The Tempest.

We cannot tell how many of the anthems belong to this period. One might surmise that most of them do, as his activity at the theatre later on must have occupied most of his time. But if we had no dates for Mozart's three greater symphonies, we might readily fall into the mistake of attributing them to another year than that of their composition, and the mistake would be natural, if not inevitable, when we consider the enormous amount of music we know Mozart to have written in 1788. In Purcell we find the same terrific, superhuman energy manifested as the day of his death drew near, and perhaps we may be wrong in imagining that the theatre wholly absorbed him. A few of the anthems may with great probability be ascribed to certain dates because of the royal events with which they are connected. For example, two ("I was Glad," and "My Heart is Inditing") must have been written for the coronation of James II. in 1685. For "the Queen's pregnancy" in 1688 another ("Blessed are They that Fear the Lord") was certainly composed. The anthems for the Queen's funeral—and, as it turned out, for Purcell's own—can also be dated in the same way, but they fall into a later period.

During these ten years fifteen odes were set, including the notable Yorkshire Feast Song, also the music for "the Lord Mayor's show of 1682," and the Quickstep, which afterwards became famous when the words "Lillibulero" were adapted to it. It was sung as a sort of war-song against James II. In 1687 Purcell wrote an elegy on John Playford, the son of the publisher of the same name.

It would be utterly impossible to determine the dates of upwards of 200 songs, duets, trios, and catches, nor does it greatly matter. In a little book such as this we have little enough space without going into these questions. The first sonatas in three parts are more important. They were published in 1683, with a portrait of the composer at the age of twenty-four. Some pieces for strings in from three to eight parts may be attributed to 1680. Some of the many harpsichord things may also belong to this period.

We cannot follow Purcell's development step by step, year by year, as we can, for instance, Beethoven's. When we come to survey his work as a whole, we shall be able to compare the three-part sonatas issued in 1683 with the sonatas in four parts published in the year after his death. We shall learn that towards the end of his life he was a more magnificent master, than he was when twenty-four years old. That is the most we can see. We may observe ode after ode, it is true, but with regard to them we ought to be able to take into account conditions and limitations of which nothing is recorded nor can be known. This holds, also, with regard to the theatre music. We can merely guess at what his employers asked him to provide. We can never know the means they placed at his disposal. One significant thing must be noted here: the music itself—its style, spirit, even mannerism—affords us no trustworthy clue as to when any particular piece may have been written. For ages the biographical copyists have not ceased to marvel at a boy of fourteen writing the Macbeth music. It is silly rubbish, with which I believe Purcell had nothing whatever to do. They marvelled at the immature power latent in the music to The Libertine, which they supposed he wrote in 1676. Alas! the date is 1692. They marvelled still more over Dido and Aeneas, attributed to 1680. Alas! again its date is much later—1688 to 1690. The evidence of style counts for little. The truth is that in Purcell's music there are no marked stages of development, no great changes in style. Undoubtedly he gradually grew in power, richness of invention, fecundity of resource; but the change was one of degree, not of kind. He never, as Beethoven did, went out to "take a new road." He struck what he knew to be his right road at the very beginning, and he never left it. His nature and the point in history at which he appeared forbade that the content of his music should burst the form. The forms he began with served him to the end.

I shall first deal with such of Purcell's compositions as may fairly be considered as having been written before 1690. The music for the dramas is not of an ambitious character. It consists mainly of songs, dances, and "curtain tunes." In many cases half a dozen items are all that are attached to one play, and many of the pieces are brief. Therefore that formidable-looking list of what used to be called Purcell's "operas" does not represent anything like the quantity of music we might suppose. Purcell wrote only one opera—Dido. The word "opera" had not in his day acquired a special meaning. Spectacular plays, with songs, duets, choruses, dances, etc., were called entertainments or operas indiscriminately. Until a few daring inquirers investigated, the world supposed Purcell to have collaborated with the playwrights. In a few later shows it is true that he did, but some of the plays were written before he was born, some while he was a boy, and others—later ones—are known to have been first given without the aid of his music. The Indian Emperour was first played in 1665; Purcell added music in 1692. Tyrannic Love was produced in 1668 or 1669; the music was added in 1694. The Indian Queen was produced before The Emperour; the music was done in the last year of Purcell's life. If the Circe music is indeed Purcell's, it cannot have been written until the author, Davenant, had been in his grave seventeen years. 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. It will be remembered that during the Puritan, joyless reign of dunderheadedness the playhouses were closed; but Cromwell, who loved music and gave State concerts, licensed Davenant to give "entertainments"—plays in which plot, acting, and everything else were neglected in favour of songs, dances, and such spectacles as the genius and machinery of the stage managers enabled them to devise. When the Puritan rule faded, the taste for these shows still persisted. Dryden took full advantage of this taste, and after 1668 threw songs wholesale into his plays. Further, it would seem to have been the custom of theatre managers, when "reviving" forgotten or half-forgotten plays, to put in new songs and dances and gorgeous scenes, in the very spirit of Mr. Vincent Crummles, as the extra attractions. As Purcell's fame spread, his help would be more and more sought. At first Mr. Crummles would be content with a few simple things, but later, finding these "a draw," he would rely more on Purcell's aid. This is pure speculation, but it is fact that the earlier plays embellished by Purcell have nothing like the quantity of music we find in the later ones. One venturesome biographer, by the way, not only insists on Purcell's authorship of the Macbeth music, but suggests that "probably the recognition of the excellence and effectiveness" of such dull stuff "induced the managers of theatres to give him further employment." They were certainly a long time about it, for Lee's Theodosius, the first play for which Purcell is known to have composed incidental music, was not produced till 1680, eight years after the latest possible date of the Macbeth music; and, apart from Dido, which is not a play, but an opera, it was eighteen years till these same astute managers were "induced" by "the excellence and effectiveness" of the Macbeth or any other music to give Purcell something serious to do in the theatre. It was in 1690 that Dioclesian appeared, the first and one of the most important of a long string of works for the stage. The hypotheses, the "wild surmises" and the daring defiance of mere facts