Complete Encyclopaedia of Music/B/Blow, John

Blow, John, doctor of music, born in 1648, at North Collingham, in Nottinghamshire, was one of the first set of children of the Chapel Royal, after the restoration. In 1673, he was sworn one of the gentlemen of the chapel, and in 1674, upon the decease of Humphrey, appointed master of the children. In 1685, he was nominated one of the private musicians to King James II., and in 1687 he was likewise appointed almoner and master of the choristers in the Cathedral Church of St. Paul ; but in 1693 he resigned this last place in favor of his pupil Jeremiah Clark. Blow had his degree of doctor in music conferred on him by the special grace of Archbishop Sancroft, without performing an exercise for it in either of the universities. On the decease of Purcell, in 1695, he was elected organist of St. Margaret's, Westminster, and in 1699 appointed composer to the chapel of their majesties King William and Queen Mary, at a salary of forty pounds a year, which afterwards was augmented to seventy-three pounds. A second composer, with the like appointment, was added in 1715, when John Weldon was sworn into that office ; at which time it was required that each should produce a new anthem on the first Sunday of his month in waiting. That Blow was a composer of anthems while a singing boy in the Chapel Royal appears from Clifford's collection of the words of the services and anthems used in the collegiate and cathedral churches in 1664; for among the ecclesiastical composers mentioned in this book, amounting to upwards of sixty, are included the names of Pelham, Humphrey, John Blow, and Robert Smith, children of his majesty's chapel. Humphrey was born in 1647, and Blow in 1648, so that, at the restoration, the first was only thirteen, and the second but twelve. Their composing anthems fit for the Chapel Royal, before they had attained the age of sixteen or seventeen, would now be regarded as more wonderful proofs of precocity, if Purcell, soon after, at a still more early period of life, had not produced compositions that were superior to these. Dr. Blow died in 1708, at sixty years of age ; and though he did not arrive at great longevity, yet, by beginning his course and mounting to the summit of his profession so early, he enjoyed a prosperous and eventful life. His compositions for the church, and his scholars who arrived at eminence, have rendered his name venerable among the musicians of England. "Though there are strokes of the pathetic, and subjects of fugue in Blow's works that are admirable, yet I have examined," says Dr. Burney, "no one of them which appears to be wholly unexceptionable, and free from confusion and crudities in the counterpoint. He has been celebrated by Dr. Boyce for ' his success in cultivating an uncommon talent for modulation ; ' but how so excellent a judge of correct and pure harmony could tolerate his licenses, is as unaccountable as any thing in Blow's compositions, considering the knowledge and known probity of the late Dr. Boyce. The ballads of Dr. Blow are in general more smooth and natural than his other productions, and, indeed, than any other ballads of his time ; there is more melody than in those of Henry Lawes, or any composers of the pre-ceding reign ; yet it is not of that graceful kind in which the Italians were now advancing to-wards perfection with great rapidity. It is either of a Scotch cast, or of a languid kind, that ex-cites no other sensation than fatigue and drowsiness. His pastoral, ' Since the spring comes on,' is, however, as chantante as any mongrel mixture of Scotch, Irish, French, and English, that has been since compiled. The first movement, particularly, seems to have been the model of most of the Vauxhall songs of the last forty years. ' Fill me a bowl' has the same kind of merit. The collecting his secular compositions into a folio volume, in 1700, under the title of ' Amphion Anglicus,' was doubtless occasioned by the great success of the ' Orpheus Britannicus,' a similar collection of Purcell's dramatic and miscellaneous songs, published by his widow in 1698. But whether Dr. Blow was stimulated to this publication by emulation, envy, or the solicitation of his scholars and friends, by whom there are no less than fifteen encomiastic copies of verses prefixed to the work, the ungrateful public seems to have always remained insensible to these strains of the modern Amphion, which were not only incapable of building cities, but even of supporting his own tottering frame. Go, perjured man,' is the best of all his secular productions ; but that which was an imitation of a duet by Carissimi, ' Dite, o Cieli,' is overloaded, in his ' Amphion Anglicus,' with a labored and unmeaning accompaniment. Pages 44 and 46 of this collection contain two of his best ballads - 'Salina has a thousand charms,' and 'Philander, do not think of arms.' In these ballads the union of Scotch melody with the English is first conspicuous. The subject of a song, page 168, ' Orithea's bright eyes,' is likewise broad Scotch."

See ANCIENT PEEFACES.