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                              Purcell Ode

                            And Other Poems




                              Purcell Ode

                            And Other Poems

                                  By
                            Robert Bridges

                       [Illustration: colophon]

                                Chicago
                            Way & Williams
                                 1896


                               COPYRIGHT
                           BY WAY & WILLIAMS

                               MDCCCXCVI

                           University Press:
               JOHN WILSON AND SON, CAMBRIDGE, U. S. A.



            Two Hundred Copies printed on Van Gelder paper.




CONTENTS


                          PAGE

ODE TO MUSIC                29

THE FAIR BRASS              42

NOVEMBER                    45

THE SOUTH WIND              49

WINTER NIGHTFALL            53




PREFACE


The words of the Ode as here given differ slightly from those which
appeared with Dr. Parry’s Cantata, sung at the Leeds Festival and at the
Purcell Commemoration in London last year.

Since the poem was never perfected as a musical ode,--and I was not in
every particular responsible for it,--I have tried to make it more
presentable to readers, and in so doing have disregarded somewhat its
original intention. But it must still ask indulgence, because it still
betrays the liberties and restrictions which seemed to me proper in an
attempt to meet the requirements of modern music.

It is a current idea that, by adopting a sort of declamatory treatment,
it is possible to give to almost any poem a satisfactory musical
setting;[1] whence it would follow that a non-literary form is a
needless extravagance. From this general condemnation I wish to defend
my poem, or rather my judgment, for I do not intend to discuss or defend
my poem in detail, nor to try to explain what I hoped to accomplish when
I engaged in the work; it is still further from my intention that
anything which I shall say should be taken as applying to the music with
which my ode was, far beyond its deserts, honored and beautified. But I
am concerned in combating the general proposition that modern music, by
virtue of a declamatory method, is able satisfactorily to interpret
almost any kind of good poetry.

Such questions are generally left to the musician, and it should not be
unwelcome to hear what may be said on the literary side. I shall
therefore state what appear to me to be impediments in the way of this
announced happy marriage of music and poetry, and enumerate some of the
difficulties which, it seems to me, must especially beset the musician
who would attempt to interpret pure literature by musical declamation.

First, the repetitions in music and poetry are incompatible. Though some
simple forms dependent on repetition are common to both, yet the general
laws are in the two arts contraries. In poetry repetition is avoided, in
music it is looked for. A musical phrase has its force and significance
increased by repetition, and is often in danger of losing its
significance unless it be repeated; whereas such a repetition in poetry
is likely to endanger the whole effect of the original statement. And
when reiterations that can be compared occur in both, then the second
occurrence will in music be generally the strongest, but in poetry the
weakest; and the intensity of the repetitions goes on decreasing in
music, and increasing for some time in poetry, till both become
intolerable.

Secondly, the difficulty which this difference occasions is much
increased by the method of declamatory exposition. Musical declamation
must mean that the musical phrase is not chosen, as the earlier
musicians might have chosen or invented it, chiefly for the sake of its
own musical beauty, in correspondence with the _mood_[2] of the words,
and merely fitting the syllables, but that it is invented also to follow
the verbal phrase in correspondence with some notion of rhetorical
utterance, or natural inflection of speech enforcing the sense, and in
so far with lesser regard to its own purely musical value. Such a
musical phrase will therefore, in proportion to its success, be more
closely associated with the words, and cannot well be repeated unless
the words are repeated, which the declamation forbids.

Thirdly, when a declamatory musical movement is once started, the
musician has very few means of bringing it to a conclusion. There is the
method of repetition, which does not suit the Ode,[3] and which on his
own theory he is almost forbidden to use; and there is the method of
rising to a climax, which is perhaps the most usual device: but few
poems can offer occasion for the recurrence of climax, and its
employment would break