Page:Pratt - The history of music (1907).djvu/197



It should be added that in England, as elsewhere, there was much writing of detached songs or scenes either as incidentals to some spoken drama or in a similar style, so that any list of masque-writers might be reasonably extended to include many composers of 'ayres' and the like.

It has been the fashion to say that the Puritans were hotly opposed to all music, simply because they objected to the ornate cathedral services and to the abuses of the theatre. Yet all the Puritan leaders were interested in music itself, many of them, like Milton, being expert in it, and it seems that the revival of public concerts and even of some sort of musical plays in 1656 was either by direction of the Protector or with his implied approval. During the Commonwealth there was a notable amount of music-printing.

The better-known composers of masques or similar plays were all either in court service or engaged in church music—in 1607-13 Thomas Campion (d. 1620), poet and physician; in 1609 (Ayres) Alfonso Ferrabosco (d. 1628), the second of the name, born in England of Italian parents; in 1613-4 John Coperario [Cooper] (d. 1627), lutist, gambist and court-teacher; in 1613 Nicholas Lanier (d. 1666), royal choirmaster from 1640, who is said to have been the introducer of the recitative into England; in 1613 William Lawes (d. 1645); in 1634 (Comus) Henry Lawes (d. 1662), his brother; in 1653-75 Matthew Locke (d. 1677); in 1667 Pelham Humphrey (d. 1674); in 1667-77 John Banister, Sr. (d. 1679), an eminent violinist; from 1675 Henry Purcell (d. 1695), the crowning genius of the period; in 1676-1706 Jeremiah Clarke (d. 1707); in 1681-1707 (over 40 works) John Eccles (d. 1735) in 1695-1707 Daniel Purcell (d. 1717); and in 1700 John Weldon (d. 1736). Masques continued to be written much later, as by Arne (d. 1778) in 1733 and after, but they were overshadowed by the Italian opera under Handel and others.

89. Purcell.—The one master with both dramatic and musical gifts was the extraordinary Purcell, whose fertile originality, in spite of the brevity of his career, brought the century to a brilliant close. Making up for the lack of travel by intuition and assiduous study, he seized upon the finest points in the Italian style, combined them with some features (especially in choral writing) strangely neglected, and applied them to the treatment of plots that were essentially strong. Purcell's use of Continental methods had been prefigured by Humphrey, who might have been another strong opera-writer if his life, too, had been longer, but he himself outstripped all before in true melody, in characteristic and telling accompaniments, in delineation of personages and situations, and in daring innovations in constructive detail. His many-sidedness is re