Restoration Company
Homage to Four Monarchs
September 2011
from the series: ‘Royal Odes: Dubious Poetry, Magnificent Music’
Program:
| Pre-concert: | Wind chamber-music in foyer |
| Purcell: | "Welcome, Vicegerent" (1677) for Charles II (his first ever ode) |
| "Ye Tuneful Muses" (1686) for James II | |
| Interval: | Keyboard suite in the auditorium, String chamber music in foyer |
| Purcell: | "Celebrate this Festival" (1693) for Mary |
| Handel: | "Eternal Source of Light Divine" (1713) for Anne |
| Post-concert: | Lute songs in foyer |
| Forces: | SSAATTBB, 4 strings, 4 winds, 2 continuo, director (19) |
Over the centuries, those that could afford to have "removed" from the closeness and stench of summer London to far more pleasant surroundings in the country. The monarch's return to the capital in the autumn (or after any other significant absence) was generally celebrated both at court - a banquet, ball and a musical Welcome Ode extolling the ruler's supposed virtues were usual - as well as in the city, where " ... at night there were ringing of bells, and bonefires in severall places, and other publick expressions of joy." (Narcissus Luttrell, ... State Affairs ...). Royal birthdays were naturally also an event requiring much celebration, and occasioned yet another poem dripping with obsequious adoration, to be set to lively and colourful music.
The Ode form, firmly established by John Blow and Henry Purcell in the first 20 years after the Restoration, links many of the musical elements of the pre-Commonwealth Masque to the early 18th-century Oratorio. Its varied mix of an overture, followed by solo and ensemble songs and declamations, choruses and instrumental ritornelli allowed court composers to display the full range of their skills – an opportunity Purcell, in particular, gratefully exploited to wonderful effect in his 16(!) royal odes.
Due to their function, the texts of these works are often poor poetry, but they revealingly reflect the curious political concerns of the moment - whether at court, within the church hierarchy, or in international relations - and comically display the endless, gratuitous fawning so characteristic of the period, and so often ridiculous to modern ears. Ironically, it only served to heighten the expressive and illustrative potential of the words, and afforded composers ample opportunity to clothe the text in music of soaring beauty:
“... For where the Author’s scanty words have failed, your happier Graces, Purcell, have prevailed ...” (Thomas Brown, c. 1700)