Purcell - The Londoner The Birth of British Music

MILITARY MUSIC

This is a journey through two centuries of music and history

which forged the essential soundscape of our nation.

Our story starts 350 years ago in London.

A city recovering from civil war, plague and fire

and home to the great British composer Henry Purcell. The first of four towering figures

who shaped the music and musical life of the emerging United Kingdom.

The others being George Frederick Handel, Joseph Haydn and Felix Mendelssohn.

MUSIC: "Hallelujah Chorus"

Of the four, only Purcell was actually born in Britain.

The other three each coming across from continental Europe

bringing with them fresh sounds,

fresh ideas to a land in the process of transforming itself

into a modern society.

POPPING

# In his pleasure

# In his pleasure... #

I'll be discovering how these four composers

each in their own way, changed the way me make music,

the way we hear music and even how we think about music.

This was a day of national rejoicing.

The royal bride enters for her marriage to the man of her choice.

MUSIC: "The Wedding March"

Mendelssohn, Haydn, Handel and Purcell wrote great tunes

we all know.

Music for weddings, funerals and great state occasions.

Music that brings us together.

Music lies at every point of our history.

In here we simply use it as a prism through which to explore a little bit of who we really are.

MUSIC: "Rondeau from Abdelazer" by Purcell

This first programme is the story of Henry Purcell.

A musician who was born in London 350 years ago.

He's been described as our musical Shakespeare.

The first great British composer

just as the idea of Great Britain was beginning to take shape.

'The next station is Westminster.

'Exit for Westminster Abbey and the Houses of Parliament.'

Above this Tube station - the historic heart of Britain.

The centre of the nation's political life

and at the close of the 17th century, the core of Purcell's world.

Purcell lived, worked and ultimately died here in central London.

But his music reaches out beyond the city

to reveal the story of a nation on the threshold of huge social

and political changes.

Purcell was a true child of the Restoration.

He was born in 1659, just a year after the death of Oliver Cromwell

and the collapse of the republican parliament

so the monarchy was restored, Charles II came back from exile

and he immediately set to work building a new more coherent, more stable society

after 150 years of division over religion and politics.

There was a new optimism in the air and Purcell was right at the forefront of this.

He was a man of his time.

His music touched every aspect of Restoration society.

A soundtrack for the growing complexity of public life.

Evocative music for the great institutions of the state -

the king and the Church.

Music for the stage that thrilled sophisticated Restoration audiences

with its powerful tunes and expressive settings of the English language.

# Wondrous, wondrous

# Wondrous

# Wondrous machine

# To thee

# The wa-a-a-a-a-arbling lute

# Though used to conquest

# Must be forced, must be forced must be forced to yield. #

'Purcell's supreme gift is for setting urban English to expressive music.

'Mixing the sophisticated poetry of the palaces and courts

'with the vibrant language spoken on the city's streets.

'London has changed since Purcell's time,

'but walking up Whitehall still leads you north from the river.

'And at the top of the street is a time capsule.

'The National Portrait Gallery.'

Some great 17th century characters in here.

John Dryden.

Samuel Pepys.

And over here, one of the great comic actresses of the age,

Nell Gwyn, also mistress to Charles II.

And here he is.

King of England and Wales. King of Scotland

and King of Ireland.

But in this next room, we find the only authenticated portrait of OUR man -

Henry Purcell.

This is the earliest true likeness of a British composer to survive.

This sketch was almost certainly taken from life.

Slightly watery eyes, strong nose.

There's pride there, surely, but maybe also wistfulness.

Certainly sensitivity, compassion.

He's dressed with a typical musician's informality.

And yet it's expensive cloth - he's obviously got a sense of the luxurious.

Purcell's childhood had been marked

by huge events.

At the age of six, he managed to survive the outbreak of bubonic plague

which killed 100,000 of his fellow Londoners.

And the following year, 1666, the majority of the city

was devastated in the Great Fire.

When the fire came, in September 1666,

it devastated the whole of the old city.

Over 13,000 houses were destroyed.

Something like 86 churches.

It was almost impossible to imagine

the extent of the devastation.

And almost immediately, there was a sense that a new city had to be built out of the ashes.

This was a city that would rewrite the rules.

It would be a rational city rather than the old medieval huddle.

At the heart of it were these new city churches.

Perhaps the most resplendent is St Paul's Cathedral itself

but also the financial institutions - new banks.

The first trading floors of the stock market.

London was to be a trading capital of the world.

It would be the largest city in Europe

and would be right at the heart at what was the emerging British Empire.

Transformation on this scale called for a rare kind of visionary.

And the king chose as his architect

the country's leading scientist, the Oxford professor of astronomy - Christopher Wren.

Wren's buildings are like the 17th century built in stone.

And in the evocative, formal space of the Sheldonian Theatre in Oxford,

'I've assembled a team of singers alongside my orchestra, Army of Generals,

'who, using the instruments and performing techniques of Purcell's time,

'will allow us to hear this music,

'more or less as the composer and his audience heard it.

'Hail Bright Cecilia is Purcell's ode to the patron saint of music.

'An elegant baroque masterpiece

'celebrating music's ability to bring order to the world.'

# Soul

# Of the world

# Soul of the world

# Soul of the world... #

'Purcell was a master of word painting.

'Just listen to this amazing musical onomatopoeia on the word, "jarring."

'"The jarring, jarring seeds of matter did agree."'

# The jarring, jarring seeds

# The jarring, jarring seeds

# Of matter did agree

# Thou didst the scatter... #

'As Purcell resolves the musical tension of those "jarring" chords,

'you get the feel of Restoration society emerging from years of chaos.'

Purcell's music radiates optimism

and a belief in humanity's place in a well-ordered universe.

'The symbol of the new age was Christopher Wren's Monument

'currently undergoing its own restoration. It was built in Pudding Lane, where the fire had begun,

'and celebrates the arts and sciences coming together

'under the patronage of Charles II in the aftermath of 1666.'

The young up and coming poet, John Dryden, cemented his reputation

summing up this momentous year in his "Annus Mirabilis."

a heroic and patriotic poem in which he predicts

that a greater and more august London will arise from her fires.

And so impressed was Charles II that he immediately appointed him official poet to the crown.

He was the first Poet Laureate

and soon to be one of Purcell's major collaborators.

'Restoration society revolved around the central presence of the king.

'From his palace in Westminster, Charles II dominated all aspects of public life -

'social, political and religious.'

'Creativity in response to the needs of Church and state

'is the key to the early part of Henry Purcell's professional career.'

Preserved here is something of 17th century Westminster

and in the early 1680s, Purcell was simultaneously organist at Charles II's Chapel Royal,

and also here at Westminster Abbey.

He lived in a little street just over there,

a street that no longer exists by the name of Bowling Alley East together with his wife, Frances.

The fact is, we know very little about the man.

Not even how to pronounce his name - Pur-CELL? PUR-cell?

Who knows?

# Close thine eyes

# And sleep

# Sleep, sleep

# Secure

# Thy soul is safe

# Thy body sure... #

Since the middle ages, the background of every professional musician in Britain was church music.

And Purcell, like all his predecessors, was brought up in this tradition.

But the continuity with the past had been destroyed

by the execution by the head of the church Charles I.

Under the patronage of his son, Charles II,

there was a deliberate attempt to restore the repertoire of Anglican church music.

Purcell, with his gift for word-painting,

seized the chance to explore the lushest vocal elaborations,

while still presenting the text with a crystalline clarity.

# That keeps who never... #

'Here the words he set,

'come from a poem written by Charles I emphasising the continuity

'of the monarch's position as head of the church.'

# Never slumbers, never sleeps

# A quiet conscience

# In a quiet breast... #

The work that Purcell and others did in revitalising the repertoire of Anglican church music

persists in our cathedrals to this day.

And Purcell's sensitive yet robust compositions

are one of its cornerstones.

# Shut not

# Shut not thine merciful ears

# Unto our prayers

# But spare us, Lord

# Spare us, Lord, most holy

# O God

# O God most mighty... #

There's a certain approach to dissonant harmony

to slightly over-rich, quite daring harmony

that gives his music

a sort of individuality

and a sort of colour.

# Thou most worthy judge eternal... #

'His word setting is wonderful.

'I think that's partly because of his interest in dramatic music.'

He must have been very aware of heightened speech,

of how to give that a musical expression.

'We find some of it eccentric - irregularity and so forth

'but it always helps the clarity of the text.'

# Last hour

# For any pains of death

# To fall, to fall

# From thee. #

Although his main residence was in Whitehall just round the corner from Westminster,

Charles would often visit his outlying palaces,

always accompanied by a huge retinue

including multiple musicians who were there to provide sacred music for him whenever he needed it.

These were the gentlemen of the Chapel Royal.

# Be merciful unto me

# O Lord

# Be merciful unto me

# O...

# Be merciful, be merciful

# Be merciful

# Be merciful... #

Chapel Royal is a group of clergy and musicians

whose function is to minister

to the musical and liturgical needs of the sovereign.

Purcell was a member of it for his entire musical career.

He joined as a choirboy.

Uncertain exactly when - the records don't have that degree of detail

but probably around the age of eight or nine.

His father and his uncle were both adult members of the choir - Henry Purcell and Thomas Purcell.

And so much of Purcell's greatest music was written for the Chapel Royal.

CHOIR SING

We have no idea about Purcell's emotional or intellectual life.

He worked and composed for the church but that didn't necessarily mean he shared their beliefs.

That was where the work was and he was a professional musician.

So he set the text, the devout text and the psalms that were required of him

but through his extraordinary gift for harmony and expressivity,

he made those texts his own.

The spirituality in Purcell's music can be simply massive.

# Hear my prayer

# O Lord

# And let my crying

# Come unto thee

# Let my crying

# Come unto thee... #

'Hear My Prayer sums up Purcell's gift as a dramatic composer'

and his ability to extract the maximum from a short piece of text.

'Here we are - supplicant human beings

'all too aware of our weakness.

'It's one long slow burn.'

An intensely slow crescendo to an anticipated relief we never quite experience.

# Let my cry...

# And let my cry

# Come unto... #

'He draws out our emotions'

only to bend them gently to his own human perspective.

There is no resolution.

'Perhaps even in death.'

# Hear my prayer...

# Hear my prayer...

# Let my crying...

# Let my crying... #

'I think this is a characteristically British style of choral music.

'As a nation, we do love to sing

'and Purcell's confident, but at the same time slightly restrained

'self-controlled sacred music still resonates some three centuries later.'

Charles II loved sailing and he had a succession of royal yachts.

One of them was called the Fubbs - named after one of his chubbier mistresses.

One day they decided to take it on a cruise down the Thames and round the Kent coast

with a party of singers and musicians for the king's entertainment.

Among them was the Rev John Gosling - a stupendous bass singer and a close friend of Henry Purcell's.

He was to learn, all too well, on this voyage,

both the wonders and the perils of the deep.

After leaving the security of the river, they sailed out into the open sea.

But a violent storm arose around the treacherous waters of North Foreland

off the Kent coast and there was a real fear that they might capsize.

The king and the rest of the royal party were forced to work the sails alongside the rest of the crew.

And together they managed to bring the royal yacht Fubbs safely ashore.

Afterwards, Gosling persuaded Purcell to set some appropriate words from one of from the psalms

so it could be sung for King Charles' pleasure during a Chapel Royal service.

'An opportunity to demonstrate the full range of his remarkable voice

'and a challenge to sing even for a great modern bass like John Tomlinson.'

# They that go down to the sea in ships

# These...

# These men see the works of the Lord

# And his wonders

# His wonders in the deep

# For at his word

# A stormy wind ariseth

# For at his word

# A stormy wind ariseth

# Which lifteth up, which lifteth up the waves thereof

# They are carried up to heav'n

# And carried down again to the deep... #

They That Go Down To The Sea was written for John Gosling

who was this great bass and friend who must have been great

because the range of the thing is immense, isn't it?

The first phrase alone is two octaves

from a top D to a bottom D just in

the first couple of bars.

So it's all very descriptive music -

describing the depths of the sea and the storm

and staggering men. It's all described and painted in the text.

So, yeah, it's a big range.

It's true musical onomatopoeia. You're down there, on the sea

and you're scudding about and there's this amazing lilt to it.

It's almost like a slow dance.

That's true. La-la, la-la, la-la.

# Down in the deep

# Down into the bottom. #

So it's quite demanding but it's meant to be.

# They are carried up to heav'n

# Are carried up to heav'n

# And down again to the deep

# The souls mentor the way because of trouble

# They kneel, they kneel to and fro

# And stagger, and stagger like a drunken man

# And are and are at their wits' end

# And are and are at their wits' end... #

Although Purcell left no personal papers,

no letters or documents revealing his thoughts or beliefs,

he did leave behind plenty of autographed scores.

His music in his hand

and I'm on my way to the British Library in St Pancras to look at this extraordinary collection.

-Sandra, this is Purcell's own score book.

-That's right, yes.

This is a document of musical life at Charles' court

in the last five years of his reign.

It's Purcell's own handwritten document of most of the pieces he wrote at court.

'There's something really touching about this book.

'This is the composer's personal archive of his work

'copied out not for performance but for preservation.

'And you get a deep sense of the man.

'The best sort of musician, really - creative and practical.'

And here we have his table of contents.

You see you get down here

and he's put the page numbers of everything up to Unto Thee Will I Cry.

And if we go to that section of the book...

..you see here's They That Go Down To The Sea In Ships.

Purcell wrote out the first instrumental introduction

but he stopped here after the first line of the verse.

It's the bass solo.

"They that go down to the sea in ships, these men see the works of the..."

and it stops.

And what's on the next page?

-Nothing at all!

-Nothing at all!

Several blank pages.

And the next thing we get is the anthem that was written for the coronation of James II.

So it looks like Purcell possibly was writing that when he heard that Charles had died

so he didn't finish...

-He didn't bother.

-He didn't bother.

And the fact that he stopped at this point

shows how immensely practical he was.

There's no point in sweat and toil

over writing a fair copy because the times had changed.

Charles II was replaced by his brother, James II

who was welcomed, surprisingly, as he was a known Catholic

but very very quickly, within three years of his reign,

he became a very hated figure,

because he was willing to attempt to convert England back to Catholicism.

There was a real fear that the worst thing that could possibly happen

was a return to civil war.

They had experienced it.

This was the same generation that had spent their childhood

not knowing what the future held.

During his brief but anxious reign, James II favoured Roman Catholics

from Italy and Spain over domestic musicians.

And Purcell seems to have used this as and opportunity

to consolidate his position at Westminster Abbey

where his organ playing was beginning to attract attention.

The end of the 17th century saw a huge leap forward in terms of organ technology,

driven principally by the two main builders working in Britain.

The German born Bernard Smith known as Father Smith, master organ builder by royal appointment,

and the upstart from Brittany, Renatus Harris.

Christopher Wren's programme to rebuild London's churches, after the Great Fire,

created a ready market for new organs.

Purcell was personally involved in the choice

and testing of these instruments.

The intensely competitive Smith and Harris

each brought their own style and secret techniques to the ancient craft of organ-building.

It's a tradition of craftsmanship that still survives,

and this Renatus Harris organ, in this city church,

was restored to its current peak condition by the specialist firm of Goetze and Gwynn.

So this is the important part of the pipe, actually.

I'm making the flue for the ribbon of air

which causes the sound.

This is actually, almost, the most critical part of these pipes.

So when we put the front on,

you can see it looks a bit like a recorder.

The interesting thing about these early organs is that the pipes are just cut to length,

so there's no means of tuning them.

Once I've tuned them once, that's it.

-Forever?

-Forever, yes. You know,

if one has obviously gone a bit flat,

-you would then shorten it slightly with a knife.

-How about if it's gone sharp?

-If sharp, you'd take a bit of ear wax, and stick it in the top.

-HAZLEWOOD LAUGHS

These are tools and techniques that would have been immediately familiar to Purcell.

In his youth, he'd worked as an unpaid assistant to John Hingeston,

once Oliver Cromwell's favourite musician, and now Keeper of the King's instruments.

There you go.

-So this globule...

-Yes.

'From Hingeston,

'he'd learnt to make, repair, and tune all manner of organs.'

In order to operate, it needs a couple of valves.

We're going to just put a bit of sheepskin on here,

it provides a very good seal.

Has it been cured in any way to make it soft like that?

Yes. Yes, it's always tanned.

Yeah, because to cure kid gloves in the 19th century,

they used to rub...well, dog poo in, for want of a better phrase.

Yes, yes, that's a possibility. Yes. But I don't think here.

17th-century listeners were hungry for novelty.

They wanted their organs to offer a panorama of different sounds - to imitate trumpets, and violins.

In the 1680s, Purcell gave public organ recitals,

demonstrating the superiority of Bernard Smith's instruments over those of his competitor,

Renatus Harris.

Both had their individual styles of pipes,

Smith preferring the more traditional wooden pipes...

NOTE SOUNDS

So that's the wood pipe.

..whilst Harris pioneered the use of metal pipes with reeds.

Now that is a reed pipe, isn't it?

If you keep your finger on the key...

NOTE SOUNDS

-NOTE SHARPENS

-You can see.

So, actually, the right sound is about there.

-Now this is a vox humana.

-Vox humana literally translated means human voice.

-So...

-CROAKING NOTE SOUNDS

HAZLEWOOD LAUGHS

-That sounds nothing like a human voice!

-But...

at the end of Purcell's lifetime,

all the people who could afford it, wanted an organ which had the new imitative stops.

So the vox humana must have sounded like...or rather,

people sang like the vox humana, so...

-That's a scary thought, really, isn't it?

-It is quite, yes.

It had been an uneasy decade for the country,

but in the closing years of the 1680s,

just as Henry Purcell reached the age of 30,

change was in the air.

The glorious revolution of 1688 was a turning point in British history.

A small group of English nobles had written to the Dutch nobleman,

William of Orange, and invited him over.

And he arrived with a fleet the size of the Spanish Armada, with a vast army.

This was the last invasion of England.

James the II fled ignominiously to France,

and the impeccably Protestant William and his wife Mary were crowned joint monarchs.

Mary was James II's daughter, and the line of legitimate succession passed through her.

London relaxed, and got back to the pleasures of business,

and the business of pleasure.

And this was where Henry Purcell's career really took off,

composing music for the stage at the capital's leading theatre in Dorset Gardens.

York Watergate stands here in its original 17th-century position.

These days, it's landlocked, 150 metres from the river,

but originally, its steps would have led down directly to the water,

and it was this that was the secret of the Dorset Garden theatre's success.

You could get there by river taxi.

The Thames was one of the main highways through London.

It was much more speedy and practical to travel by boat

than to struggle through the crowded, narrow, and dirty streets.

Besides, you didn't encounter all the muggers, whores, and street lowlifes

who might accost you, and ruin your evening at the theatre.

Dido And Aeneas is a curious thing.

It's the only piece Purcell wrote that we would call an opera.

In other words, it's through-composed, it has no spoken dialogue.

The English text was written by Nahum Tate,

a minor Irish bard who gained some notoriety

by rewriting Shakespeare's tragedies in order to give them happy endings.

Everything that makes Purcell great is distilled into this bittersweet adaptation of Virgil's Aeneid.

The shipwrecked Trojan Aeneas falls in love with Dido, queen of Carthage,

but malicious supernatural forces conspire to tear their relationship apart.

I'm on my way to Sweden, because no Restoration theatres survive in Britain.

Dido And Aeneas demands a sophisticated range of baroque stage effects

to match the virtuosity of Purcell's music.

The Royal Theatre at Drottningholm gives us a tantalising glimpse

of the kind of spectacle the theatre of Purcell's time offered.

As a musician, Purcell understood how to use the theatre as a physical space,

and Dido And Aeneas demonstrates his ability to design music to bring the stage to life.

Theatre in Purcell's day was all about illusion, about transformation.

Worlds could change in the blink of an eye - from a palace,

to a forest. Nowadays, that would probably be affected at the touch of just one button.

In Restoration theatre, however, you needed half a battalion.

Down here in the bowels of the theatre, it's how I imagine it's like being in the galley of a ship.

Even the equipment seems derived from naval technology. And all this,

for just one rock.

You can only imagine the visceral thrill the audience must have experienced

at witnessing this spectacle for the first time.

A spectacle which, up until now, had only been described, not seen.

And all of that coupled with the extravagant opulence of Purcell's music.

Invariably in Restoration drama,

the actors played out the story of the mortals,

and it was the job of the music to suggest the supernatural,

and the mythological.

So you can imagine, when all these new-fangled effects came on line,

the impact was just as it was meant to be -

awe-inspiring.

I'm up in the flies of the theatre, and I'm going to attempt my descent,

on this celestial throne.

'Purcell and Tate were as ambitious as any Hollywood producers...' Ready!

'..Dido And Aeneas calls for a harbour, a cave,

'a royal palace, a woodland glade.

'It's special-effects theatre.

Wow, that is something that pulls focus.

You can tell that every eye in the room is on you.

Makes you feel, therefore, a little bit like a god.

At the climax of the opera,

Aeneas leaves, and the heartbroken Dido resolves to kill herself.

Her final lament is a devastating aria of stunning simplicity.

Miraculously,

it's all set over one bass line, which rolls round and round.

It's called a ground bass, and Purcell was a master at them.

There's something reassuring about this repetitive hook,

over which the melody grows and develops,

and also something deeply compelling.

# When I am laid

# I am laid in earth

# May my wrongs

# Create

# No trouble

# No trouble

# In thy breast... #

I love it for its simplicity.

It's such a simple and honest piece.

The ground bass just carries on

with that inevitability that Dido is facing -

a steady march, I suppose, towards her death.

And I just love the way that the orchestra shadows her, sort of bringing her emotions in with her.

# Forget my fate

# Remember me

# But, ah

# Forget

# My fate... #

It's a dawning on her of what's happening - the music grows,

and it doesn't just grow in terms of volume, it goes up and up and up,

and she finishes her last, "Remember me," and then,

the orchestra brings it down and down. It's all over.

It just brings tears to your eyes.

# Forget my fate

# Remember me

# But, ah

# Forget

# My fate. #

It's been said Purcell and Tate were connecting their piece with contemporary events,

that the opera is somehow a political allegory,

in which Aeneas represents the recently deposed King James II,

and Dido, the British people mourning the loss of their rightful monarch.

In the end, we simply don't know what meaning contemporary audiences might have read into the opera,

and in fact, there was only one documented performance during Purcell's lifetime.

But it did survive out there on its own.

Small, but perfectly formed, becoming Purcell's acknowledged masterpiece.

But there was another side to Henry Purcell.

London life at the close of the 17th century was notorious for being sociable to the point of inebriation.

# Once

# Twice

# Thrice

# I, Julia, tried... #

Purcell composed something like 200 tavern songs.

Elegant, witty, and sometimes slightly vulgar songs

for the discerning drinking gentleman.

They're not always that easy to sing when you've had a couple of pints.

# The scorn... #

LAUGHTER

-That's not right either.

-LAUGHTER

Musicians always have a tendency towards being sociable,

and much of the business of everyday life was conducted in the coffee houses and pubs.

London's not a big town at this time,

so people who are playing in the chapel are also playing in the theatre,

playing in court, in the pub, writing music

for each other to sing, experimenting,

seeing what they could do, then performing it.

You do blah, blah, blah, and then you hit...

Purcell also had a reputation for being rather fond of a drink.

There are endless rumours and myths,

like the story he came home drunk, and was shut out of his house

by his wife, and therefore, staggered off into the night,

-caught a cold, and that was what led to his death.

-HE CHUCKLES

Probably not true, and even if it is, no worse than anybody else in Restoration London.

# Since the pox or the plague

# Of inconsistency reigns In most of the women

# Of the town

# What ridiculous fop

# Would trouble his brains

# To make the lewd devils lie down?

# No more in dull rhyme

# Or some heavier strain

# Will I of the jades or their jilting complain

# My court I will make

# To things more divine

# The pleasures of friendship

# Freedom and wine

# The pleasures of friendship

# Freedom and wine... #

This rambunctious song, Since The Pox Or The Plague,

was one of Purcell's earliest popular successes, printed, and widely circulated,

and it's not difficult to imagine the composer and some of his friends

having a bit of fun with it over a drink.

# ..Venus Adore

# For a goddess no more

# That old lady whore

# But Bacchus we'll court

# Who doth drinking support

# Let the world sink or swim

# Sirrah! Fill to the brim. #

Yes! Thank you very much.

This is Canons Ashby, the ancestral home of the Dryden family,

and the house that John Dryden might have inherited,

had he not converted to Roman Catholicism at precisely the wrong time.

Poet, patriot, and wit, Dryden was both brave and reckless.

When he refused to swear allegiance to the Protestant King William III,

he promptly lost his patronage. So he threw himself into his work,

and in the late 1680s/1690s, he produced lengthy poems, political satires, dozens of translations,

and heaps of plays. There was genuinely no stopping him.

During this time, he forged a close creative partnership with Purcell,

and one of the fruits of their collaboration was King Arthur,

a piece which explores the notion of Britishness at the end of the 17th century.

King Arthur is also known as The British Worthy,

and John Dryden, there he is, loved men of that ilk.

For instance, his King Arthur, whilst king of the Britons,

is not the familiar, chivalrous knight of yore.

Instead, he's viewed through a glass, darkly.

He's like a tribal warrior, aided by wizards and spirits,

locked in a seemingly eternal conflict with his rival, Oswald, the king of the Saxons.

The plot contains abduction, seduction, human sacrifice, and pagan gods of mythic power.

# What power art thou?

# Who from below

# Hast made me rise

# Unwillingly and slow

# From beds

# Of everlasting snow... #

The shivering cold genius rises from the ground,

so it should be a very dramatic moment.

# ..How stiff and wondrous old

# Far unfit

# To bear the bitter cold... #

The sequence of about 50 chords are completely unpredictable.

I mean, the tonal sequence there is fantastic. I mean, it's modern.

It's dissonant. You don't know what chord's going to come next, do you?

# ..or draw my breath... #

It's quiet. The scale of it is small, vocally.

But dramatically, it should be really intense.

Sometimes the quieter you sing,

the more the role will come out and it focuses the attention.

# Let me, let me, let me Freeze again to death. #

Purcell described music and poetry as sisters walking hand in hand.

And King Arthur presents a fascinating combination

of erotic and patriotic love.

And at the climax of the work, there are scenes depicting the beauty

and perfection of the British Isles.

And also the prophecy that one day, the Britons and the Saxons

would live together in love.

Cloaked in a melody of simple dignity

Purcell and Dryden spin a sentiment which resonates against a background

of religious dispute and civil war.

These are artists who really want Britain to be the island of love.

"Fairest isle, all isles excelling. Seat of pleasures and of loves.

"Venus, here, will choose her dwelling and forsake her Cyprian groves."

# Fairest isle All others excelling

# Seat of pleasure

# And of love

# Venus, here, will choose her dwelling

# And forsake her Cyprian grove

# Cupid from his favourite nation

# Care and envy will remove

# Jealousy that poisons passion

# And despair that dies for love. #

The British voice had, I think, a kind of quiet self confidence.

A pragmatism. An ability to look beyond our shores.

And British culture is rich because of our diversity.

In the final decade of the 17th century, the new foreign king,

William III and his wife, Queen Mary, brought a sense of harmony

to Purcell's London.

The 1690s really were the revolutionary period for the city.

Everything that had been brewing over the last 50 years,

really came together in the 1690s.

BRASS BAND PLAYS: "Rondeau from Abdelazer" by Purcell

You see a redefinition of monarchy.

That there would be no Catholic upon the throne.

There was a hope that a new sense of national identity would be formed.

Purcell, himself, was very much connected with this.

The Grenadier Guards were first established by Charles II,

as the first regiment of foot guards.

They've taken part in every major campaign of the British army since.

Although still a battlefield regiment,

we usually see them these days carrying out their ceremonial duties

as Royal guards.

The music of Purcell has formed an unbroken tradition for grenadiers,

since the 17th Century.

Purcell's music feels as important today as it has at every point,

down the ages, since he wrote it, doesn't it?

And so it is, Charles. We, as a modern military band

often perform music by Purcell.

Very often in the state arena. State ceremonial, on guard,

in the forecourt of Buckingham Palace or Wellington barracks.

Are you and the members of your band, musicians first, soldiers second,

or soldiers first, musicians second or somewhere between the two?

I suppose the honest answer is somewhere between the two,

but the official line is we are musicians first and soldiers second.

Our primary role in life is to provide music in support of the army

in and out of operations.

But we are always ready to assume an operational role when required.

Many musicians took part in both the Gulf conflicts.

Every year on the second Sunday of November,

the nation remembers its war dead.

At the cenotaph in Whitehall, thousands gather for a ceremony

that combines silence and music,

including a sombre arrangement of the RAF from Dido and Aeneas,

When I Am Laid In Earth.

In this sublime music, the depth and complexity of the emotion

is carried by the simplest musical sequence.

Profound, dignified and touched by sorrow beyond words.

In December, 1694, Queen Mary died suddenly of smallpox.

And it was decided that she would be buried in Westminster Abbey

with full state honours.

The funeral of Mary, daughter of the deposed James II,

saw a huge outpouring of formalised mourning.

A very baroque way of death.

Purcell's music for the ceremony takes the simplest melodic fragments

and, using the skills he honed in the theatre and in the chapel,

arranges them into a monument for the departed queen,

whose joint monarchy with William III had brought stability

and cohesion to British society.

The funeral took place on a bitterly cold day.

An eyewitness account is provided in Peter Glean's poem,

Occasion, by the magnificent proceeding to the funeral of her late majesty.

Observe the inanimate machines of war. How dull their sound.

How flat their echoes are.

The drums and shriller trumpets. Voices break.

And sound no longer victory, but death.

# Thou knowest Lord The secrets of our hearts

# Shut not, shut not

# Thy merciful ears unto our prayer... #

The public grief at Mary's death was genuine

and Purcell, who knew her personally, caught the national mood,

setting the sentences from the book of common prayer

for the choir to sing.

A stunning display of his ability to cloak the English language

in rich, expressive textures, without losing its character or clarity.

# ..Oh, holy and most merciful saviour... #

Through sheer inventiveness and the absolute command of his craft,

he seems able to speak to people on every level.

But above all, he possessed this fantastic gift

for making the English language sound sensual.

Setting it to wonderful tunes, evocative melodies,

which when combined with words, seemed perfectly to articulate

the feelings of the new Britain.

CHOIR SINGS

Somehow, through the power of music, he brought British society together.

# ..To fall, to fall from thee

# Amen. #

Here, beneath my feet, and in the shadow of the organ,

lies Henry Purcell. And, as this plaque up here says -

He made a will in a hurry at the age of 35, where he said,

"I, Henry Purcell, of the city of Westminster, gentleman,

"being dangerously ill as to the constitution of my body,

"but in good and perfect mind and memory. Thanks be to God."

So within a year, he's buried at home, here at Westminster Abbey,

to the same funeral music that he created for Mary.

Purcell was only 36 when he died.

But he captured all the vitality of his age,

and his works were to have a massive impact on the nation's emerging musical life.

In the next episode of The Birth Of British Music,

I'll be exploring how the brilliant but volatile young composer,

George Frederick Handel arrived from a foreign land and, with his music,

won our hearts. Ultimately becoming almost more British than the British themselves.

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