motet notes - Purcell
Purcell: I was glad, Z. 19
Henry Purcell (1659-1695)
Composed for the Coronation of James II in 1685, "I was glad" is a setting of Psalm 122, the appointed psalm for the First Sunday in Advent in the Revised Common Lectionary.
It opens with rich five-part harmony and joyful dotted figurations in a jubilant triple meter. The brief central section is a plea for peace and prosperity. It reverts to triple time again hoping for peace and plenteousness. The exultant doxology is a compositional tour de force as Purcell sets the four note descending scale of ‘world without end’ in as many variants as possible.
©Ryan Turner
Henry Purcell (1659-1695) was born a year after Oliver Cromwell’s death and just as the Stuart monarchy was restored. As a boy, Purcell was a chorister in the Chapel Royal, a body of priests and singers serving the spiritual needs of the monarch. In these years, he copied music of Tallis, Byrd and Gibbons by hand. When his voice broke, he was engaged to tune the organ at Westminster Abbey; in 1679, he succeeded John Blow as the Abbey’s organist. Keeping his post there, he succeeded to the post of organist of the Chapel Royal, where he had been a chorister as a boy.
Most of his theater music was composed in the last five years of his life. Before that time, the main body of his church music was completed. While we may know his Dido and Aeneas, and Come, Ye Sons of Art, his church music is far less known. In today’s setting of Psalm 22, 1-8, each verse has an individual musical depiction, sung by alto, tenor and bass soloists, sometimes in brief declamatory recitative style (verses 3, 6, and 7) and sometimes in cantabile song or in rhythmic dance-like style. The soprano voice enters only at the end, in the final verse 7, which is sung both before and after verse 8.
Even as the strings have their own overtures and ritornellos, acting as markers between the sung verses, the music for singers and strings are related to each other throughout the piece. The first alto solo, verse 1, repeats the music of the preceding overture, then grows into a new musical depiction for verse 2. The following string ritornello then gives a varied repeat of the singer’s verse 2, which serves to expand its meaning. The instrumental ritornello following sung verse 4, reinterprets what the singers have just sung, adding new musical material, which the tenor solo of verse 5 in turn repeats, closing these sections before the more prayerful music of verse 6 opens in the minor mode with a new instrumental symphony. The major key returns soon after the singers re-enter with the words, “they shall prosper that love thee.”
©James Olesen