He did his best for his paymaster.
If there is no evidence hinting at his despising posterity, like Charles
Lamb, or at any determination, also like Lamb, to write for antiquity,
there is in his anthems and odes very considerable evidence that he was
ready to write what his paymaster wanted written. We must bear in mind
that downright bad taste, such as our present-day taste for such
artistic infamies as the "Girls of This" and the "Belles of That," had
not come into existence in Purcell's time. Purcell's contemporaries
preferred his music to all other for the same reason that we prefer it
to all other of his time--it was the best.
_Dido_, in pianoforte score, is generally accessible; only a few of the
spoken play sets are as yet published, and they are ridiculously
expensive. Let us not repine and give up hope. Some day that unheard-of
thing an intelligent music publisher may be born into the world, and he
may give Englishmen a trustworthy edition, at a fair price, of the works
of England's greatest musician. Meantime, the reader must do as the
writer did for some years--he must grub and laboriously copy in the
British Museum, buying, when he can, the seventeenth-century edition of
_Dioclesian_ and the eighteenth-century editions of such works as _The
Tempest_ and _The Indian Queen_, and also the _Orpheus Britannicus_.
Pages:
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62