But his recitative is always solid and dignified, and often
impassioned and pathetic. Music, too, owes him a great debt for his
invention of what is known as the French form of overture, consisting
of a prelude, fugue, and dance movement, which was afterwards carried to
the highest conceivable pitch of perfection by Handel.
Meanwhile an offshoot of the French school, transplanted to the banks of
the Thames, had blossomed into a brief but brilliant life under the
fostering care of the greatest musical genius our island has ever
produced, Henry Purcell. Charles II. was not a profound musician, but he
knew what sort of music he liked, and on one point his mind was made
up--that he did not like the music of the elderly composers who had
survived the Protectorate, and came forward at his restoration to claim
the posts which they had held at his father's court. Christopher
Gibbons, Child, and other relics of the dead polyphonic school were
quietly dismissed to provincial organ-lofts, and Pelham Humphreys, the
most promising of the 'Children of the Chapel Royal,' was sent over to
Paris to learn all that was newest in music at the feet of Lulli.
Humphreys came back, in the words of Pepys, 'an absolute Monsieur,' full
of the latest theories concerning opera and music generally, and with a
sublime contempt for the efforts of his stay-at-home colleagues. His own
music shows the French influence very strongly, and in that of his pupil
Henry Purcell (1658-1695) it may also be perceived, although coloured
and transmuted by the intensely English character of Purcell's own
genius.
Pages:
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34