Word: purcelle
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Written for performance by the female students of the Great School House at Chelsea in 1675, the work of necessity includes a predominance of women's roles. These will be filled in the coming performance by members of the Radcliffe Choral Society, who promise to be more than capable. Both...
The beauties of this work are not generally known. Despite a mediocre libretto by Nahum Tate (poet-laureate of England at the time) Purcell has a real sense of dramatic pace, and his themes admirably express the varying moods of his characters.
In this, his only full-fledged opera, Purcell bases his texture on the Venetian School, and more especially on Lully. He exhibits a strong bent to the use of a basso ostenato, basing his melodic line on the structure of his bass part.
A prolific writer, Purcell wrote no fewer than fifty dramatic works, chiefly incidental music for plays. Among these compositions is one called the "Faery Queen," which was intended as accompaniment to Shakespeare's "Midsummer Night's Dream."
Many music students are surprised that Purcell did not exert any considerable influence on his contemporaries and immediate successors. They are liable to draw the conclusion that succeeding generations relegated Purcell to the background because they could find no merit in his music.