CHAPTER III

During the first ten years of his mastership Purcell composed much—­precisely how much we can only guess.  It was not until 1690 that he began the huge string of incidental theatre sets which were for so long spoken of as his operas.  Mr. Barclay Squire, to whom all who are interested in Purcell are deeply indebted, has clearly established that by 1690, though not more than two years earlier, his one opera, Dido and Aeneas, was written.  If we take this as belonging to the period which began in 1690, we have for these first ten years only ten plays to which he provided music, and of these several are very doubtful, and the rest not very important.  During the remaining six years of his life he wrote music for forty-two plays.  Several sets are of the greatest importance, amongst them Dioclesian, King Arthur, The Fairy Queen and The Tempest.

We cannot tell how many of the anthems belong to this period.  One might surmise that most of them do, as his activity at the theatre later on must have occupied most of his time.  But if we had no dates for Mozart’s three greater symphonies, we might readily fall into the mistake of attributing them to another year than that of their composition, and the mistake would be natural, if not inevitable, when we consider the enormous amount of music we know Mozart to have written in 1788.  In Purcell we find the same terrific, superhuman energy manifested as the day of his death drew near, and perhaps we may be wrong in imagining that the theatre wholly absorbed him.  A few of the anthems may with great probability be ascribed to certain dates because of the royal events with which they are connected.  For example, two ("I was Glad,” and “My Heart is Inditing”) must have been written for the coronation of James II. in 1685.  For “the Queen’s pregnancy” in 1688 another ("Blessed are They that Fear the Lord”) was certainly composed.  The anthems for the Queen’s funeral—­and, as it turned out, for Purcell’s own—­can also be dated in the same way, but they fall into a later period.

During these ten years fifteen odes were set, including the notable Yorkshire Feast Song, also the music for “the Lord Mayor’s show of 1682,” and the Quickstep, which afterwards became famous when the words “Lillibulero” were adapted to it.  It was sung as a sort of war-song against James II.  In 1687 Purcell wrote an elegy on John Playford, the son of the publisher of the same name.

It would be utterly impossible to determine the dates of upwards of 200 songs, duets, trios, and catches, nor does it greatly matter.  In a little book such as this we have little enough space without going into these questions.  The first sonatas in three parts are more important.  They were published in 1683, with a portrait of the composer at the age of twenty-four.  Some pieces for strings in from three to eight parts may be attributed to 1680.  Some of the many harpsichord things may also belong to this period.