Purcell 340
A Celebration of Purcell’s Fantasias
340 years ago this June, a 20 year-old Henry Purcell, for no reason we can now discern, started to write Fantazies (as he called them) in four parts, most probably conceived for viols. The viol consort was on its last legs at the time, and fashionable music was for violins in the style appreciated by the foot-tapping king. But Purcell had been studying and copying English music from previous generations, and he could exercise his fabulous facility with counterpoint in these melancholic, episodic caprices, which manage to compress the essence of the consort style into richly dense masterpieces lasting just a few minutes. Webern would have approved, had he known them.
It’s startling now to realise that Purcell probably never heard these works performed, and the single manuscript, in the young composer’s hand, is the only surviving source for these remarkable works.
You can see the original here (The Fantazies start on page f.67r, and proceed backwards i.e. the next page is f.66v):
http://www.bl.uk/manuscripts/Viewer.aspx?ref=add_ms_30930_f030r
Between now and August, we will be publishing previously-unreleased recordings of Fretwork performing each fantasia on the day it was composed, together with Fretwork’s edition of the score and parts. The first of these, the fantasia in G minor Z. 735 is free for all. The rest will be available only to Friends of Fretwork.
Fantasia à 4 [no. 4] in G minor, Z.735:
We have played and loved these works since the founding of the group in 1985; in fact, so much so, that we have recorded them twice. Our second recording won a Gramophone prize. This, however, is from a live performance in San Antonio on 18th January, 2009:
About the fantasia:
He started on 10th June with this first of the four-part fantazies, marking out his territory with extravagant and exaggerated technical ability: combining his first theme with itself in inverted, augmented & double augmented forms, yet hiding this feat with smooth and mellifluous melody.
Having thus set out his contrapuntal skills in high fashion, he then shows his extraordinary harmonic ability, moving around almost all the keys with bewildering facility before arriving back where he started.
He finishes with two new movements marked ‘Brisk’, the first smooth and the second scampering towards a climactic end, finishing in characteristic fashion on a chord with no third.