Devotion Sacred and Secular Songs by Henry Purcell
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Devotion Sacred and secular songs by Henry Purcell Ensemble Unmeasured Julia Doyle, soprano Matthew Wadsworth, archlute and theorbo Christopher Bucknall, harpsichord and organ Kate Bennett Wadsworth, viola da gamba 1 From Rosy Bow’rs 06’38 2 02’57 Amidst the Shades Recorded at Binham Priory, Norfolk, United Kingdom 3 Fly Swift Ye Hours 05’24 Engineer and producer: Adrian Hunter Harpsichord and organ tuning and maintenance: Alan Gotto 4 Lord What is Man 05’49 5 The Blessed Virgin’s Expostulations 07’02 Harpsichord by Alan Gotto 6 O Solitude 05’24 Organ by Goetze & Gwynn Theorbo and archlute by Klaus Jacobsen 7 O Fair Cedaria 04’08 Bass viol by Hermann Bächle 8 The Fatal Hour 03’31 9 Music for a While 03’45 Cover art: ‘Devotion’ by Joy Richardson joyrichardsonart.com Cover and booklet design by S.L. Chai 10 Incassum Lesbia 07’21 11 Sweeter than Roses 03’16 12 When first Amintas 02’27 13 An Evening Hymn 04’51 Henry Purcell (1659-1695) wrote within a rich imaginative landscape that can be hard When once the sense is fled, to enter from our own time period. Its understanding of emotions was linked to Love has no pow’r to charm. medical theories that we have since discarded; its framework for human relationships The next two songs are gentler to the lovesick character. The shepherd in “Amidst relied on a vision of natural hierarchy that we have since rejected; its passionate and the Shades” is spared the indignity of singing his pathetic song directly to us: most deeply personal style of religious devotion was inflected (and probably heightened) by of our attention is directed to the sympathetic birds, who wish to cheer him up. In the complex currents of new religious sects and their shifting political ramifications, “Fly Swift Ye Hours”, Purcell’s graceful triple time in the final section gives the all of which have now either disappeared or settled into very different forms today. poetry a whiff of the old tradition of courtly love, saving the speaker from what Purcell’s music, with its emotional depth and immediacy, gives us a secret entry into might otherwise come across to us as pure masochism: this world. We may not recognise all of the scenery, but we know instantly how it feels to be there. Yet though her cruel scorn provokes despair, My passion still is strong as she is fair The first three songs on this disc capture various shades of lovesickness, a physical Still must I love, still bless the pleasing pain, and emotional ailment thought to be caused by an imbalance of the four humours Still court my ruin and embrace my chain (cheerfulness, melancholy, lethargy, and anger, each connected to one of the body fluids). Lovesickness occurred when the fires of love burned away three out of four, In “O Fair Cedaria”, the courtly love tradition holds the upper hand. The speaker leaving only the black bile of melancholy. Since one of the symptoms of lovesickness proclaims his beloved as “Queen of Beauty, Wit and Grace”, and Purcell sets this was wild mood swings, the most theatrical representations in music were the so-called declaration of love to a harmonious, stately ground bass, with consonant notes that “mad songs”, which granted both composer and performer full license to display their ring out like church bells. Even the supplication at the end of the song has a best emotional extremes in quick succession. “From Rosy Bow’rs” in particular plays ceremonial quality to it: lovesickness to the hilt. Its original context was a scene in Thomas D’Urfey’s play, The Then pity me, who am your slave, Comical History of Don Quixote , in which a character feigns lovesickness as part of an And grant me a reprieve; elaborate practical joke on Don Quixote. The audience is in on the joke, and thus free Unless I may your favour have, to enjoy every exaggeration along with the performers: from the alternately languid I can’t one moment live. and frienzied melismas in the opening recitative down to the triumphant, almost warlike rhythms in the final section, when the speaker chooses madness as a grand This strain of love poetry takes on a certain noble humility from the language of victory over love. feudal loyalty and even of religious worship. C.S. Lewis has called it “a temporary escape, a truancy from the ardours of a religion that was believed into the delights of a Part of what makes these songs hang together as credible emotional experiences is a religion that was merely imagined”. strong overlap of feeling between earthly and religious devotion. So striking is this emotional overlap that no one in our group could tell at first who was being If love poetry borrows some of its dignity from religious devotion, the religious songs addressed in the last few lines of “O Solitude”: meanwhile create an immediate sense of passion and intimacy that today we’re more likely to associate with romantic love. “Lord, What is Man” is an outpouring of For thy sake I in love am grown gratitude to God for saving mankind. Purcell’s breathless repetition of “and that for me, With what thy fancy does pursue; for me, oh wondrous love! for me” evokes the incredulous bliss of a newly accepted But when I think upon my own, lover. “An Evening Hymn” brings out a cosier side of salvation, creating an image of I hate it for that reason too, the soul cuddling up with God: “dear, dear God, even in thy arms”; Purcell sets this Because it needs must hinder me From seeing and from serving thee. line with a falling perfect fifth on the repeated word “dear”, like a contented sigh. Still other songs juxtapose human relationships and religious feeling. “The Fatal Hour” Serving whom? Both the language and Purcell’s setting would be appropriate for a is an impassioned plea for the dying beloved to turn to God before it is too late. “The beloved, for God, or (as the first stanza might lead us to think) for Solitude itself. Blessed Virgin’s Expostulation” is an imagined soliloquy given to Mary when Jesus, at Even an earthly monarch could inspire poetry and music of passionate devotion, such the age of twelve, had gone missing for three days (and would be eventually be found as “Incassum Lesbia”, the gut-wrenching lament for the early death of Queen Mary deep in discussion with the rabbis at the Temple - see Luke 2:41-52). In the opening in 1694. recitative, we are thrust directly into the panic of a mother whose child has gone Our “O Solitude” question turned out to have an easy answer, since the text of missing. Having shared this extremely relatable (even universal) distress with Mary, Purcell’s song is excerpted from a much longer poem by Antoine Girard de Saint- we follow her into a more spiritual distress, as her natural motherly worries bring her Amant (1594-1661), which appeared in a widely popular English version by face to face with the fragility of her own faith: Katherine Philips (1632-1664). Each stanza contains a separate flight of fancy How shall my soul its motions guide? inspired by some detail of the surrounding natural beauty. Three stanzas before the How shall I stem the various tide, end, we learn that this fanciful nature-meditation has a dedicatee: Whilst faith and doubt my lab’ring soul divide? Bernieres! for whose beloved sake For whilst of thy dear sight beguil’d, My thoughts are at a noble strife, I trust the God, but oh! I fear the child. This my fantastic landskip take, Which I have copied from the life. I only seek the deserts rough, otherworldly quality. Like 17th-century magic, music has a mysterious power, which Where all alone I love to walk, we can harness but never fully fathom. And with discourse refin’d enough, My Genius and the Muses talk; “Sweeter than Roses”, by contrast, is completely de-thorned by lifting it out of its But the converse most truly mine, original context. As the opening music for a seduction attempt in Richard Norton’s Is the dear memory of thine. tragedy, Pausanias, the Betrayer of His Country , “Sweeter than Roses” captures the full perfume of a first kiss, and the scene that follows the song is a strenuous test of a This stanza is the key to understanding the text, the link between the beginning and man’s devotion to his friend and protector. On its own, the song simply invites us the end of Purcell’s song. That Purcell chose to leave it out raises a new question: into a cheerful celebration of sensuality. Purcell expands the line “first trembling did he expect his listeners to be familiar with the poem, or was the original context made me freeze”, with a series of tremulous melismas on the word “trembling”, of the words simply not important to him? He does seem to have re-purposed the leading to such a shocking modulation on the word “freeze” that we are stopped in poem as a hymn to melancholy, with its simple, mournful ground bass. Also, his our tracks: just like the person being kissed, we tremble, we freeze, and we are setting of the text often finds pathos in words that are not especially pathetic in the delighted. context of the poem, such as the tortured melisma on “pains” in “where I have learnt Apollo’s lore without the pains to study it”.