able as
sound from tone, as atoms from the element they constitute. But the
question, why did Purcell write thus, and not as Mozart and Beethoven,
brings me to the point at which I must show the precise relationship
in which Purcell stood to his musical ancestors, and how in writing as
he did he was merely carrying on and developing their technique.

For we must not forget that the whole problem for the seventeenth
century was one of technique. The difficulty was to spin a tone-web
which should be at once beautiful, expressive, and modern--modern
above all things, in some sort of touch with the common feeling of the
time. I have told how the earlier composers spun their web, and how
Lawes attained to loveliness of a special kind by pure declamation. In
later times there was an immense common fund of common phrases, any
one of which only needed modification by a composer to enable him to
express anything he pleased. But Purcell came betwixt the old time and
the new, and had to build up a technique which was not wholly his own,
by following with swift steps and indefatigable energy on lines
indicated even while Lawes was alive. Those lines were, of course, in
the direction of word-painting, and I must admit that the first
word-painting seems very silly to nineteenth century ears and
eyes--eyes not less than ears. To the work of the early men Purcell's
stands in just the same relation as Bach's declamation stands to
Lawes'. Lawes declaims with a single eye on making clear the points of
the poem: the voice rises or falls, lingers on a note or hastens away,
to that one end. Bach also declaims--indeed his music is entirely
based on declamation,--but as one who wishes to communicate an emotion
and regards the attainment of beauty as being quite as important as
expression. With him the voice rises or falls as a man's voice does
when he experiences keen sensation; but the wavy line of the melody as
it goes along and up and down the stave is treated conventionally and
changed into a lovely pattern for the ear's delight; and as there can
be no regular pattern without regular rhythm, rhythm is a vital
element in Bach's music. So with Purcell, with a difference. The early
"imitative" men had sought chiefly for dainty conceits. Pepys was the
noted composer of "Beauty, Retire" and his joy when he went to church,
"where fine music on the word trumpet" will be remembered. He
doubtless liked the clatter of it, and liked the clatter the m