Before making some general observations on the stage music, I wish to
give a few instances of Purcell's power of drawing pictures and creating
the very atmosphere of nature as he felt her. Let me begin with _The
Tempest_. The music is of Purcell's very richest. Not even Handel in
_Israel in Egypt_ has given us the feeling of the sea with finer
fidelity. Unluckily, to make this show Shakespeare's play was ruthlessly
mangled, else Shakespeare's _Tempest_ would never be given without
Purcell's music. Many of the most delicate and exquisite songs are for
personages who are not in the original at all, and no place can be found
for their songs.
Two of Ariel's songs are of course known to everybody--"Full fathom
five" and "Come unto these yellow sands," both great immortal melodies
(in the second Shakespeare's words are doctored and improved). The
first I have mentioned as a specimen of Purcell's "word-painting":
there, at one stroke of immense imaginative power, we have the depths of
the sea as vividly painted as in Handel's "And with the blast," or "The
depths have covered them." Another exquisite bit of painting--mentioned
in my first chapter--is repeated several times: the rippling sea on a
calm day.
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