Surprising though it may be, England can be credited with having been the first country where a canon of musical classics emerged. Music had little such tradition until the eighteenth century. While the names of some of the most highly renowned musicians remained in memory, little of their music was actually performed. The main places in the early modern period where old music was honored in canonic fashion were the Sistine Chapel, where Palestrina’s works remained in the repertory regularly after his death, and a few English cathedrals and chapels, where service settings and anthems by Byrd, Tallis, and other sixteenth-century composers seem to have continued in use, surviving even the hiatus in Anglican practice during the Commonwealth period. After the term “ancient music” arose in England around 1700 to denote music of the sixteenth century, a set of repertories of old works developed that by 1780 were thought explicitly to serve as canon. By then works by Henry Purcell, Corelli, Handel, and a variety of other composers were also regarded as “ancient” and during the early nineteenth century they were included in the new denomination, “classical music.”1
Little was written upon this extremely important development until well after the middle of the eighteenth century. It is of considerable significance to find a new and earlier source, and one that raises a profound question: why, by tradition, had musical culture had no classics? The subject of “Old Stile” music was treated in a series of three pieces that appeared in 1724 in The Universal Journal, a weekly magazine that seems to have been almost as little known then as it is today.2 The articles include a eulogy to Henry Purcell that is remarkable at that date for the canonic nature of its thought. They suggest strongly that a remarkable breadth of thinking then existed in England concerning the very new idea that music from the past might be preserved as a corpus of great works.
The Universal Journal appeared between 11 December 1723 and 29 August 1724. It was a general interest periodical, one of the many imitations of the spectacularly influential Spectator and Tatler that had been published in the previous decade. The items that concern us were published in the issues of 27 May, 11 and 25 July 1724.3 The first is a leading article, presumably by the editor; the second, printed on p. 3 and headed “From my own Apartment,” has a similar style4 but includes a poem by a colleague; and the third is a letter to the editor.5 The first two pieces and the poem formed part of a rich journalistic literature that existed between 1705 and the 1730s on the subject of Italian opera, which had excluded British composers and (to a large extent) British singers from the stage of the King’s Theatre, Haymarket.6 Here the issue of who was to sing opera went hand-in-hand with issues about the export of British wealth, and with religious-cum-political resentments about the Roman Catholic background of the Italian performers.
Who, then, wrote the three articles? The first question we must ask is where the journal stood in the political spectrum of the time. The Universal Journal did not direct its attention upon politics as specifically as did many other periodicals, focusing instead upon the theatre. In its opening issue it declared that “the pulpits and the theatres we shall consider as the Medicines of Instruction; We shall not therefore suffer the One to be seditious, nor the Other to be immoral” (11 December 1723, pp. 1–2). The periodical offered no criticism of the Walpole regime such as was becoming widespread, eventually almost obligatory, in the literary community, as resentment grew over his refusal to serve as patron to men of letters. By abstaining from such commentary, the journal took a moderate Whiggish stance. Repeated attacks upon astrology and superstition in general resonated with the “enlightened” tone of that party’s thinking. Early partisan associations did not inhibit canonization, and some of the composers referred to presented complex situations: Henry Purcell’s reputation encompassed both strong Tory loyalties and his work for William III, while that of William Byrd delicately balanced loyal court service with fervent Catholic recusancy.
The 1724 texts provide some hints as to their author. A passage in the final one offers a pair of promising candidates, Ambrose Philips and Leonard Welsted, when it declares, “Let our Dablers in Poetry therefore learn of Philips or Welsted to prize Milton’7 Philips and Welsted took similar intellectual directions as their careers progressed, and collaborated in editing the journal The Free-Thinker in 1718–21. Philips (?1675–1749) seems the most likely of the two to have edited the magazine. He was a loyal Whig throughout his career: in Samuel Johnson’s words, “Philips was a zealous Whig, and therefore easily found access to Addison and Steele.”8 He entered into a major dispute with the rising Alexander Pope between 1709 and 1714 when his recently-published books of pastorals were favoured by a commentator over those of Pope: Pope responded with a harsh satirical rejoinder and accusations that Philips was part of a cabal of Addison’s supporters formed against him.9 Since Pope was then a Tory, the two squared off over political partisanship: an edition of Philips’s works published in 1799 claimed that “it was said he used to mention Pope as an enemy of the government.”10 In tracing the history of the episode, Annabel Patterson states that the conflict “disrupted literary friendships for a generation and led, on Pope’s side, to the renunciation of pastoral as a viable mode of expression, and its deliberate sabotage by the parodies of Gay and his followers.”11 Pope’s reputation grew far more than Philips’s, and the two authors became irreconcilable enemies. The fact that The Universal Journal was discontinued on 29 August 1724 is a further important indication of Philips’s role as editor. An article in the final issue—“The History of the Universal Journal, with the author’s Last Will and Testament, Published by a Friend”—gives no reason why the series was to be ended, but it does make clear that the editor was going on to other things. In November 1724 Philips left England to become secretary to Hugh Boulter, a major contributor to The Free-Thinker, who in 1719 had become Bishop of Bristol and in the autumn of 1724 was translated as Archbishop of Armagh, primate of the Anglican church in Ireland.12
Leonard Welsted (1688–1747) was thirteen years younger than Philips but emerged within the same literary milieu. He seems to have owed a good deal to Philips, since the issues of The Free-Thinker represented his first major publications, and his aesthetic essay published in 1724 includes highly complimentary words toward his colleague.13 Welsted conflicted with Pope, just as Philips did: in 1730 he charged the great man of contributing to the death of a lady, and Pope answered with an accusation that Welsted manipulated his patrons shamelessly. Most important of all for our purposes, Welsted married the daughter of Henry Purcell, Frances Purcell, daughter of the composer and his wife Frances (nee Peters). She was born in 1688, married Welsted in 1706, became the executrix of her father’s estate at her mother’s death that same year, and was placed in charge of her young brother Edward.14 The strongest evidence that Welsted wrote the letter of 25 July is a passage revealing intimate knowledge of family matters about the estate: “it must be owned a great Misfortune, that his Works were not corrected by himself, but that after his Death all Copies were called in from private Hands, and a Collection [i.e., Orpheus Britannicus] made with a View more to the Bookseller’s Advantage, than the Author’s Honour.”15 That his wife had died in 1724 makes it all the more likely that Welsted wrote the article, perhaps as a kind of memorial. Welsted may even have had some part in the first two articles, since there is other evidence of his opposition to Italian opera in London. In an article in The Free-Thinker in 1718 he had made the interesting comment that since opera performances were “Entertainments for a Select Audience” they could not be called “public shows.”16 In 1721 he published a Prologue to a play that had been delivered at Lincoln’s Inn Fields Theatre (and was accompanied by an Epilogue by Steele on the same occasion) that included some of the earliest satirical commentary upon the Royal Academy opera company.17 Welsted may very well have written some of the anonymously published satires about Italian opera at this period. Indeed, his discussion of the opera, the South Sea Bubble and the country’s moral malaise in 1718 resembles greatly the treatment of the same subjects in a poem by Henry Carey that was included in the first of the three articles in The Universal Journal.
The early proponents of older music were associated chiefly with the “ancients” in the great Quarrel of the Ancients and Moderns that began in the 1690s.18 While publications of that time did not address themselves to music, the term “ancient music” came into use inconspicuously around 1700 to denote works in the old polyphonic style as practised in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. Henry Aldrich, Dean of Christ Church, Oxford, who figured significantly in the Phalaris dispute, became the main proponent of ancient music through his close involvement in the musical program at the Cathedral and as host of private meetings in his college rooms for singing Elizabethan and contemporary music. He and his colleagues were predominantly Tory high churchmen who championed old music as part of their critique of the Whig government. Arthur Bedford contributed the most important ideological construct of their point of view in his attack on the commodification of musical life in The Great Abuse of Musick.
During the 1720s it was men of letters, most of them opposition Whigs associated with the “moderns,” who came to the fore in discussions of old music. The pieces in The Universal Journal grew out of the critical methodology that figures such as Richard Bentley had marshalled against the unprofessional thinking that they found in contemporary writing on the classics. Their historical philology questioned the veracity of classical artefacts and demanded that the whole nature, and indeed authority, of ancient culture should be reconsidered.19 Ambrose Philips and Leonard Welsted followed in this iconoclastic path in their approach to poetry and aesthetics, a bold posture in their time. Philips’s book of pastorals focused upon rustic instead of classical models, English instead of ancient Greek or Roman, and in so doing mounted a critique of writers who he thought showed excessive reverence for antiquity.20
The presence in The Universal Journal of articles on the pastoral from that very point of view strongly indicates Philips’s authorship. Welsted followed much the same modernist path in his poetry and his aesthetic writings, arguing that genius was to be found in a variety of times and places, and did not necessarily follow classical models.21 One suspects that he was influenced by Bentley during his career at Trinity College, Cambridge. The article of 11 July offers a pithy example of the robust, iconoclastic mentality of the “moderns,” stating a common intellectual assumption and calling it into question. After urging a greater unity between words and music, the author points out that great musical works had not been kept in perpetuity in the same way as great poems: “David touched a Harp so divinely, that he even charmed Evil Spirits; yet are his musical compositions dead with him, whilst his Psalms remain the Standard and just Model of all spiritual Hymns”—and much the same applied to Homer and Sappho.
It may seem paradoxical that, for all that they distrusted conventional thinking about literary classics, the “moderns” helped to build a musical canon. They did so because such a project furthered the rethinking of the classical tradition in literature, since it could help to establish canon independent of ancient models and free from the rigid principles by which it had been defined. A similar outlook can be found in William Hogarth. Though a critic of academic canons such as were established by conservatories in the 1730s and 1740s, he joined the Academy of Ancient Music, the London society where works of Tallis, Byrd, Marenzio, and Palestrina were performed.22 The unpresumptuous, workman-like character of Elizabethan polyphony must have appealed to him; he would have found a simplicity and an honesty in it that contrasted with the pretentious values he would later see in the ideas and the institutional leadership of Sir Joshua Reynolds.
The letter of 25 July to The Universal Journal goes farther than the preceding two articles, taking a broad perspective in suggesting a canonic status for Purcell and his music. The piece opens with the simple assertion that “Purcel was a Shakespear in Musick,” but what follows has much greater depth and significance. The author attacks the assumption that had hitherto been basic to musical taste, that music in “Old Stile” was “out of Date, and therefore ought to be kick’d out of Doors.” He puts the question in comparative terms, asking why similar principles do not apply in painting or literature:
We have doubtless many good Painters now living; must therefore Rubens, Vandyke, Lilly, and Kneller be forgot? Must Spencer, Milton, Shakespear, and Addison be never read because there are writers of a later Date? And must Corelli, Bird, and Purcel never be sung, because they are Old Stile?
He then calls upon his colleagues to honor great figures in music as they do in their own field:
In Musick we have many Great Masters now living, to support the Dignity of that heavenly Science; but it is the worst Complement any one can pay them, to make Blockheads of Corelli and Purcell. I am confident they would receive it with as much indignation as Mr. Pope or Mr. Philips would hear a Reflection on Shakespear, tho’ never so much intended in their Favour. No, ’tis only the noisy Vulgar who set up idols, and demolish the Shrines of the Ancients.
The letter stands among the fullest prose eulogies to Purcell that were published in the century after his death. The most important previous tribute had been the publication in 1698, three years after the composer’s death, of Orpheus Britannicus, a collection of his vocal works in both sacred and secular idioms.23 It is indicative of the composer’s unusually high reputation among men of letters that prefatory poems were contributed to the publication by John Dryden and Nahum Tate as well as by Purcell’s brother Daniel, the organist Henry Hall, and “a person of quality.” But no upsurge in performing Purcell’s music followed, and it was virtually neglected in the period of the Universal Journal articles. None of his major theatre works were revived in London between 1717 and 1729, and The London Stage records the only occasional introduction of seven of his songs (on eighteen occasions) into other performances at the London theatres.24 His famous Te Deum and Jubilate was still presented from time to time in church services for which orchestrally accompanied music was appropriate, such as that for the annual feast of the Corporation of the Sons of the Clergy, but even so it naturally shared the honors with works by contemporary composers, and Handel’s settings of the Te Deum largely supplanted Purcell’s in the 1730s.25 As far as publication of Purcell’s music was concerned, only the Te Deum and Jubilate, Orpheus Britannicus, and selections within anthologies of catches enjoyed sufficient demand from the purchasing public to remain in print.26 Nevertheless, these publications meant that the more serious musicians and amateurs could become acquainted with Purcell’s music, indeed rather more than was possible for music of the great majority of composers from the seventeenth century. In the long run, the continuing use of his Te Deum and Jubilate at festival events (in London and the provinces) served an extremely important function as the foundation of a practice upon which Handel’s English works eventually remained in performance. But it was not until the 1760s that performance of Purcell’s songs, theatre music, and sacred works became at all frequent.
What is particularly impressive about the letter of 25 July 1724 is that it is focused so substantively upon musical rather than literary or political agendas. Most citations of Purcell during the first half of the century invoked his name to promote the cause of English writers against foreign competition; in most cases his music itself was not of principal interest.27 All of which is a tribute to the daring of the authors of the three pieces in The Universal Journal, most likely Ambrose Philips and Leonard Welsted. We can admire the originality of their contribution, even though they both ended up on the margins of the literary world. Little research or critical study has recently been done on either of them, but they attract a growing respect among scholars of the period for their willingness to question entrenched ideas and to do battle with Alexander Pope.
A comment made in the letter of 25 July deserves particular scrutiny: “if every man had the same value for Purcel, as the wonderful Hendel has.” The historical perspective suggested here was quite unusual for the time. Although there would no doubt have been many people in London who could have remembered Purcell himself in 1724, his music had gone into eclipse after his death, especially after the arrival of Italian opera in London. That, after all, followed ancient convention in musical culture. Not only had there been a shift towards a different sort of theatrical entertainment from that to which Purcell had contributed, but also, as the first article in The Universal Journal noted, this movement had been accompanied by a new harmonic and melodic style, involving different principles of musical declamation. At a later period, and indeed into the twentieth century, it has been common to compare Purcell’s musical treatment of the English language with Handel’s, usually to the detriment of the latter. But no English composer in the 1720s would have been writing according to Purcell’s manner, which by then was not merely “Old Stile” but was in a style that could not be recaptured after the musical influences from more modern Italian styles had been absorbed throughout Europe. Comparison of Purcell with Handel seems an unlikely topic during this period in any case, since Handel’s treatment of the English language in “song” only became publicly audible with his introduction of English works of the oratorio type into his opera seasons in the 1730s. The sole area in which direct comparison would have been possible in 1724 was church music, and in particular through the two composers’ settings of the Te Deum and Jubilate.28 While Purcell’s “St. Cecilia” settings in D major from 1694 remained in print thirty years later, Handel’s “Utrecht” version from 1713 still awaited publication, and comparison could only have been made by people who had access to manuscript copies circulating privately, or who had listened attentively at performances of the music.29
There was accordingly little reason in 1724 to draw a link between the two composers on historical grounds, such as we may do today. One explanation for the phrase in the article might be that the author actually knew of discussions with Handel that gave testimony to his high regard for Purcell’s music. As a man chiefly of the theatre, Handel mingled with the entrepreneurs and musicians who had succeeded Purcell’s colleagues. It would appear that the respect that Purcell had achieved in the literary world—far higher than that of any other composer of his time—persisted an unusual length of time. A possible second explanation might be that the writer was referring in more general terms to an impression that Handel’s music preserved some elements of the “Old Stile” with its figural and contrapuntal approach, when compared, for example, to that of Giovanni Bononcini, the other leading Royal Academy composer of the period. It is possible that the author, having heard Handel “Utrecht” music a decade before, could have formed the opinion that Handel’s music was a logical extension of Purcell’s “grand” style for English church music—even though in fact a comparison of the two works serves mainly to emphasize the stylistic gulf between the two composers.
A third possible explanation for the link that was drawn between Purcell and Handel derives from the notion of the “master composer.” The passage occurs in a context where the author is stressing how great masters in painting and literature honored their forebears, and it was useful to his argument to say that Handel, by far the most important composer in London at the time, did so to Purcell. Links between master composers of past and present were to play a major role in the evolution of the idea of the musical canon during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The canonization of a recently-deceased composer often came about in close relationship with the honouring of a rising contemporary musician; a symbiosis occurred between them that made each one seem all the more a master in the same genre. This was seen in the “succession” perceived between the concertos of Corelli and Handel (especially after the publication of Handel’s Op. 6 in 1740), and onwards to those of Charles Avison and Francesco Geminiani after that. A further parallel existed in the interaction between the musical reputations of Haydn and Mozart, on one hand, and the ageing Beethoven, on the other, in Vienna during the 1810s and 1820s.
It is interesting to find the authors of the articles struggling to find a word by which to denote old music in their discussion of the “Old Stile.” No generic term had as yet developed to identify music from the preceding generations. “Ancient music” was still in 1724 a term restricted to works written before about 1625, and only in the 1770s was it broadened to include any works that were several decades old. In any event, writers among the “moderns” such as Philips or Welsted would probably have avoided the term, since they were by instinct suspicious of the language by which classical texts had conventionally been discussed. It is all the more remarkable to find “Old Stile” being used to denote composers as diverse as these three: “And must Corelli, Bird, and Purcel never be sung, because they are Old Stile?” Pieces by the three composers had established themselves in quite different social and intellectual contexts: William Byrd’s services and anthems were performed in the cathedrals and the Chapel Royal, Corelli’s concertos in London and provincial music societies, Purcell’s Te Deum and Jubilate in church services associated with annual festivals, and his songs (occasionally) in theatre and concert programs. Once again we find the author of the letter remarkably percipient, since an omnibus conception of old music was at least fifty years away.
1) 27 May 1724, p. 1
Spite of Fashion let some few be found
Who value Sense above an empty Sound.
—Prologue to the 2d Part of Henry IV.
Every Art and Science has in every Age had its particular Admirers and Followers; but Musick since its first Invention has met with general Applause: It has been universally received and encouraged; and to that and its Sister, Poetry, are attributed every Good of Life: To them we are said to owe the Names of Rational Creatures, they having brought the Generality of Mankind out of the Savage State in which they lived, to inhabit Towns, and to form regular Societies: The Stories of Orpheus and Amphion, are too well known to need repeating on this Occasion.
The works of our ancient and modern Poets are every where filled with the Praise of Musick: I will not quote particular Passages; they are so very numerous, that of themselves they would swell my Paper beyond its usual Length. I would rather chuse to admire the Improvements that have been made in it of late Years in our Nation; and indeed they are such, that we may venture to affirm they have brought that Art to the very Height of Perfection.
But I am grieved to say, that as Musick has improved, Sense decayed; and that this has been reduced to the lowest Ebb it possibly could be, whilst the other was attaining that Summit of Perfection. It was a custom amongst our Fathers, first to compose a Song, and then to set it to Musick; but their wiser Sons despise this old Fashion, and have quite inverted it. They value nothing but the Tune, which therefore they make it their Business to compose first, and then set Words to it, no Matter for the Sense, provided they are soft, and run smoothly to the Notes.
How many Examples will both Sacred and Profane History furnish us with, of eminent Musicians and Poets, who carefully cultivated the Sister Arts; yet thought that if they must incline to either Side, they ought to have the greater Regard for their Poetical Compositions. David touched a Harp so divinely, that he even charmed Evil Spirits; yet are his musical Compositions dead with him, whilst his Psalms remain the Standard and just Model of all spiritual Hymns. Homer sung from Door to Door the Wrath of Achilles, the Fall of Troy, and the Adventures of Ulysses; and tho’ his Musick doubtless was good, yet is that perished, whilst his Songs connected form the noblest Epick Poems that ever were wrote. The beauteous Sappho the Lesbian, is mentioned by several Writers, as having excelled her Co[n]temporaries in Musick; and those Fragments of hers which are handed down to us, at the same time shew that she excelled them in her poetical Compositions. But this is a Truth so universally acknowledged, that more Instances of this Kind must be reckoned impertinent. Amongst our Moderns, Purcell was justly esteemed a great Master; and if we carefully read him, we shall find that he had as much Regard to the Song it self, as to the Air he composed for it.
But whether the Nation, to whom we owe our Improvements in this Art, be not so well furnished with sound Judgment as their Neighbours, or whether they have so entirely devoted themselves to the one, that it is impossible they should have any Attention left for the other, I will not say; but to our Sorrow we find, that a Mio Caro quavered and repeated half a Dozen times, is equivalent to all the soft and easy Things a Suckling or a Prior could have wrote.
I know not whether these warbling Gentlemen ever look forwards; but I am certain, that, were I in their Case, and capable of thinking, I should dread the Downfall of Musick in this Kingdom. All earthly Things are liable to the greatest Vicissitudes; and every thing is unstable. If Musick be at its Height amongst us, and that like all Things here below it cannot be fixed, of Necessity it must fall. How lately do we remember Wit in its full Bloom of Glory, when we were every Day blest with the Converse and Writings of an Addison, a Garth, a Pope, a Prior, a Steele, and several others, the Pride of the Age, and the Darlings of Helicon; but Death summoned some away, old Age overtook others, and the rest, for want of Company, are retired, and have left us to bewail the sudden fall of Wit, and the great Decay of Sense in so short a Time.
But there are Men still left in the World, whose Ears may indeed awhile be charmed with an Italian Voice, or Violin, but who will soon recover from that Lethargy into which they have been lull’d; and who, seeing the Frothiness of what they have admired, will be ashamed of owning that they even were Lovers of Musick, when it apears that for its Sake only Wit and good Sense have been banished the Commonwealth.
That the Fall of Musick is near at Hand, seems to me undoubted; I had my self a tolerable Opinion of South Sea Stock about four Years ago; but when Subscriptions began to run so prodigiously high, I foresaw its Fate. The Case is the very same here: Musical Subscriptions have been taken in at a very extravagant Rate, and frequent Calls made upon them; and if I am not misinformed, the Jobbers in that Way would fain get rid of what they have in that Fund; and I am told that even at this Present a Man might buy Opera Stock at a very considerable Discount.
I am led into this Way of thinking, by reading over my Friend Saturnio’s Observations upon the late Eclipse; wherein, amongst other things, he has particularly threatened Musick: As I have no great Faith in Prophecies, I was willing to account for its approaching Ruin from natural Causes; for I take for granted that its Downfall is near. Mean while some of my Readers will perhaps be much better pleased with Prophecy than Reason, and therefore I shall give ‘em Saturnio’s own Words.
‘The Position of the Heavens, at the Time of this Eclipse, is of dire portent to Musicians, but sheds a benign Influence upon Poets and Writers: The two Arts are here represented by the two great Luminaries; the strong and dazzling Rays of Phœbus being a just Emblem of Poetick Fire, whilst the Lunar Globe is a Representative of Harmony, which receives its Light from the other’s bright Numbers: The Moon’s intercepting the Rays of Light, and the Clouds gathering round the Sun, shew us the Decay of the one, by our too great Attachment to the other, and our being guided by the clouded Imaginations and Fancies of some. But notwithstanding the Calculations made by the best Astronomers, the Eclipse was not total, which denotes that good Writing shall not be entirely rooted out of our Land. The Sun suddenly appeared again, and by its superiour Brightness eclipsed the Moon, whose Body then we could not discern; so shall Poetry shortly re-assume its pristine Glory, and so dazzle us with its recovered Beauty, that we shall not be able to discover any Charms in Musick: which shall then be so contemned and neglected, that our Children’s Children, passing thro’ the Hay-Market, shall look with surprize upon the ruin’d Opera House, and enquire, what Service that decayed Pile of Building was intended for.’
N. B. Saturnio at the same time made several other curious Observations; but they relating to * and * cannot be safely communicated at present; but the Author intends to take some more convenient Opportunity of letting the World know what they were.
2) 11 July 1724, p. 3
From my own Apartment.
The prodigious Encouragement which Foreign Professors of every Art and Science meet amongst us, whilst our own Countrymen are brow beaten and despised, has been so very often complained of, and so little taken notice of, that I do not repeat it in hopes of making many Converts; but I must own that I cannot, without being shock’d, meet with any particular Instance of it. Our Extravagance has no where shewn it self more conspicuously than in the Case of the Italian Singers, whilst our own Masters are despised and forgotten; and yet I have often heard Men of very good Sense, and who perfectly understand Musick, acknowledge, that among the Latter there were now as great Hands as any Age had produced; but this Acknowledgment they made in private, and at the same time owned they did not dare say such a Thing publickly, for fear of being laughed at, and reckoned meer Idiots in Musick.
A few Days ago I went to visit an Acquaintance whose Compositions I have always been old fashion’d enough to value, and who has obliged the Publick with several of ’em; I saw the last Work that he had publish’d lye upon his Table, and turning it over I found the following Lines written on the Reverse of the Title-Page in my Friend’s own Hand; some Business shortly after calling him out of the Room, I took a Copy of ’em on purpose to make ‘em publick; I hope he will forgive my doing it without his Knowledge. For fear of being thought partial I will not praise them; but thus much I’ll venture to say, That there is more good Sense in them than in all the Italian Songs and Operas I ever saw, put together.
Resign they Pipe, thy wonted Lays forego,
The Muse is now become thy greatest Foe:
With taunts, and Jeers, and most untimely Wrongs,
The flouting Rabble pay thee for thy Songs.
Untuneful is our Native Language now,
Nor must the Bays adorn a British Brow:
The wanton Vulgar scorn their Mother-Tongue,
And all our British Bards have bootless sung.
Ev’n Heav’n-born Purcel now is held in Scorn;
Purcel! who did a brighter Age adorn.
That Nobleness of Soul, that manly Fire,
That did our British Orpheus once inspire
To rouse us all to Arms, is quite forgot:
We’re, now, for something soft—We know not what
Our ancient Bluntless [Bluntness] and Sincerity
Is alter’d to Grimace and Flattery;
Effeminate in Dress, in Manners grown,
We now despise whatever is our own.
A false Politeness has possest our Isle,
And ev’ry Thing that’s English is Old Stile.
So Rome, when famous once for Arts and Arms,
Betray’d by Luxury’s enfeebling Charms,
Sunk into Softness, and its Empire lost
We may be as refin’d too—to our Cost
Then break thy Reed; for ever close thy Throat,
Nor dare to pen a Line, or sing a Note;
For what would have been priz’d in former Days,
Will now but Envy and Derision raise:
Go court Retirement, learn to be obscure;
The Man who’s least observ’d, is most secure.
Do’st thou write ill, then all against thee join;
Dost thou write well, they swear ’tis none of thine:
If they applaud, it is but for a Day;
But they condemn for Ever and for Aye.
3) 25 July 1724, p. 3
To the Author of The Universal Journal.
SIR,
As you seem, by some of your Writings, to bear Respect to the Memory of the late famous Mr. Henry Purcel, it has revived my Veneration for that wonderful Man, and stirr’d up a little Resentment in me against the modern Fops, who seem resolv’d to tear the Laurel from his Brow, and lay his Memory low in Oblivion.
I shall not vindicate him at the Expence of any Musician now living, tho’ I hope I may without Offence, say, That Purcel was a Shakespear in Musick; and tho’ we have had many great Poets since Shakespear, yet as none have exceeded, may I not say equal’d him; so tho’ Musick has been improved almost to a Prodigy since Purcel’s Time, yet those Lines of Mr. Hall’s may be very well apply’d.
Sometimes an Hero in an Age appears;
But scarce a Purcel in a Thousand Years.
Now that this Great Man’s Fame should dye, nay worse, that his incomparable Works should be made a Jest of by ignorant Coxcombs, who praise and condemn but by Example, and for Fashion’s Sake, is enough to raise Resentment in any, who have the least Regard to the Honour of their Country, or Concern for true Merit.
The first and chief Reflection they cast on his Musick, is, that ’tis Old Stile: I grant it; (all the World knows it was not made Yesterday;) but I cannot comprehend these Gentlemens nice Distinction of Old Stile and New Stile, unless they would infer that the three Sister-Arts never flourished ’till now, or that the Musick, Painting and Poetry of the last Age is Old Stile, (i. e.) out of Date, and therefore ought to be kick’d out of Doors.
We have doubtless many good Painters now living; must therefore Rubens, Vandyke, Lilly, and Kneller be forgot? Must Spencer, Milton, Shakespear, and Addison be never read, because there are Writers of a later Date? And must Corelli, Bird, and Purcel never be sung, because they are Old Stile?
In Musick we have many Great Masters now living, to support the Dignity of that heavenly Science; but it is the worst Complement [sic] any one can pay them, to make Blockheads of Corelli and Purcel. I am confident they would receive it with as much Indignation as Mr. Pope or Mr. Philips would hear a Reflection on Shakespear, tho’ never so much intended in their Favour. No, ’tis only the noisy Vulgar who set up Idols, and demolish the Shrines of the Ancients. It is from our present Great Men I would have our petits Maitres silenced.
I defy any Person living to have a greater Veneration for Raphael, Rubens, and Vandyke, than Richardson, Dake, or Vandebank have for those glorioius Ancients. Let our Dablers in Poetry therefore learn of Philips or Welsted to prize Milton: And had every man the same value for our Purcel, as the wonderful Hendel has, I had never set Pen to Paper. In Co[n]temporaries indeed Emulation may eclipse the Merit of great Men in each other’s Opinion: But the Grave throws all Blots aside; and there can be little Merit, where there is not Generosity enough to have Respect to the good Works of our Ancestors.
Purcel was our great Reformer of Musick; he had a most happy enter-prizing Genius, join’d with a boundless Invention, and noble Design. He made Musick answer its Ends (i. e.) move the Passions. He expres’d his Words with a singular Beauty and Energy; there is a Manliness of Stile runs through his Works; and were Italian Words put to some of his Airs, they would not be found Old Stile, nor need any of our modern Composers be ashamed of them.
His Recitative is gracefully natural, and particularly adapted to the English Tongue. There is a Solemnity in his Songs, which at the same time awes and pleases; and when they do not, the Fault is too frequently either in the Singer, who consults not the Intention of the Author; or in the Hearer, who is determined to condemn whatever is Purcel’s.
Had that great Man lived till now, he had doubtless made yet greater Improvements in Musick; and it must be owned a great Misfortune, that his Works were not corrected by himself, but that after his Death all Copies were called in from private Hands, and a Collection made with a View more to the Bookseller’s Advantage, than the Author’s Honour. There are doubtless many Songs in Orpheus Britannicus, which Purcel never intended for the Publick; little Occasional Pieces, done in his Juvenile Years, which he never designed to transmit to Posterity. But then, on the contrary, there are in that very Book (and of those a great many) such bright Originals, as will outlive the Malice and Ignorance of this fantastick Generation, and shine to the latest Posterity; when the Memory of that glorious Englishman shall again flourish, and when Musick and Reason once more be united.
1. See William Weber, The Rise of Musical Classics in Eighteenth-Century England: A Study in Canon, Ritual and Ideology (London: Oxford University Press, 1992); Weber, “The Intellectual Origins of Musical Canon in Eighteenth-Century England,” Journal of the American Musicological Society, 43 (1994): 488–520; and Weber, “The History of Musical Canon,” in Rethinking Music, ed. Mark Everist and Nicholas Cook (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997).
2. Among the numerous bibliographies of eighteenth-century periodicals, it is cited only in The New Cambridge Bibliography of English Literature, ed. George Watson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1969–77), vol. 2, col. 1325.
3. Issues nos. 25, 31 and 33. The journal announced that it was “To be continued Weekly,” but there was a 10–day gap after No. 25, when the publication day changed from Wednesday to Saturday. The articles were first discovered by Donald Burrows in 1979, and reference to that of 11 July was included in Donald Burrows, Handel and the English Chapel Royal during the reigns of Queen Anne and King George I (Ph. D. dissertation, Open University, Milton Keynes, 1981), vol. 1, 107; see also the references in Weber, The Rise of Musical Classics. The letter of 25 July 1724 was reprinted in Michael Burden, ed., Purcell Remembered (London: Faber and Faber, 1995), 135–8.
4. The heading “From my own apartment” was used regularly in The Universal Journal for the second article, which was presumably also written by the editor.
5. Correspondence was explicitly solicited in the wording of the imprint at the end of each issue: “LONDON: Printed for T. PAYNE, near Stationers Hall; where Letters and Advertisements are taken in.” Musical topics occurred fairly often in The Universal Journal, suggesting that the editor had friends among London musicians. Notices of the Festival of the Sons of the Clergy appeared twice, once including the text of Maurice Greene’s festival anthem “Open the gates of righteousness” (see 11 December 1723, 6; and 18 December, 3). Concern for the needs of English musicians and actors is a theme of numerous articles that began in May 1724. The first (6 May), a discussion of benefit performances, includes an attack upon the large fees paid to opera singers.
6. See Donald Burrows, Handel (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), 113–15; and Lowell Lindgren, “Critiques of Opera in London, 1705–19,” in II melodramma italiano in Italia et Germania nell’età barocca: Atti del V Convegno internationale sulla musica italiana nel secolo XVII, Loveno di Menaggio, Como, 1993, ed. Alberto Colzani, Norbert Dubowy, Andrea Luppi and Maurizio Padoa (Como, 1995), 143–65.
7. We are indebted to Professor Maximilian Novak for originally suggesting these two figures as possible authors and editors.
8. Samuel Johnson, Lives of the English Poets, ed. G. B. Hill (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1905), vol. 3, 313.
9. See John Barnard, ed., Pope: The Critical Heritage (London: Routledge, 1973), 9; Charles Kerby-Miller, ed., Memoirs of the Extraordinary Life, Works, and Discoveries of Martinus Scriblerus (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988), 16, 221–2; Peter Quennell, Alexander Pope: The Education of Genius, 1688–1728 (London: Stein and Day, 1968), 61–3, 110; George Sherburn, The Early Career of Alexander Pope (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1934), 124–5, 137, 151–4, 303.
10. “The Life of the Author,” in The Poetical Works of Ambrose Philips, from Bell’s Edition of the Poets of Great Britain (London, 1799), vi.
11. Annabel Patterson, Pastoral and Ideology: Virgil to Valéry (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987), 195. See also John M. Aden, Pope’s Once and Future Kings: Satire and Politics in the Early Career (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1978), 118–191, 127, 137–8, 140, 142; and W. L. MacDonald, Pope and His Critics: A Study in Eighteenth Century Personalities (London: Dent, 1951), chapters 1–2.
12. Dictionary of National Biography, vol. 15, 1058–9; Letters Written by His Excellency Hugh Boulter, Lord Primate of London (2 vols., London, 1770), vol. 1, 83; vol. 2, 106.
13. Epistles, Odes, &c. Written on Several Subjects, With a Translation of Longinus’s Treatise on the Sublime (London, 1724), li.
14. See Franklin B. Zimmerman, Henry Purcell, 1659–95, His Life and Work (London: Melbourne, 1967), 314, 316, 383.
15. The letter of 25 July criticizes the collection for including early songs, which indicates that the writer had unusually extensive knowledge of Purcell’s music and perhaps access to unpublished portions of it. The assessment that Purcell did better later suggests that the author was someone knowledgeable in both music and criticism.
16. The Free-Thinker: or, Essays on Ignorance, Superstition, Bigotry, Enthusiasm, Craft, &c. (3 vols.), 14 November 1718, vol. 2, 59–60.
17. A Prologue to the Town, as it was Spoken at the Theatre in Little Lincoln’s-Inn-Fields and Epilogue on the same occasion by Sir R. Steele (London, 1721). Welsted’s early relationship with Steele is evident in his Epistle to Mr. Steele, on the King’s Accession to the Crown (London, 1714).
18. See Joseph M. Levine, The Battle of the Books: History and Literature in the Augustan Age (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1991).
19. Joseph Levine, “Ancients and Moderns Reconsidered, Eighteenth-Century Studies, 15 (1981): 72–89; Levine, “The Battle of the Books and the Shield of Achilles,” Eighteenth Century Life, 9 (1984): 33–61; and Levine, The Battle of the Books.
20. See his Pastorals (London, 1710), and The Poems of Ambrose Philips. See also Christine Gerrard, Walpole and the Patriots: Politics, Poetry and Myth, 1725–1742 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994); Patterson, Pastoral and Ideology, 195, 206; and Aden, Pope’s Once and Future Kings, 118–19, 127, 137–8, 140, 142.
21. See his “Dissertation Concerning the Perfection of the English Language, the State of Poetry, &c.,” in Epistles, Odes, &c, 1-lvii.
22. Ronald Paulson, Hogarth (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1991–3), vol. 1, 334. On his relationships to the academies, see vol. 1, 104–9, 331–4.
23. Orpheus Brittanicus, A Collection of All the Choicest Songs, for One, Two, and Three Voices. Compos’d by Mr. Henry Purcell (London, 1698).
24. The London Stage, 1660–1800, Part 2, 1700–29, ed. Emmett L. Avery (Carbondale: University of Southern Illinois Press, 1960), vol. 2, 490, 492, 730. Two songs (three performances) are recorded at Lincoln’s Inn Fields Theatre in 1718: most of the rest were performed by Richard Leveridge and Thomas Salway at the same theatre between 1726 and 1728. For Purcell himself, see Curtis Price, Henry Purcell and the London Stage (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983) and Music in the Restoration Theatre (Ann Arbor: UMI Research Press, 1979).
25. See Burrows, Handel and the English Chapel Royal (London: Church Music Society, 1985), Vol. 2, Appendix 4, and Weber, Rise of Musical Classics, 111–17.
26. A new edition of Orpheus Britannicus appeared in 1721.
27. See the extensive bibliography of such comments in Richard Luckett, “‘Or Rather our Musical Shakspeare’: Charles Burney’s Purcell,” in Music in Eighteenth-Century England: Essays in Memory of Charles Cudworth, ed. Christopher Hogwood and Richard Luckett, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), 59–78.
28. Handel had also composed a few anthems, either for the Chapel Royal or for James Brydges at Cannons, which included texts that had previously been set by Purcell (Let God arise, My song shall be alway, O Sing unto the Lord, and The Lord is my light), but the music (by both composers) was unpublished and there were few manuscript copies.
29. On Handel and the relationship of his music to Purcell’s, see Burrows, Handel, 55, 76, 91–3, 148.