And it is pure magic: there is no explaining the effect. He got into his
music the inner essence that makes the external beauty of the
picturesque England he knew. That essence was in him; he made it his own
and gave it to us. He did not use much of the folk-songs born of our
fields and waters, woods and mountains, and the hearts of our
forefathers who lived free and did not dream of smoky cities and
stinking slums; though folk-song shaped and modified his melodies. In
himself he had the spirit of Nature, and it made his music come forth as
it makes the flowers blow. The very spirit of the earth seemed to find
its voice through him, the spirit of storm and the spirit of fair
weather that sports when sweet rains make a musical clatter among the
leaves. The music in which he found a voice for Nature cannot grow old
while the earth renews its youth with each returning spring. In its
pathos and in its joy the soul of seventeenth-century England is in his
music in perennial health.
This is not a fanciful description: it is the plainest, most
matter-of-fact description. 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.
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