Piano Music - Henry Purcell

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Purcell

📖 HENRY PURCELL

The poet wishes well to the devine genius of Purcell and praises him that, whereas other musicians have given utterance to the moods of man's mind, he has, beyond that, uttered in notes the very make and species of man as created both in him and in all men generally.

Have fair fallen, O fair, fair have fallen, so dear
To me, so arch-especial a spirit as heaves in Henry Purcell,
An age is now since passed, since parted; with the reversal
Of the outward sentence low lays him, listed to a heresy, here.

Not mood in him not meaning, proud fire or sacred fear,
Or love or pity or all that sweet notes not his might nursle:
It is forgèd feature finds me; It is the rehearsal
Of own, of abrúpt sélf there so thrusts on, so throngs the ear.

Let him oh! with his air of angels then lift me, lay me! only I'll
Have an eye to the sakes of him, quaint moonmarks, to his pelted plumage under
Wings: so some great stomfowl, whenever he has walked his while
The thunder-purple seabeach plumèd purple-of-thunder,
If a wuthering of his palmy snow-pinions scatter a colossal smile
Off him, but meaning motion fans fresh our wits with wonder.

Gerard Manley Hopkins

📖 "[Of Purcell:] One of the most celebrated masters of the service of music in the kingdom, and scarce inferior to any in Europe."
Obituary in the Flying-Post (1695)

📖 "Mr Purcell in whose person we have at length found an Englishman equal with the best abroad."
John Dryden, in Dedication to Amphitryon (1690)

📖 "In one way Purcell is a finer stage composer than Wagner: his music is full of movement, of dance. His is the easiest music in all the world to act."
Gustav Holst, in The Heritage of Music (1928)

Henry Purcell

1659 - 1695
Henry Purcell was an English composer of the Baroque era.

📖 “Christ is made the sure foundation.”

📖 „Music and Poetry have ever been acknowledged Sisters, which walking hand in hand support each other; As poetry is the harmony of words, so music is that of notes; and as poetry is a rise above prose and oratory, so is music the exaltation of poetry. Both of them may excel apart, but sure they are most excellent when they are oined, because nothing is then wanting to either of their perfections.“

📖 “I attempt from love’s sickness to fly.”

📖 "Poetry and painting have arrived to their perfection in our own country; music is yet but in its nonage [immaturity], a forward Child, which gives hope of what it may be hereafter in England, when the masters of it shall find more Encouragement."

Quotes by Henry Purcell

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