the Chapel Royal, with Captain Cooke
as his master. Cooke must have been a clever musician in spite of the
military title he had gained while fighting on the Royalist side in the
Civil War. He had an extraordinarily gifted set of boys under him, and
he seems to have trained them well. When some of them tried their
infantile hands at composition he encouraged them. Pepys heard at least
one of their achievements, and records his pleasure. And it must be
remembered that Pepys was a composer and connoisseur--he would go many
miles to hear a piece of music. Cooke died in 1672, and Pelham Humphries
became master of "the children." He was born in 1647, and therefore was
eleven years older than Purcell; he, too, had been a child of the
Chapel Royal. In 1664 Charles sent him abroad to study foreign methods.
In the accounts of the secret-service money for 1664, 1665, and 1666
stand sums of money paid him to defray his expenses; yet in 1665 the
accounts of the "King's Musick" show that Cooke received L40 "for the
maintenance of Pelham Humphryes." In less than a year's time he was
appointed musician for the lute--in the "King's Musick"--in the place of
Nicholas Lanier, deceased. Two months after this entry the appointment
is confirmed by warrant. He undoubtedly did go abroad. He got, at any
rate, as far as Paris, and came back, says Pepys, "an absolute
monsieur"--very vain, loquacious, and "mighty great" with the King. Most
of the musicians of the time were vain. Cooke must have been
intolerable. Perhaps they learnt it from the actors with whom they
associated--many of them, in fact, were actors as well as musicians.
Humphries had worked under Lulli. It is not known that he had any other
master in Paris or in Italy, or whether he ever got as far as Italy. Up
to that date no opera of Lulli's seems to have been produced, but he was
none the less a master of music, and he could hand on what he had learnt
of Carissimi's technique. Humphries, highly gifted, swift, returned to
England knowing all Lulli could teach him. He had not Purcell's rich
imagination, nor his passion, nor that torrential flow of ever-fresh
melody; but it cannot be doubted that he was of immense service in
indicating new paths and new ways of doing things. He had--at second
hand we must admit--Carissimi's methods and new impulse; and, at the
very least, he saved Purcell the trouble of a journey to Paris. It was a
misfortune for English music that he died so early. The