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Purcell and Britten:
Three Odes for St. Cecilia
Celebrating the music of Britten and Purcell, Three Odes for St. Cecilia is a concert
of works written in praise of Saint Cecilia, patron saint of music, by two of Britain’s
finest composers. Purcell’s intimate early masterpiece Welcome to all the pleasures
sits in absolute contrast with his most extrovert ode Hail, Bright Cecilia for seven solo
voices and full baroque orchestra.
Benjamin Britten’s music was hugely indebted to Purcell; his a cappella Hymn to
Saint Cecilia completes this programme, both contrasting and complementing the
different aspects of Purcell’s music that are presented alongside it. The result is, in
McCreesh’s own words, “a most ravishingly beautiful programme”. This is a
programme that has toured extensively, to several of the UK’s major festivals and
more widely across Europe, including to La Chaise Dieu, Festival de Beaune and the
Concertgebouw, Amsterdam.
Selected CD reviews of Purcell’s Ode for Saint Cecilia’s Day
“… Paul McCreesh's reading of the Ode is probably one of the most consistently
convincing of latter-day recordings. This is certainly a fine crop of Purcell reissues.”
Gramophone, 2003
“This performance is exceptionally receptive to the brilliance of the score… the
ensemble as a whole moves effortlessly from discretion and intimacy to the imposing
timbral homogeneity of McCreesh's most extrovert Venetian exploits. His tempos especially in the grand opening instrumental sinfonia - are irrepressible and
invigorating.” Gramophone 1995
THREE ODES FOR ST. CECILIA
Henry Purcell (1659-1695)
“Welcome to all the Pleasures” Z. 339
Ode for St. Cecilia’s Day (1683)
Symphony
Welcome to all the pleasures
Here the deities approve
While joys celestial their bright souls invade
Then lift up your voices
Beauty thou scene of love
In a consort of voices
Benjamin Britten (1913-1976)
Hymn to St Cecilia, Op. 27 (1942)
Henry Purcell
“Hail, bright Cecilia!” Z. 328
Ode for St. Cecilia’s Day (1692)
Symphony
Introduction – Canzona – Adagio – Canzona – Adagio – Allegro – Grave – Allegro
Hail, bright Cecilia!
Hark, hark, each tree its silence breaks
‘Tis Nature’s voice
Soul of the world
Thou tun’st this world below, the spheres above
With that sublime celestial lay
Wondrous machine!
The airy violin
In vain the am’rous flute and soft guitar
The fife, and all the harmony of war
Let these amongst themselves contest
Hail, bright Cecilia, hail to thee!
PERFORMANCE NOTES, BY NICK KIMBERLEY
Writing in 1945 at the time of the premiere of his opera Peter Grimes, Benjamin Britten
acknowledged both a debt to Purcell, and a determination to stand alongside him in the
pantheon of British composers. ‘One of my chief aims,’ he said, ‘is to try and restore to the
musical setting of the English language a brilliance, freedom and vitality that have been
curiously rare since the death of Purcell.’
Today Purcell and Britten are widely regarded as the two finest composers that Britain has
ever produced. The critic Hans Keller went so far as to call Purcell ‘Britten’s father’, but
perhaps the relationship was more fraternal than paternal. For Britten, Purcell’s music
provided, not quite a model, but certainly an inspiring example.
If Britten’s interest in Purcell was not life-long, it took many forms. Most famous is his use of
Purcell as the basis for one of his most popular works, The Young Person’s Guide to the
Orchestra. Yet the musical empathy went much deeper than mere borrowing. In 1951,
Britten and Imogen Holst prepared their own performing edition of Purcell’s Dido and
Aeneas. Later, in 1967, they did the same for The Fairy Queen, while at the time of the first
performance of Grimes, Britten and his partner Peter Pears had been including Purcell in
their recitals for six years.
He and Pears began working on Purcell’s songs when they were in the United States during
the Second World War. It was work which helped Britten to discover the range and timbre of
Pears’s voice, while his piano realisations of Purcell’s continuo accompaniments contributed
to the ripening of his own harmonic language. He described his realisations as a ‘personal
reaction’ to the songs, in which ‘Purcell has provided… a firm and secure musical structure
which can safely hold together and make sense of one’s wildest fantasies’.
Of course it is not unusual for a composer from one era to feel a particular affinity for a
composer from an entirely different historical period. As Paul McCreesh says, ‘Virtually all
great composers have forged their own individual relationship with music from the past. We
can think of Brahms and Schütz, for example, or Stravinsky looking back to renaissance
madrigalists, and Tchaikovsky’s reverence for Mozart. I am increasingly drawn to explore
some of these connections in the programming for the Gabrielis, especially as our repertoire
broadens. It’s clear that Britten’s relationship with Purcell’s music was unusually intimate,
and putting the two together makes perfect sense. At school I was always taught that
English is not a great language for singing, but in the hands of a Purcell or a Britten, it’s a
very different story.’
Purcell’s skill in setting English was acknowledged by his contemporaries; the foreword to
the first publication of his songs (published three years after his death) stated unequivocally,
‘The Author’s extraordinary talent in all sorts of Musick is sufficiently known, but he was
especially admir’d for the Vocal, having a peculiar genius to express the Energy of English
Words, whereby he mov’d the Passions of all his Auditors.’
Tonight we hear Purcell and Britten side by side, in works that celebrate Saint Cecilia, early
Christian martyr (she died in about 230AD) and patron saint of music. Coincidentally, her
saint’s day falls on November 22, the day on which Britten was born in 1915, and the day
after Purcell died in 1695. The two Purcell works we hear come from opposite ends of his
career, if such a short life can be said to constitute a career. The less familiar of them,
Welcome to all the pleasures, dates from 1683 and sets words by the somewhat obscure
poet Christopher Fishburn (he also provided the text of Purcell’s later Cecilian ode Raise,
raise the voice).
Welcome to all the pleasures was commissioned by the Musical Society of London, a newly
formed body of musicians and music-lovers who planned an annual celebration to mark St
Cecilia’s Day. Purcell was twenty-four years old at the time, and already established as a
composer at the court of Charles II. He provided the Society with a relatively intimate piece
for strings and voices which, after an expressive opening, becomes a heartfelt celebration
of the ‘universal harmony’ which blessed Cecilia bestows. There are two especially fine
arias, ‘Beauty, thou scene of love’ and the ground-bass ‘Here the deities approve’; and the
finale is particularly surprising, with its repeated use of the word ‘iô’ evoking ancient
Classical rituals.
Hail, bright Cecilia is an altogether more imposing work. It was commissioned to celebrate
Cecilia in 1692, and as Paul McCreesh points out, it broke new ground, not only for Purcell,
but for English music more generally: ‘Because we are so familiar with the music that Handel
wrote in London not so long after Purcell’s death, we take the very rich sound of his baroque
orchestra for granted. It’s worth remembering, though, that Hail, bright Cecilia is probably the
first substantial piece of English music to use the full orchestra, providing obbligato parts for
all the instruments. It is an extraordinarily forward-looking work, full of exquisite vocal solos
and brilliant instrumental effects.’
McCreesh draws attention, in both Welcome to all the pleasures and Hail, bright Cecilia, to a
significant musical detail which is sometimes overlooked: ‘Today we use the term
countertenor to denote a largely “falsetto” male voice. In Purcell’s time it seems clear that
the normal countertenor voice was that of a high light tenor, a fact confirmed in the
autograph of Hail, bright Cecilia, where the term “high countertenor” is clearly marked for the
two solos that go into high, falsetto range. The use of high tenor voices gives a very
different colour to the music, but these voices must have been as common in Purcell’s choirs
as the ubiquitous haute-contre was in France.’
Britten completed his Hymn to St Cecilia in 1942, although he had long wanted to compose
a piece to celebrate the saint whose name-day fell on his own birthday. His first idea had
been to set a Latin text, but he had failed to find anything appropriate. Then in 1940, when
he and
Pears were in the United States, his friend and collaborator WH Auden began to supply him
with the text that he would eventually set. Britten started work on the project, but found it
difficult to complete.
In 1941, the operetta which he had written with Auden, Paul Bunyan, had its first
performance at Columbia University in New York. That had been followed by something of a
creative block; Britten resumed work on Auden’s paean to St Cecilia, which now seemed to
offer a way through. Then in March 1942 Britten and Pears decided to return to Europe and
to the war from which America had been their refuge. It was a difficult decision, not least
because German U-boats were a threat to all transatlantic crossings. No doubt Britten
wondered if he had made the right choice when, before they boarded the Axel Johnson for
the voyage, US customs confiscated the scores which Britten was working on, including that
of the Hymn to St Cecilia. Apparently the officials were wary that the music might contain
coded messages that could fall into the wrong hands.
Neither Britten nor Pears enjoyed life on the Axel Johnson, and Britten spent most of his
time in their cabin, devoting himself wholeheartedly to composition. He rewrote the
beginning of the Hymn from memory, going on to complete the work, as well as composing a
first draft of A Ceremony of Carols, another major choral work; no mean achievement for a
sea voyage lasting barely a fortnight, through perilous waters and with no guarantee of safe
arrival.
Neither work shows any trace of the difficulties and dangers which Britten faced as he
worked on them. Auden’s text for Hymn to St Cecilia is dense and allusive, but Britten treats
it with virtuosic panache. The first part offers a vision of St Cecilia about to be martyred,
while the second, which takes the form of a fast scherzo, presents a portrait of the creative
artist (poet or composer) as wilful, lonely and in need of Cecilia’s blessed love. The final
section is built over a Purcellian ground bass figure. Toying with the conceit, again familiar
from baroque music, of instruments and their associated affects, it visits a theme that would
become increasingly important in Britten’s work: lost childhood innocence, particularly
poignant in a time of mass destruction.
The repeated, haunting refrain, meanwhile, becomes a kind of verbal and musical anchor, a
celebration of Cecilia’s power to ignite creativity and, perhaps, bring peace. The ‘brilliance,
freedom and vitality’ which Britten found in Purcell are here in abundance. The Hymn
ushered in a new surge of creative energy that would carry Britten forward, to the premiere
of Peter Grimes and beyond. St Cecilia had been paid a handsome tribute.
A Review of Purcell’s Ode for St Cecilia’s Day from The Gramophone, October 1995
This performance is exceptionally receptive to the brilliance of the score.
The trumpets are bold and brassy (only occasionally overblown) and the ensemble as a
whole moves effortlessly from discretion and intimacy to the imposing timbral homogeneity
of McCreesh's most extrovert Venetian exploits. His tempos - especially in the grand
opening instrumental sinfonia - are irrepressible and invigorating; there is a danger that this
eight section introduction can seem too much of a good thing, as it does in Mackerras's 1969
recording, if not briskly negotiated. The solo singing is almost uniformly outstanding: Peter
Harvey is the busiest of the basses and he delivers his splendid music, including “Wondrous
machine!”, with authority and variety of colour. Charles Daniels must, by now, have sung
almost everything by Purcell but there is no sign of flagging: “Tis Nature's voice” has a
magical sense of unfolding as the music's captivating charms are gradually exposed. His
duet with Mark le Brocq, “In vain the am'rous flute” has its moments, though the intonation of
the recorders is languorous to say the least… It is the Ode, above all, which takes the
plaudits here.
This is the best version available at present, spaciously recorded but
not without definition. Strongly recommended.