But those of us who are not antediluvian academics know that form (in that sense) is not an end, but a means of managing and holding together one’s material.  In Purcell’s music it is not needed.  The torrent of music flowing from his brain made its own bed and banks as it went.  Without modern form he wrote beautiful, perfectly satisfying music, which remains everlastingly modern.  Neither did he feel the want of the mode of thematic development which we find at its ripest in Beethoven.  As I have described in discussing the three-part sonatas, in movements that are not dances his invention is its own guide, though we may note that he employed imitation pretty constantly to knit the texture of the music close and tight.  Many of the slow openings of the overture are antiphonal, passages sometimes being echoed, and sometimes a passage is continued by being repeated with the ups and downs of the melody inverted.  Dozens of devices may be observed, but all are servants of an endless invention.

The variety of the songs and recitatives is wondrous.  Purcell was one of the very greatest masters of declamation.  In his recitative we are leagues removed from the “just accent” of Harry Lawes.  It is passionate, or pathetic, or powerfully dramatic, or simply descriptive (in a way), or dignified, as the situation requires.  “Let the dreadful engines” and “Ye twice ten hundred deities” have, strange to say, long been famous, in spite of their real splendour; and another great specimen is the command of Aeolus to the winds (in King Arthur)—­“Ye blustering breezes ... retire, and let Britannia rise.”  The occasion is a pantomime, but Purcell used it for a master-stroke.  He wrote every kind of recitative as it had never been written before in any language, and as it has not been written in English since.  In the songs the words often suggest the melodic outline, as well as dictate the informing spirit.  Many are rollicking, jolly; some touchingly expressive; most are purely English; a few rather Italian (old school) in manner.  One can see what Purcell had gained by his study of Italian part-writing for strings, but he could not help penning picturesque phrases.

The dances are, of course, simple in structure.  When they are in the form of passacaglias they may be huge in design and effect.  The grandest pieces are the overtures and choruses.  The overtures are often very noble, but without pomposity or grandiloquence; indeed, they move as if unconscious of their own tremendous strength.  One may hear half a dozen bars before a stroke reveals, as by a flash of lightning, the artistic purpose with which the parts are moving, and the enormous heat and energy that move them.  When strength and sinew are wanted in the themes, they are there, and contrapuntal adaptability is there; but they are real living themes, not ossified or petrified formulas.  Themes, part-writing and harmony are closely bound up in one another, and harmony is not the least important.