Words by John Dryden (1631-1700)
Music by Henry Purcell (1659-1695)
Performing edition by Christopher Suckling and Paul McCreesh
King Arthur is the semi-legendary 6th century king of the Britons, later celebrated in literature, and associated with the courtly idea of knights of the round table at Camelot. He is the subject of a collaboration between John Dryden (words) and Henry Purcell (music). The subtitle ‘or The British Worthy’ refers to a person of eminent worth or merit.
Purcell was the English musical genius of his age (some would say of all ages). Dryden, poet, critic and playwright, was the major literary figure of later 17th century England. King Arthur, first staged at the theatre in London’s Dorset Garden in 1691, was a triumph for both men, yet it has many features which make a full revival problematical.
What is King Arthur ?
– Is it a patriotic spectacle, with elements of the latter-day Royal Command Performance?
– Is it a magic play, with wizards and enchanters practising their illusions and deceptions?
– Is it a forerunner of the ‘musical’, where a spoken play is framework and pretext for song and dance numbers?
– Is it essentially a Baroque opera, where elaborate music accompanies elaborate staging?
– Is it thinly disguised propaganda, where contemporary audiences would have discerned political subtext?
King Arthur is ALL these things, and more.
The title page of John Dryden’s final version of King Arthur, or The British Worthy calls this stage piece ‘A Dramatick Opera’. Dryden wrote: ‘It cannot properly be called a play, because the action of it is supposed to be conducted sometimes by supernatural means, nor an opera, because the story of it is not sung’.
In this performance, the emphasis is on music. It is dramatic music, but that is only half of what Dryden meant by ‘dramatick opera’. The story-telling dramatic framework is omitted, for two main reasons: there is no staging, sets and costumes, and most of the drama is spoken, not sung. The main characters are exclusively speaking parts, including Arthur, his Saxon opponent Oswald, his love-interest Emmeline, his adviser Merlin, so they will not be heard.
Much is inevitably lost by omitting the staging and all the words that are spoken, not sung. A Purcell scholar of the 20th century, Sir Jack Westrup, was adamant that King Arthur needs a stage presentation. A concert performance without the dialogue is, in his view, ‘ridiculous and meaningless’. The present writer, recalling the experience long ago of a staged King Arthur, remembers some patriotic spectacle, such as Britannia, a statuesque soprano draped in the Union Jack, making ‘Fairest Isle’ anticipate ‘Land of Hope and Glory’. Before that came the startling view of two of his singer friends, seen for the first time naked from the waist up, as the nymphs of the stream who try to entice Arthur in for a frolic. The parts of the show that remained in memory and made the most sense were musical numbers and scenes. Especially – and this was true for the very first audiences – the extraordinary Frost Scene, painted in music. Even Dryden a little grudgingly admitted that much of what was best in King Arthur is to the credit of his composer collaborator, Henry Purcell.
The kind of entertainment King Arthur represents is notoriously difficult to present on the concert platform, so as at least to suggest the fusion of drama, dance, and lavish theatrical effects. The version presented by the Gabrieli Consort and Players strips most of the narrative surrounding Purcell’s music, but what remains is self-validating (with the help of Dryden’s words) – convincing, and rewarding.
Scenes conceived largely for music did most to establish King Arthur’s immediate and long-lasting fame. The Frost Scene, for example, marvelously satisfies the Baroque taste for sensational effect, while its daring music moves the listener through sheer imaginative power.
How King Arthur came into being.
Purcell, you may have read, composed only one opera, Dido and Aeneas (1689), for performance in a girls’ school. True, but only if we accept an anachronistic definition of opera. Dido and Aeneas is the only stage music of Purcell’s where all the words are sung, but ‘opera’, in England when Purcell was young, meant a full-length, expensively staged, theatre piece, with a considerable amount of music and Baroque spectacle. King Arthur is all these, and although the story is largely spoken, not sung, is referred to as an opera by contemporaries. One commented that ‘our English genius will not relish that perpetual singing’ such as is found in French and Italian opera. ‘Our English Gentleman, when their Ear is satisfy’d, are desirous to have their mind pleas’d, and Musick and Dancing industriously intermix’d with Comedy or Tragedy’.
Unlike Purcell’s other stage works, King Arthur has a text originally intended for music, rather than being a play later adapted for music. But Dryden wrote the first of his several versions of King Arthur before he became associated with Purcell. The king to be bathed in Arthur’s reflected glory was Charles II, who commissioned the piece from Dryden. Work stopped on Charles’ death, and Dryden filed it away, busy with projects for King James II, in whose service the poet converted to Catholicism. After six years, and after the ‘Glorious Revolution’ of 1688 had swept James away and replaced him with William and Mary, the Theatre Royal, Dorset Garden, had a great success with The Prophetess, or The History of Dioclesian, an operatic adaptation of an old play, with music by Purcell. The theatre managers wanted more like it. Dryden had much work to do on his King Arthur text, but what Dryden had already written enabled Purcell to begin setting the lyrics to music.
In his preface Dryden strove to convince the new royal censors that he had removed from his King Arthur all that might be politically inappropriate. He stressed the fairy-tale aspects of the story. And Dryden made the masque in the final act of King Arthur underline the parable of reconciliation of conflicting kings, ending with a perhaps backhanded compliment to a king for whom he did not much care. William, this king from across the water: a British Worthy? Dryden’s assurances were accepted. King Arthur was licensed for the stage, premiered triumphantly in spring 1691, and stayed in the repertory for over a century. Dryden’s most ambitious work for the musical stage had become Purcell’s also.
Overview
Before examining the musical sequence of scenes, some general points. This performance presents a collation of the scattered and numerous sources for King Arthur, none of them complete, and none in Purcell’s hand. The edition performed is a recent one, which also reviews and revises the Gabrieli ensemble’s 20 year traditions performing the music, in the light of modern scholarship.
In describing King Arthur as ‘an almost perpetual delight’, modern critics are referring mainly to how its dramatic articulation is achieved by Purcell’s music. Dryden’s words help, by keeping the musical and dramatic scenes in closest possible contact. In the performance, you may be puzzled at times, lacking signs of the dramatic motivation of certain scenes. But the music will surely soon banish your cares.
Summary of the drama
The central conflict is the rivalry between the British king Arthur and the Saxon king Oswald for the hand of Emmeline, blind daughter of the Duke of Cornwall (all these are speaking roles only). By the end of Act I the Britons have defeated the Saxons. Oswald is helped by an evil magician, Osmond, and his earthly spirit Grimbald. Arthur is assisted by Merlin, and Philidel, a spirit of air. These two spirits are singing roles. In Act II Merlin and Philidel lead the Britons out of the bogs into which Grimbald has enticed them, but too late to save Emmeline from kidnapping by the Saxons. Merlin’s magic restores Emmeline’s sight, with a magical essence smuggled to her by Philidel, but Osmond, the evil one, has fallen for her himself and keeps her prisoner in an enchanted wood, chaining his own king in a dungeon. When Osmond declares his love, Emmeline replies ‘I am frozen with’, so he uses magic to show the power of love in warming back to life dwellers in a region of ice and snow. This Frost Scene is the first of the extended masques in King Arthur (a masque was an entertainment, self-contained though often within a longer evening, involving dancing and acting, dialogue and song). In Act IV Arthur is tempted in the magic wood, notably by the bathing nymphs, but, being the British worthy, he of course resists, successfully. Arthur, coping with Grimbald disguised as Emmeline, cuts his way through the wood, and in Act V defeats the released Oswald in single combat. Merlin hails Arthur as a Christian Worthy, first Lord of a great empire to be. Waving his wand, Merlin calls forth the masque, a vision of Britain (‘Fairest isle, all isles excelling’), which concludes King Arthur.
The plot is a bewildering maze of intrigue, whose relation to credibility, writes one scholar, ‘is entirely coincidental’. But words and music conspire, in this dramatick opera, to turn irrationality to advantage. Some hints follow as to how this is done.
The musical numbers
Act I. After three instrumental pieces: ‘First Music’, ‘Second Music’, and an Overture. Purcell blends and reconciles French baroque conventions with an English style very much his own. Then comes a relatively tame religious liturgy invoking Woden, the Britons’ deity. After this drinking ceremony come strains of war. Offstage the Britons are fighting the Saxons. ‘Come if you dare’ marks the Britons’ victory, with martial trumpets, and word-painting for drums (‘double, double, double beat’). This quickly became one of Purcell’s hits.
Act II. The magic begins. The spirit Philidel is a deserter from Osmond’s evil band. She contests with her opponent Grimbald, as she tries to lead the Britons out of the marsh. Arthur is unsure which to follow, as the music illustrates (‘Hither this way, this way bend’). The gestural music and words call out for dancing and mime. The scene ends by exalting patriotism over the supernatural, a main theme of King Arthur.
The shepherds’ music of the following scene occurs as Emmeline awaits Arthur’s return. She does not sing, but the music celebrates her beauty and aptness for love, sometimes in lines from Dryden found too explicit by a later public, who nevertheless didn’t want to deprive themselves of Purcell’s exquisite music!
Act III. The context of the masque known as the Frost Scene was described above. The action is in suspense, and the heroine (Robert Etheridge Moore wittily points out) must be kept in cold storage. Cupid takes the lead among other allegorical figures, dominated by the Cold Genius. He is immeasurably old, so his music is in a deliberately antiquated style. The stiff, teeth chattering, shivering music he shares with the chorus of Cold People has precedents, notably in Lully’s opera Isis (1677). Purcell’s dissonances are weirder, yet they are not just a sensational effect, but under masterful control, and evoke pity for the frozen sufferers. Cupid then melts bodies and hearts in a typically Baroque contrast of transformation. This masque is a highlight, placed at the very centre of King Arthur. Action will resume after interval.
Act IV. In the enchanted wood Arthur is enticed by the aforementioned Sirens, whose bewitching appeal his manliness resists. Purcell’s music is seductive enough, yet with a warning dissonance for naked danger. This leads straight to a mighty passacaglia, the largest single piece in King Arthur (‘How happy the lover’). As in the chaconnes of Lullyan opera, this singing and playing is also a pretext for dancing. Arthur is roused, in the ensuing spoken action, from any music-induced reverie, to hack at the tree from which Emmeline’s plaintive voice is heard.
Act V. Arthur has vanquished Oswald in single combat (no music survives for this), and the victor’s wizard adviser Merlin, the play having ended, conjures up the masque: tableaux foretelling the future greatness of Britain. Aeolus’s call to the winds to make way for Britannia’s rise implies the appearance of ‘The Queen of Islands’ in a transformation achieved by stage machinery, for which Purcell provides the music. The celebration of England’s pastoral delights, idyllic enough, gives way to an anticlerical folksong, jolly despite the hostile sentiments (cheating the parson of his tithe – ‘one in ten’). These singers are obviously in their cups, but the mood rises skyward for the most famous number in the opera, ‘Fairest isle’, even if we can’t agree this is Purcell’s greatest song.
At the end this Gabrieli performing edition makes an ingenious rearrangement of the surviving Purcell/Dryden materials, best explained by one of the editors, Christopher Suckling.
‘The final climactic sequence honoring St. George…may have been cut, or altered, as a result of religious tensions following the ascent of William and Mary…a suspiciously poor chorus, far below Purcell’s usual standards, and a song in a somewhat later musical style, suggesting an early eighteenth century attempt to reconstruct the scene. This performance adapts what is probably Purcell’s finest trumpet song and chorus, the climax to Act IV of Dioclesian; with relatively few changes of text it has been possible to create in spirit the Paean to St. George, Britannia, and the Order of the Garter, envisaged by Dryden, albeit not in precisely his own words. Similarly, the sources seem to lack all the instrumental music one might expect to find…a few additional pieces have been included from that rich treasure trove of incidental music to other plays’.
How lucky are we that the music of King Arthur is so rich already, and that we have such faithful and imaginative interpreters to bring it alive!
First published by Melbourne Recital Centre