Henry Purcell (1659-1695) 

George Frideric Handel (1685-1759)

 

Henry Purcell
Music for a while
Ignatius Sancho (c. 1729-1780)
Minuets and Country Dances
      arr. Nicola Saraceni Canzano
George Frideric Handel
Yet can I hear that dulcet lay

Interval

Edward Kennedy ‘Duke’ Ellington (1899-1974)
In my solitude

 

 

Click here for the texts and translations.

 

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The odes of Henry Purcell (1659-1695) were closely tied to court ceremonial and public celebration. In the days of the music-loving Stuart monarchs, Purcell’s music marked the comings and goings of the king with appropriate pomp and magnificence. After the accession of the Protestant William and Mary, Purcell continued to write odes for the queen’s birthday and for the festivities of civic institutions such as London’s “Musical Society.” In Purcell’s day, odes served as elevating expressions of unity in times of frequent political unrest—as well as projections of royal power. Their enduring subject, however, is music—the act of singing—itself. The word “ode” comes from an ancient Greek term meaning “to sing,” and the ode of Classical antiquity was thus a poem meant to be sung.

The feast day of St. Cecilia (November 22), the patroness of music, encouraged music that reflected on its own powers: celebration and praise, lamentation, solace and healing. Although some of the occasions for raising the voice have changed since Purcell’s time, many of the basic reasons for doing so have not. This programme celebrates the power and importance of supporting and listening to those voices, bringing together some of the gems of Purcell’s vocal and instrumental writing with the work of diverse musicians of later centuries. 

Raise, raise the voice (Z. 334) is one of Purcell’s St. Cecilia Day odes, and its opening “Symphony” draws a majestic sound out of relatively modest three-part scoring for two violin lines and bass. Like a French overture, it begins with a dignified, sombre introduction, followed by an agile and more intensively contrapuntal second section; whereas the overture was frequently intended to accompany the entrance of the king, we can imagine that this symphony is welcoming “Music” itself, whose “holiday” is being celebrated. 

“O solitude,” which Purcell published in 1687 in a collection titled Comes Amoris: Or The Companion of Love, uses one of the composer’s favourite devices, a ground bass; Purcell adopted the practice from his Italian contemporaries but made it unmistakeably his own, crafting unusual bass patterns, varying the harmony, and shaping the melodic contour and rhythm to create a dramatic sense of storytelling. “Music for a while,” from a set of incidental music for the play Oedipus, and the beloved “Evening Hymn” are also examples of Purcell’s ingenious and expressive use of this technique.

“‘Tis nature’s voice” suggests another kind of Italian influence. Drawn from the ode Hail, Bright Cecilia (Z. 328)—and, according to an early engraving, sung by Purcell himself on St. Cecilia’s Day—it is an ornate recitative with extraordinary pictorial effects, all of which describe the various functions and effects of music. “Here the deities approve,” another song on a ground, was popularized by a beautiful keyboard arrangement that Purcell published in 1689; “Crown the altar, deck the shrine” similarly pairs elaborate vocal melody with an active, strongly thematic bass.

George Frideric Handel (1685-1759) succeeded Purcell as the preeminent musical personality of the English Baroque. Vedendo amor (HWV 175), however, dates from his time in Italy, and is part of a string of cantatas for voice and continuo detailing the protagonist’s ill-fated attempts to escape the snares of “Amore,” who takes the form of an uccellatore, or bird-catcher. “Now can I hear that dulcet lay” is also part of a larger work, The Choice of Hercules (HWV 69), which tells the popular story of young Hercules’s fateful decision between the paths of Virtue and Pleasure. The “dulcet lay” is one of Pleasure’s attempts to win the hero over; enticing as the music is, Hercules must reject it in order to embrace the sterner but higher rewards of Virtue. One gets the sense, though, that Handel relished this moment of indecision as a chance to display his own—incomparably “sweet”—melodic gifts. Bekennen will ich seinen Namen (BWV 200), by Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750), is also a gracious and lyrical aria in E major, but its speaker is at the end of his journey rather than the beginning. The text paraphrases the words of Simeon (Luke 2.29-32), an old man who after seeing the infant Jesus in the temple proclaims his assurance of salvation and his readiness to die. 

While Bach and Handel were at the height of their powers, Ignatius Sancho (c. 1729-1780) was born on a slave ship bound for Columbia. An orphan, Sancho was brought at the age of two to England, where he spent the rest of his life. Sancho’s determined self-education, resilience, and perseverance in finding patronage allowed him to achieve and safeguard his freedom, to win the esteem of his contemporaries as a man of letters, and to become a vocal abolitionist; his collected letters were published posthumously in 1784 as evidence of the injustice and inhumanity of the slave trade. A man of many talents, Sancho also penned a treatise on music theory and wrote collections of dances for keyboard, several of which we will hear tonight in an arrangement for four-part ensemble.

Duke Ellington (1899-1974), one of the great American composers, pianists, and bandleaders of the twentieth century, also brought a passion for social justice to his long and storied career. Wrestling with the ongoing realities of segregation and racial discrimination at home, Ellington also advocated for peace and international cooperation on his world tours. As the story goes, Ellington wrote “In My Solitude” in twenty minutes while he was waiting to start a recording session. This haunting music went on to be unforgettably recorded not only by Ellington and his orchestra but also by Billie Holiday and many others. There is a certain continuity with the love lyrics of Purcell’s day, tapping into the uncanny pain of absence and bereavement: in spite of “solitude,” just to be singing about loss is to be gathering strength, finding friendship, raising your voice. 

• Connor Page