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Purcell, Locke, Blow & Gibbons

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Purcell, Locke, Blow & Gibbons b0087_WH booklet template.qxd 17/04/2017 17:13 Page 1 The English Concert Harry Bicket Rosemary Joshua Sarah Connolly Purcell, Locke, Blow & Gibbons b0087_WH booklet template.qxd 17/04/2017 17:13 Page 2 The English Concert Harry Bicket director, harpsichord, organ Rosemary Joshua soprano Sarah Connolly mezzo-soprano Recorded live at Wigmore Hall, London, on 10 March 2015 Matthew Locke (c.1622–1677) Suite from The Tempest (1674), Part 1, Nos. I–V 01 The First Musick: Introduction 00.54 02 The First Musick: Galliard 01.19 03 The First Musick: Gavot 00.46 04 The Second Musick: Saraband 03.31 05 The Second Musick: Lilk 00.46 henry PurceLL (1659–1695) 06 If music be the food of love Z379b 1st setting/1st version (?1691/2) 01.58 07 Draw near, you lovers Z462 (1683) 03.51 08 Oh! the sweet delights of love 01.50 (a duet for the two Wood-Gods) from Dioclesian Z627 (1690) Matthew Locke Suite from The Tempest Part 2, Nos. VI–XI 09 The Second Musick: Curtain Tune 04.18 10 The Second Musick: The First Act Tune ‘Rustick Air’ 01.08 11 The Second Musick: The Second Act Tune ‘Minoit’ 00.43 12 The Second Musick: The Third Act Tune ‘Corant’ 01.00 13 The Second Musick: The Fourth Act Tune ‘A Martial Jigge’ 01.14 14 The Second Musick: The Conclusion ‘A Canon 4 in 2’ 01.48 2 b0087_WH booklet template.qxd 17/04/2017 17:13 Page 3 henry PurceLL 15 Music for a while from Oedipus Z583/2 (?1692) 03.57 16 Oh! fair Cedaria hide those eyes Z402 (?c.1689–92) 04.05 17 My dearest, my fairest from Pausanias, the Betrayer of his Country Z585 (1695–6) 02.07 John BLow (1649–1708) 18 Chaconne in G 04.44 henry PurceLL 19 O solitude, my sweetest choice Z406 (1684–5) 05.02 20 Sweeter than roses from Pausanias, the Betrayer of his Country Z585 03.15 christoPher GiBBons (1615–1676) Fantasy-Suite in D minor 21 Fantasy 02.47 22 Allman 01.39 23 Galliard 01.55 henry PurceLL 24 One charming night from The Fairy Queen Z629 (1692) 02.18 25 The plaint from The Fairy Queen Z629 07.54 26 Love, thou art best from The Female Virtuosos Z596 (1693) 01.47 encores henry PurceLL 27 Chaconne from The Fairy Queen Z629 02.32 28 They shall be as happy as they're fair from The Fairy Queen Z629 00.47 Total time: 73.11 3 b0087_WH booklet template.qxd 17/04/2017 17:13 Page 4 PurceLL, Locke, BLow & GiBBons Matthew Locke’s music for Psyche was the first Tempest supplement was a creative manifesto opera score ever published in England – headed around which other English musicians and The English Opera to prove a patriotic point. It potential patrons were supposed to rally. To went on sale in 1675. The year before a group of place Locke’s achievement as a composer of French musicians led by Robert Cambert had instrumental music in rough perspective this performed an opera of their own in London and programme includes pieces by Christopher tried to persuade King Charles II to fund a French- Gibbons (a close contemporary, son of Orlando, style ‘Royal Academy of Music’ producing more of with whom Locke collaborated on several the same. Locke and his English colleagues experimental music-theatre projects in the 1650s) saw this as a threat, not unreasonably, and and John Blow (the first great English composer to moved aggressively to counter it. In day-to-day reach professional maturity after the Restoration professional life they had to work alongside in 1660, ten years older than Purcell). French fellow members of the king’s Private As usual in the Restoration period the version Musick. French influence was unavoidable even in of The Tempest ‘made into an opera’ in 1674 was the theatre: Psyche was an English re-working of not actually Shakespeare’s original but an the Lully-Molière smash-hit tragédie-ballet adaptation concocted by Sir William Davenant Psyché, produced in Paris in 1671. So when and John Dryden a few years before. (Until his opportunities to assert English independence death in 1668 Davenant served as poet laureate came along they had to be exploited to the full. to Charles II; Dryden inherited the role.) The Psyche was a complicated show to get Davenant-Dryden Tempest script lightly tweaked together and preparations over-ran. Needing an by English Psyche’s librettist Thomas Shadwell alternative highlight for their 1674 season the contained many more cues for music than Dorset Garden theatre company put Psyche on Shakespeare himself had provided, one of the temporary hold, mounting a hurried but most conspicuous coming right at the beginning. unexpectedly successful revival of Shakespeare’s The curtain rose to reveal an animated storm-at- The Tempest, for which Locke provided sea scene: Locke’s ‘Curtain Tune’ accompanied instrumental music. His Tempest numbers were the wrecking of a model ship tossed about by collected together and printed as an appendix to moving waves. A detailed description of this The English Opera, giving purchasers a welcome scene survives: bonus and – crucially – a top-quality, undilutedly English theatre suite to play at home. The Front of the Stage is open’d, and the Locke wanted the world to know what he was Band of 24 Violins, with the Harpsicals and capable of: The English Opera including its Theorbo’s which accompany the Voices, are 4 b0087_WH booklet template.qxd 17/04/2017 17:13 Page 5 plac’d betweem the Pit and the Stage. While the Overture is playing the Curtain rises … Behind this is the Scene, which represents a f thick Cloudy Sky, a very Rocky Coast, and a Tempestuous Sea in perpetual Agitation. This Tempest (suppos’d to be rais’d by Magick) has many dreadful Objects in it, as several Spirits in horrid shapes flying down amongst the Sailers, then rising and crossing in the Air. And when the Ship is sinking, the whole House is darken’d, and a shower of Fire falls upon ’em. This is accompanied with Lightning, and several Claps of Thunder, to the end of the Storm. Repeat marks at the end of the published version of the Curtain Tune make sense in concert performance contexts; in the theatre presumably the ship sank only once. The twenty four violins referred to were Charles II’s: his court orchestra playing at full strength, on loan to Dorset Garden for the operatic Tempest’s opening run. They sat under the stage, HENRy PURCELL specially opened at the front to let sound out, by John Closterman, probably 1695 because the Chapel Royal choir also appearing by permission of His Majesty had taken over the theatre years later: Purcell knew the building music room above the proscenium arch. Purcell inside out. was just too old to sing in this production (his Locke’s Curtain Tune is his only Tempest piece voice would have broken by 1674), but his slightly obviously tailored to its dramatic moment. There younger Chapel Royal chorister associates were is a reason for this. The First Music (three tunes) involved and almost certainly he went along and the Second Music (two tunes) were played to watch it. His own full-scale operas (all except well before the show started, while the audience The Indian Queen) were produced in the same gathered. Act tunes filled short gaps between the 5 b0087_WH booklet template.qxd 17/04/2017 17:13 Page 6 acts. The curiously spiky conclusion, ‘A Canon 4 in this stage in proceedings ex-emperor Dioclesian 2’, played people out. 4 in 2 may have been has learned to handle his own emotions: pangs intended as a musical commentary on marriage of love can be recalled in relative tranquillity. arrangements made in Act 5 of the Restoration (Dioclesian has retired to a country estate to Tempest, where four young lovers pair happily off spend more time with his wife Drusilla, handing (not Shakespeare’s two). over responsibility for empire to his power-hungry For decades after The English Opera’s nephew Maximinian.) publication its genre-defining importance was ‘One charming night’ and ‘The plaint’ come recognised, along with its practical utility. Even in from Purcell’s last Dorset Garden opera, The Fairy the 1720s music historian Roger North considered Queen, first performed in 1692, revived with light it ‘not unworthy of a place in a virtuoso’s revisions in 1693. ‘One charming night’ is the [connoisseur’s] cabinet’. By then most of the rest third in a sequence of four sleep-inducing songs of the music in this programme would have found performed for the fairy queen Titania in Act 2 of its way into the cabinet too. the opera. She is asleep by the end of it, shortly After The Tempest in 1674 and Psyche (finally!) afterwards waking and falling in love with Bottom in 1675 the next full-scale English opera for the Weaver sporting his famous ass’s head. which an English composer produced music was Publication in Some Select Songs as they are sung The Prophetess, or the History of Dioclesian, in The Fairy Queen, 1692 (another merchandising premièred in 1690. Dioclesian was Purcell’s big venture financed by Purcell himself) made it career breakthrough, propelling him in one instantly available to amateur performers. bound from the comparative obscurity of court ‘The plaint’, added to The Fairy Queen in 1693 employment into the full glare of theatrical for no very obvious reason – perhaps to fill publicity.
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