Henry Purcell (1659 – 1695) was an English composer.
His style of Baroque music was uniquely English,
although it incorporated Italian and French elements.
Generally considered among the greatest English opera
composers, Purcell is often linked with John Dunstaple
and William Byrd as England's most important early
music composers. No later native-born English composer
approached his fame until Edward Elgar, Ralph Vaughan
Williams, Gustav Holst, William Walton and Benjamin
Britten in the 20th c...(+)
Henry Purcell (1659 – 1695) was an English composer.
His style of Baroque music was uniquely English,
although it incorporated Italian and French elements.
Generally considered among the greatest English opera
composers, Purcell is often linked with John Dunstaple
and William Byrd as England's most important early
music composers. No later native-born English composer
approached his fame until Edward Elgar, Ralph Vaughan
Williams, Gustav Holst, William Walton and Benjamin
Britten in the 20th century.
Queen Mary was one of England's most beloved monarchs,
and her death from smallpox just after Christmas 1694
plunged the nation into genuine grief. The queen's body
lay in state for public observation until her funeral
in March. Henry Purcell thus had time to compose music
especially for the ceremony, and he did write a brass
canzona and the anthem Thou know'st, Lord for the
burial, but otherwise he seems to have fallen back on
earlier scores, including two funeral anthems.
Precisely what was performed is a matter of argument;
no autograph scores exist, and Purcell left no account
of his own of the ceremony. Trumpets and drums are
known to have participated in the event, but Purcell's
funeral march and canzona for the occasion are for
"flatt trumpets," which were similar to sackbuts or
trombones, and no tympani part has been connected to
the brass movements. (Tympani are often included in
modern performances, especially since Thurston Dart
made a reconstruction in the 1950s.)
The march is written for a quartet of flatt trumpets,
which could play in a minor key, something Purcell uses
to good effect to provide interest for his repetitive
sequence of variants on a very simple four- or
five-note phrase. Recordings may place this march at
the beginning and/or the end of the work, and sometimes
drop it into the middle, too. Somewhere in the middle
also comes the brass canzona, a pulsing, polyphonic
piece in two related and repeated sections.
The first of the choral selections, "Man that is born
of a woman," holds some of Purcell's most deeply
melancholy and expressive music. The composer brings
particular tension to the phrase "hath but a short time
to live," and the melody rises and falls in imitation
of the words "he cometh up and is cast down like a
flower." "In the midst of life we are in death" begins
in the soprano section (almost certainly boys in the
first performance) and spreads through the choir. The
music is angular, chromatic, and, by the standards of
the time, a dissonant cry of anguish.
"Thou know'st, Lord, the secrets of our hearts" is
hushed and resigned, a fitting send-off to the
departing spirit. Purcell's contrapuntal version of
this anthem is quite complex; his more homophonic
setting is far more serene and seems a more fitting
conclusion to this music, which was performed again in
November 1695 at Purcell's own funeral.
Source: Wikipedia
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Purcell).
Although originally composed for Voices (SATB),
Trumpets & Organ, I created this interpretation of
"Thou knowest, Lord, the secrets of our hearts" from
the Music for the Funeral of Queen Mary (Z.860 No. 5)
for Winds (Flute, Oboe, French Horn & Bassoon) &
Strings (2 Violins, Viola & Cello).
