From Heavenly Harmony
Master of Majesty & Lament
Henry Purcell (1659–1695) composed many more works for use in secular settings than in the Church’s worship. During his lifetime and in ours, his reputation has been built less on his anthems, devotional songs, and service music than on his works of chamber music, his operas and other theatrical works, and his lavish compositions for special royal celebrations. But it was within the context of liturgical music that Purcell’s musical genius first blossomed, and the many hours of sacred song that he left behind after his short life merit sustained attention by listeners and—where they are able and wise—even by church choirs.
In about 1668, when Purcell was eight or nine years old, he became a chorister in the Chapel Royal. “In” rather than “at” is the correct preposition here, since the Chapel Royal was and is an organization rather than a building, a group of clergy and musicians who serve the royal household.
In addition to singing in services for the royal family, the young choristers of the Chapel Royal would have learned to play a number of instruments and studied music theory. Henry Purcell’s teachers included Christopher Gibbons, the son of the distinguished composer Orlando Gibbons (1583–1625), and John Blow (1649–1708), a noted composer and organist at Westminster Abbey, a post that Purcell himself would assume in 1679.
Chapel boys were also encouraged to hone their compositional skills by copying out the music of notable composers. Purcell is known to have copied works by Gibbons, Thomas Tallis, William Byrd, and other Tudor-era masters, as well as works by some more contemporary composers.
Renewed Aesthetic
Since the reign of Queen Elizabeth I, the Chapel Royal had been one of the most prestigious institutions for the promotion of musical excellence within a liturgical setting, albeit a restricted one. The music heard within the confines of Hampton Court or St. James’s Palace often required the skills of the most highly trained musicians, and often had more the quality of a private devotional concert than of a communal liturgy.
If Purcell had been born a decade earlier, he might never have had the opportunity to develop his musical skills. As musicologist and composer Arthur Hutchings notes, “within a few months of his birth the monarchy and the established Church were restored in England, and with them a demand for two kinds of public music that had been out of official commission when the puritan government closed the theatres and outlawed Anglican worship.”
Upon returning to England after his exile, Charles II did more than merely restore Anglican worship within the realm. As music historian Nicholas Temperley explains, the King was also “prepared to spend money to make those services colourful and artistic. . . . [H]e had developed a continental taste in art and music that had not as yet made much headway in England. A brilliant musical tradition quickly developed at the Chapel Royal.” Samuel Pepys remarked in a diary entry in the summer of 1660: “To Whitehall chapel. . . . Here I heard very good music, the first time that ever I remember to have heard the organs and singing-men in surplices in my life.” This was the renewed aesthetic and liturgical world into which Purcell was welcomed before the end of the decade.
Varied Works
After his voice changed, Purcell was able to stay attached to the court by securing a job maintaining the instruments used by court musicians, and by the time he was eighteen, he was employed as a composer-in-residence for the court. In that position, he began writing anthems and other service music for use by the Chapel Royal, as well as works for various ceremonial occasions. One of his earliest anthems, “Blow up the Trumpet in Sion,” sets a text from Book of Joel which announces a call to “sanctify a fast, call a solemn assembly, gather the people and sanctify the congregation.” Purcell’s setting is for eight choral parts and seven separate soloists, plus a complement of instruments, alternately taking turns to achieve a variety of musical textures. Purcell in his late teens already demonstrates his capacity to combine in a single work confident and expansive majesty and intimate, even anxious,
penitence.
Another early anthem displays (in the phrases of conductor Robert King) freshness and rapturous lyricism. Purcell’s setting of a text from the Song of Solomon, “My beloved spake,” includes an introductory “overture” scored for strings (court composers were ordered by the king to include passages for his much-loved royal violins), followed by alternating passages featuring a quartet of four singers, a tenor soloist, the entire choir, and repeated interludes for strings. The full effect is buoyant and delightful, as such inspired love poetry should be.
Ken Myers is the host and producer of the Mars Hill Audio Journal. Formerly an arts editor with National Public Radio, he also serves as music director at All Saints Anglican Church in Ivy, Virginia. He is a contributing editor for Touchstone.
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