One of the reasons I've been stalling a bit here is that I was meeting a friend for lunch late this week, and he was going to loan me his Purcell books, all in the hope that I could learn a little more about this month's work. Last night saw a little light reading:
Would you believe it? There's really not much discussion of the work in any of these books over and above what you'd learn in the average CD liner notes. So much for stalling! I suppose you'll just have to put up with my own personal rantings.
Right then, on we go, and it's finally time for the first chorus,
Hail! Bright Cecilia. It begins with a solo bass voice, slowly and seriously imploring us to, well, hail bright Cecilia, but after a couple of bars of one syllable per note, suddenly the bass runs away with a little flourish on one of the Hail's, and we get our first hint of the kind of vocal writing we can expect. After the short bass solo the full choir joins with an arresting response, mimicking the opening solo. A few more hails for good measure lead us to a marvellous contrapuntal section, the tune starting in the altos, then moving to tenors, sopranos and finally basses. Once again, it's nearly always one syllable for one note, with the exception of the word "celestial", which is allowed to soar over several notes. This "word-painting" is typical of Purcell, and we'll see examples of it time and again within the work. The string take over the contrapuntal lines on their own for a brief but beautiful interlude, but when the voices re-enter Purcell does a very clever thing. While soprano, alto and tenor sing the lines much as before, the basses sing the same music but this time each note-length is doubled. The net effect is that you hear the line simultaneously at 2 speeds, one twice as slow as the other, and yet it all continues to fit together. This contrapuntal mastery would have delighted the audience, but also adds a certain gravitas to the end of this section.
The strict counterpoint is interrupted by a duet of either 2 countertenors, or countertenor and tenor*, depending on which recording you're listening to. The melismatic writing adds an ethereal feel to the words "music's sacred love" before the chorus returns with the rather more earthy sounds of the "British forest". (Whatever the fame of Dodona's Vocal Grove back then, the reference is a little lost to modern ears!) Again the chorus is interrupted by melismatic duet, this time soprano and bass, before returning to the full chorus. The dialogue over the words "as famous" is taken up by the strings, and worked out in various ways as a coda to the movement. In a way it seems like a strangely downbeat ending after what has gone before, but it keeps the words subconsciously repeating in the ear of the listener, and links the fame of the British Forest with the ideas of the following movement: Hark each tree.
*The question of whether countertenors (men singing in falsetto voices) or high tenors (men singing in their chest voices) should be used seems to be one of those that causes a lot of consternation. The scholarship these days seems to fall down on the side of high tenors, but for a lot of the music here I find the countertenor voice more appropriate. Certainly for this section, I think the rather other-worldly sound of 2 countertenors in duet creates such an amazing effect it's a shame not to use it.
