PURCELL WAS A MERRY DOG

New Zealand Listener, Volume 1, Issue 14, 29 September 1939, Unnumbered Page

PURCELL WAS A MERRY DOG

"The Moon of English Music"

VERYONE has a great capacity for hero-worship; everyone is inclined to put someone else on a pedestal. And hero-worship is sometimes almost a vice! For example, few people can think of Shakespeare as a man, once breathing the air that we breathe, having ordinary joys and sorrows as we do. Shakespeare is an institution, a convention-in fact, anything remote and inhuman and all the things he never was. The same might be said of painters and musicians. The same might be said of the man we are writing about-Henry Purcell. Purcell was a musician first, ‘then an Englishman and a good fellow. On his tomb was placed the inscription: "Here lyes Henry Purcell, Esq.; who left this life, and is gone to that blessed place, where only his harmony can be exceeded." Purcell was a merry dog, by all accounts. Here is the legend passed on by Sir John Hawkins, on how he met his death. His demise was due to "a cold which he caught in the night waiting for admittance into his own house. It is said that he used to keep late hours, and that his wife had given orders to the servants not to let him in after midnight; unfortunately he came home heated with wine from the tavern at an hour later than that prescribed him, and, through the inclemency of the weather, contracted a disorder of which he died. . ." Besides revealing a very human side to Purcell, the above gossip reflects badly upon the composer’s wife. In the main, though, it seems that they were a very devoted couple, and after Henry’s early demise, at the age of thirty-seven, Frances Purcell published, at various times, his works, all with affectionate remembrances of her husband in the dedications. Nor does it appear that Frances was left needy by Henry, for in

her will, according to her husband's desire, she gave their son "... Bookes of Musicke in generall, the Organ, the double spinett, the single spinett, a silver tankard, a silver watch, two pair of gold buttons, a hair ring, a. mourning ring of Dr. Busby’s, a Larum clock, Mr. Edward Purcell’s picture. handsome furniture for a room. and he was to be maintained until provided for. . ." Purcell was certainly warmly human- perhaps more so than many people in the seventeenth century, in which he lived. Rupert Hughes pays high tribute to his importance as a composer when he says: "He is the moon of English music and his melodies are as exquisite and as silvery and as full of enamoured radiance as the tintinnabulations of the moonbeams themselves." The only true opera that Purcell wrote was "Dido and Aeneas." This opera made a rather curious debut: It was produced at the boarding school for girls kept by Josias Priest at Chelsea. The opera has a tragic, sombre theme. Dido, Queen of Carthage, is loved by the Trojan Prince, Aeneas. They are wedded, but a sorceress, the enemy of the Queen, determines. to. part the lovers. She sends an evil sprite. wearing the form of Mercury, to tell Aeneas that he must return to his native land or incur the dis. pleasure of the god, Jove. Aeneas prepares to go, and is already or the waterfront, when the Queen arrives and bitterly laments tha’ he should think of deserting her Aeneas says he will stay, anc suffer the wrath of Jove, but the Queen, convinced of his faithless ness, bids him begone, and the: kills herself. "Dido and Aeneas" will be pre sented soon by the National Broad casting Service. W