Music A British Worthy
ALL artists are limited to some extent by the conventions of their age and the technical material at their disposal. But genius manages to transcend these limitations, and we recognise the work of genius partly by its independence of time and place, by its universality. The music of Beethoven is con- sidered greater than that of Hummel not because it is more characteristic of the period in which it was written, but because, in addition to having that character, it speaks a language that is applicable today and, we think, for all time. Henry Purcell was, among men of genius, especially tinforttmate in the period of his life. With his fertility and variety of invention, his dramatic intuition, his instinctive musicianship and his inexhaustible flow of melody, Ile only. needed the right instrument to his hand in order to become one of the greatest composers. But he was born at a time when the orchestra was in its infancy, and opera but lately invented. The old polyphonic style had passed away and the new was not yet created. The theatre was subject to conventions as rigid as, though different from, those which
• even Handel could not wholly transcend, so that he had to turn to oratorio for the full expansion of his genius.
It is especially unfortunate that the bulk of Purcell's dramatic music is buried in plays that an ordinary audience of today would find insufferably dull, or in recensions of Shakespeare that offend the rather pedantic purism of con- temporary taste. For the procedure of giving the King Arthur music as a cantata with a minimum of spoken narration to link the musical movements together, which was adopted by the B.B.C., hardly did justice to a work designed for dramatic action. After the first half-hour, during which admiration for the clarity and euphony of Purcell's music chased all other thoughts away, one was conscious of a certain lack of variety, not of content but of form, in the long procession of brief songs and choruses. It is music designed as an accom- paniment to drama and to spectacle, and it needs the engagement of the eye as well as of the ear. Once, however, Purcell did show what he could have done in the theatre, if only the theatre had been ready for him. In Dido and Aeneas, written for private performance at a girls' school, he created an opera that completely fulfils our defini- tion of a work of genius. It is the earliest opera that still maintains its place in the theatre if not, on account of its diminutive scale, in the regular repertory. It has more life in it than the operas of Handel or even Gluck, and it is not until we reach Mozart that Dido can be said to have been surpassed. This work, which plays less than an hour, has been recorded complete by the Decca Company as their first contribution to a series of Purcell's works. The performance, directed by Mr. Clarence Raybould, is in most respects excellent. The playing of the orchestra and the choral singing is lively and accurate, and, although some of the soloists are less than ideal, the drama is on the whole faithfully presented.
• Perhaps the most remarkable feature of Dido and Aeneas is that it is composed right through, durchcomponirt as the Germans say. There is no break in the musical thread from the beginning to the end of each act, and the differentiation between song and recitative is far less conspicuous than in the later convention of set aria and recitativo secco. It may be this that commends the work more than later and more ambitious • operas to modern audiences, accustomed to the homogeneous texture of Wagner and his successors. Them is no need to eXpatiate upon the beauty of Dido's final song, the most familiar number in the opera, though one may call attention to the more moving effect it produces in its context. The value of this recorded performance is that it enables one to appreciate musical points that arc apt to pass unperceived in the theatre, when the mind is engaged by the action. There is, for instance, that simple, yet astonishingly dramatic change of key front C major to F minor at the entrance of the Sorceress (for- tunately given full effect in the recording by the performance of the "Triumphing Dance" and the cave-scene on one disk), which is but one example of Purcell's intuitive grasp of the principles of dramatic composition. After hearing this work again it is not difficult to understand the remark of a modern opera-goer, who said that it seemed to contain within its brief compass all the emotions of .Gotterd4mmerung.
DYNELEY HUSSEY.
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