Blessed are they that fear the Lord,
And walk in his ways.
For thou shalt eat the labor of thine hands;
Thy wife shall be as the fruitful vine Upon the walls of thine house,
Thy children like the olive branches round about thy table.
The Lord thy God from out of Sion shall so bless thee,
That thou shalt see Jerusalem in prosperity all thy life long.
Yea, thou shalt see thy children’s children,
And peace shall be upon Israel.
Henry Purcell, organist of Westminster Abbey and of the Chapel Royal, Composer in Ordinary to His Majesty, Keeper of the King’s Wind Instruments, and harpsichordist in the King’s Private Music, composed this new anthem on a text from Psalm 128 for a thanksgiving service held in the Chapel Royal on January 15, 1688. The noble text on fruitfulness and family joys was most apt for the occasion, which celebrated the queen’s pregnancy. There may have been people present who feared the consequences of this pregnancy and would see a Roman Catholic prince of Wales as a threat to the peace of Israel/England. But few could have guessed that the king and queen and infant prince would have fled by the end of the year, never again in their lives to see the unattainable Jerusalem that London became for them.
The anthem opens with a noble instrumental triumph, followed by the words of the psalm, in which this public celebration of a private occasion is cast in the Mediterranean imagery that seemed completely natural to northern European Christians. The setting of “thy wife shall be as the fruitful vine” for the bass soloist is exceptionally moving; Purcell had in his chapel choir a fine bass named John Gostling and often outdid himself in writing for him. The anthem, less than ten minutes long, is full of minor harmonies and strange forebodings, especially in the phrase “O well is thee” for the two trebles, harmonizing on minor thirds, that separate the bass and alto passages:
Bass: Thy wife shall be as the fruitful vine upon the walls of thine house.
Trebles: O well is thee.
Alto: Thy children like the olive branches round about thy table.
Trebles: O well is thee.
At the beginning of 1688 Henry Purcell, not yet twenty-nine years old, was busy and (I suspect) worried. His wife had borne him three sons, none of whom had lived to his first birthday, and now she was pregnant again. His appointments were impressive; but James II had turned his patronage to his separate Roman Catholic chapel and its musicians, Purcell’s pay as organist was a year in arrears, and “the organ at present is so out of repair that to cleanse, tune and put in good order will cost £40 and then to keep it so will cost £20 per annum at the least.” This statement was part of a petition Purcell had submitted to the court in May or June 1687; he finally was paid in March 1688.
Purcell’s large body of compositions exhibits an amazing range of inventiveness, technical skill, and expression. He wrote a great deal for the theater and could turn out a march or a dirge or a sailor’s dance or a hero’s shout of triumph. The man whose “Rejoice in the Lord Alway” seems to make “the peace of God that passeth all understanding” a simple fact also wrote jolly little rounds on the text “Kiss my arse.” His theatrical music touched all the themes of his age, from the opera Dido and Aeneas to songs and incidental music for The Marriage Hater Matched, Aureng Zebe (Dry-den’s play about the Mughal emperor Aurangzeb), Aphra Behn’s Abdelazer or the Moor’s Revenge, and Southerner’s dramatization of Mrs. Behn’s Oroonoko.
Mrs. Purcell gave birth in May 1688 to a daughter who lived to adulthood, married, and had a child of her own; two more children, one of whom lived to have children of his own, were born later. Purcell continued to compose furiously, especially for the theater, but also occasional pieces for the new monarchs just as he had for James. He died in 1695, aged only thirty-six.
Purcell, like every musician of his time, was treated as a craftsman and wrote a great deal to order for specific occasions. Genius of course frequently finds its way even when it is not treated as most of us think it should be. But for a long time I still was surprised and puzzled by the haunted melancholy that slips so naturally into the warm festivity of “Blessed are they that fear the Lord.” Then I remembered the Purcells’ three dead infants and one not yet born in January 1688, and listened again to the minor thirds of the young treble voices: “O well is thee.”