude or interlude. The word is almost synonymous with ritornello.
5 This device, which was later developed into such achievements as Bach's Chaconne for solo violin, his Passacaglia for organ, the Crucifixus of his Mass in B minor, and the last movement of Brahms's Fourth Symphony, was amusingly condemned by Burney in A General History of Music (London, 1789), iii, 494: “The composing songs on a ground-base, was an exercise of ingenuity, in which Purcell seems to have much delighted; but though it was much a fashion in his time, as the composing masses on those tunes in the days of Bird and Dr. Bull, in which they all manifested superior abilities, yet the practice was Gothic, and unworthy employment for men possessed of such genius and original resources.”
6 Thus the ode occupied but a small portion of the program for 1683. Although Purcell is known to have composed two other Cecilian pieces in this year (Raise the Voice, to words by an unknown poet, and the Latin hymn, Laudate Ceciliam), there is no record of their having been performed on this occasion.
7 It was not until 1690, however, that Purcell wrote any music for the plays of Dryden himself. King Arthur, the most substantial collaboration between Dryden and Purcell, dates from 1691. See Henri Dupré, Purcell, translated by Phillips and Bedford (New York: Knopf, 1928), pp. 201–204.
8 Addison's Song for St. Cecilia's Day at Oxford, 1692, also rhymes day with Cecilia. One might conclude that all Oxford pronounced Cecilia with a stressed fourth syllable except for the fact that the word is properly treated elsewhere in Fletcher's ode.
9 Mark Van Doren, The Poetry of John Dryden (Cambridge: The Minority Press, 1931), p. 209.
10 A. W. Verrall, Lectures on Dryden (Cambridge: University Press, 1914), pp. 183–185.
11 Van Doren, op. cit., p. 209.
12 W. Nagel, Geschichte der Musik in England, 2. Teil (Strassburg, Trübner, 1897), p. 245.—Sir John Hawkins, A General History of the Science and Practice of Music, new edition (London: Novello, 1875), II, 717–718.
13 In the Catalogue of the Library of the Sacred Harmonic Society (London, 1872), p. 228, under nos. 1904 and 1905. Another copy is listed on p. 227, the sixth item under no. 1897.
14 Including Hawkins, Burney, Grove, and Nagel.
15 Op. cit., ii, 752.
16 See Grove's Dictionary, art. Abell.
17 The Cathedral Services, Anthems, Hymns etc., by Henry Purcell, edited by Vincent Novello (London, n.d.), i, 147–158. In this anthem the bass solo descends to low D.
18 E.g., in the works of the Elizabethan and early Jacobean madrigalists.
19 The key signature is two flats, which would indicate G minor to a modern musician. But in the seventeenth century the signature was still regarded theoretically as an indication of a transposed mode. The minor key being the development of the old Dorian mode, closing on D, one flat would indicate its transposition a fourth higher, to G, and two flats another fourth, to C. Draghi's contemporaries would call his “key” that of “C with the lesser third.” The natural sign is not used in the score, a cancelled flat being marked by a sharp.
20 The MS has both “runs” and “run” in place of “ran,” which is demanded by the rhyme—an obvious error.
21 Verrall (op. cit.) holds that the idea of chaos is justly represented by the extremely irregular “Pindaric” form of the stanza, and also that the music for such a passage can aid the listener in comprehending its scheme. But there are two fallacies here. Dryden's leading idea is here cosmos and harmony, and not chaos; it presents a true contrast to the thought of the conclusion of the poem. Haydn was justified in writing a beautiful but extremely irregular orchestral prelude to The Creation, to represent chaos, but that was not Dryden's situation here. Again, a musical setting, which is of necessity longer and more elaborate than a mere reading of the words, requires greater, and not less, attention in order that its form may be grasped by the audience.
22 Burney, op. cit., iii, 507.
23 Critically edited in The Works of Henry Purcell, (London, 1897), vol. viii.
24 C. H. H. Parry, Oxford History of Music, iii (1902), 285.
25 Van Doren, op. cit., p. 211.
26 Husk, op. cit., pp. 41–45.
27 Op. cit., p. 211 ff.
28 Op. cit., p. 201.
29 For this point, the writer is indebted to Prof. Samuel A. Wolff of Columbia University.
30 The tradition was fostered chiefly by Hawkins, who chould have known better.
31 The text, entitled Ode on St. Cecilia's Day, adapted to the ancient British Musick, etc., was published by J. & J. Rivington, London, 1749.
32 Boswell, Johnson, Chap. xiii (1763):“Bonnell Thornton had just published a burlesque ‘Ode on St. Cecilia's Day.’” Boswell's chronology seems to be fourteen years late. Burney's note on the passage in Boswell reads as follows: “In 1769, I set for Smart and Newberry, Thornton's Burlesque ‘Ode on St. Cecilia's Day.’ It was performed at Ranelagh in masks, to a very crowded audience, as I was told, for I then resided in Norfolk.”