Sidney's Place: THREE BAROQUE COMPOSERS: BUXTEHUDE, PURCELL and PERGOLESI

The Baroque period in music is usually reckoned as stretching from the start of the 17^th century to about 1750. The two greatest exponents were the giants J S Bach (1685-1750) and G F Handel (1685-1759), whose wondrous music is deeply loved and has been extensively chronicled. This piece briefly describes three other brilliant composers who have given me, a total musical layman, particular pleasure and who also represent the Baroque idiom with huge distinction.

Dieterich Buxtehude

Dieterich Buxtehude (1637-1707), was of Danish-German origin. Not much is known of his early life. His father was a church organist in Helsingor, whom he succeeded but he is most associated with the handsome Imperial Free City of Lübeck, where Buxtehude became the organist at the Lutheran Marienkirche (St Mary’s Church) and lived there for 40 years.

His output was considerable, though much has been lost; he is most admired as a composer of organ music, of preludes and of fugues, where he displayed great mastery. However his choral music most appeals to me, usually sacred, with 4 voices. His Magnificat, Membra Jesu Nostri and his lovely cantata, Benedicam Dominum fully explain his later influence on Bach, tuneful, expressive and beautifully formed. Among his other works, the cantata Ich bin eine Blume zu Saron as rendered by the matchless baritone, Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau is an ecstatic highlight.

Buxtehude was granted considerable autonomy in Lübeck and organised Sunday afternoon concerts, Abendmusiken, not only using his own works, to entertain the people. Lübeck happily maintained this tradition well into the 19^th century. Buxtehude was revered in his lifetime and was visited by his juniors Handel, Bach and Pachelbel. The first two aspired to succeed Buxtehude but a condition was that they married his daughter, an opportunity they both declined! Buxtehude’s music deserves to be more widely known outside the German world.

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Henry Purcell (1659-95), is perhaps the greatest of English composers and after his death there was a very long wait until someone deserving of a European reputation emerged in the shape of Edward Elgar (1857-1934). Purcell had acquired a mastery of Baroque music but injected a distinctively English flavour, wry, deeply felt, yet gloriously lyrical.

Henry Purcell

Purcell was always associated with the Court and with the Anglican institution known as the Chapel Royal: as a boy and mature chorister, composer (a prodigy from the age of 9) and later as the organist at Westminster Abbey. From 1678 his duties included writing musical Odes on state occasions relating to three monarchs – Charles II, James II and finally joint monarchs William III and Mary II. These include some of Purcell’s most brilliant pieces Welcome Glorious Morn (for Queen Mary’s Birthday 1691) – this served as my waking alarm clock in the 1980s! – Come, Come Ye Sons of Art (Queen Mary’s 1694 Birthday) with its lovely counter-tenor parts and the triumphant Hail Bright Cecilia! celebrating the goddess of music. Unpopular James II nevertheless inspired in 1685 one of Purcell’s finest pieces Britain, Thou now art Great with its dazzling ritornello and percipient view on the fate of Caesars. The counter-tenor James Bowman sang this to perfection.

Purcell’s output was substantial – he wrote incidental music to over 50 theatrical pieces – and his chamber opera Dido and Aeneas was a landmark in English music. Poignant Dido’s Lament is played every year by the Guards’ massed band at the November Remembrance Day ceremony at the Cenotaph. Purcell died far too early aged 36 but his rousing choruses and soaring solo airs have earned him harmonious immortality.

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Another short life, enriched by major achievement, was that of Giovanni Battista Pergolesi (1710-36). Most of his days were spent in the Naples area where he had studied music. He became well known in Naples and Rome as a composer of opera buffa (comic opera). Posthumously, he became known as the Father of Comic Opera – his 1733 intermezzo opera La Serva Padrone (the Servant Mistress) achieved wide popularity following on from Lo Frate ‘nnamorato (The Brother in Love) in the Neapolitan dialect.

Although Pergolesi had written sacred music, he must have been an unpromising candidate to accept the commission of a Confraternity of pious Catholic laymen to provide a setting for the sombrely moving medieval poem Stabat Mater, describing the Sorrows of Mary standing at the foot of the Cross. Pergolesi rose to the occasion with one of the glories of Baroque music, a lovely work for soprano, contralto and choir. The whole piece is superb and my favourite passage is the 9^th verse Sancta Mater, istud agas with its soaring dialogue between the two voices.

Pergolesi’s death aged 26 from tuberculosis was a grievous loss to music.