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Purcell's will, made the very day of his death, was as follows: "In the name of God, Amen. "And I do hereby give and bequeath unto my loving Wife, Frances Purcell, all my Estate both reall and personall of what nature and kind soever, to her and to her assigns for ever.
If only the estimable ladies and gentlemen whose passion for writing about Purcell has wrapped the real man in a haze of fairy tales had taken the preliminary trouble of learning a little of the literature and drama of Purcell's day! Nay, had they only looked at the scores of Purcell's "operas"! Most of these plays undoubtedly had some music from the beginning.
Purcell's music has the same effect on the mind as a crowd of young leaves shooting from a branch in spring; it has a quality of what I risk calling green picturesqueness, sweet and pure, and fresh and vigorous. It is music that has grown and was not made. That Purcell knew perfectly well what he was doing we realise easily when we turn to the music he set to particular words.
David sat down, perceiving that something had gone very wrong, but not caring to inquire into it. His whole interest in the Purcell household was, in fact, dying out. He would not be concerned with it much longer. So that, instead of investigating Miss Purcell's griefs, he asked her cousin whether it had not come on to rain. The girl opposite replied in a quiet, musical voice.
And remembering this, I assert that Purcell's life was a great and glorious one, and that now his place is with the high gods whom we adore, the lords and givers of light. Before Purcell's position in musical history can be ascertained and fixed, it is absolutely necessary to make some survey of the rise of the school of which he was the close.
In the reign of Queen Anne the musical life of London was developing in a new fashion as compared with what it was in the last twenty years of the previous century. The type of English opera which Purcell and Dryden had created came to an end with Purcell's death in 1695.
It was to Purcell, and to some extent to Scarlatti too, that Handel owed the general plan of the anthems with their orchestral accompaniments, but even Purcell's anthems with orchestra had by that time been found too elaborate for general use. To the Chandos period belongs also a work which is still one of Handel's most popular compositions, the English Acis and Galatea, to words by John Gay.
Besides, he had a very strong curiosity to know what had happened after all to Lucy Purcell, and whether anything had been commonly observed of Purcell's demeanour under the checkmate administered to him.
Of form, as we use the word meaning the clean-cut form perfected by Haydn I have already asserted that there is none. This absence of form is held to be a defect by those who regard the Haydn form as an ideal an ideal which had to be realised before there could be any music at all, properly speaking. In Purcell's music it is not needed.
Owen explained, and madame gave him her place at the piano with alacrity, and took a seat far away by the fireplace. Evelyn sang Purcell's beautiful wedding song, full of roulades, grave pauses and long-sustained notes, and when she had finished Owen signed to madame not to speak. "Now, the song from the 'Indian Queen. You sang capitally," he whispered to Evelyn.
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