note in one part
against the sharpened in another he was merely following the
polyphonists, and it sounds as well--nay, as beautiful--as any other
discord, or the same discord on another degree of the scale.[2] This
discord and his other favourites are beautiful in Purcell, and his
determination to let them arise in an apparently unavoidable way from
the collisions of parts, each going its defined road to its goal, must
have determined the character of his part-writing. In spite of his
remarks in Playford's book, it is plain that he looked at music
horizontally as well as vertically, and constructed it so that it is
good no matter which way it is considered. His counterpoint has a
freedom and spontaneity not to be found in the music of the later
contrapuntal, fugal, arithmetical school. Though he was pleased with
musical ingenuities and worked plenty of them, he thought more of
producing beautiful, expressive music than of mathematical skill. Handel
frequently adopted his free contrapuntal style. Handel (and Bach, too)
raised stupendous structures of ossified formulas, building
architectural splendours of the materials that came to hand; but when
Handel was picture-painting (as in _Israel_) and had a brush loaded with
colour, he cared less for phrases that would "work" smoothly at the
octave or twelfth than for subjects of the Purcell type.

[2] Since the above was written and in type I have read Mr. Ernest
Walker's most interesting book, "Music in England," which contains a
valuable chapter on the discords found in the music of Purcell and of
earlier men.

THE ODES AND CHURCH MUSIC.

Some of the later odes are notable works. Perhaps the St. Cecilia ode of
1692 is, on the whole, the finest. Like the earlier works of the same
class, in scheme the odes resemble the theatre sets, though, of course,
there are neither dances nor curtain tunes. All that has been said about
the stage music applies to them. The choruses are often very
exhilarating in their go and sparkle and force, but I doubt whether
Purcell had a larger number of singers for what we might call his
concert-room works than in the theatre. The day of overgrown, or even
fairly large, choruses and choral societies was not yet; many years
afterwards Handel was content with a choir of from twenty to thirty.
Had Purcell enjoyed another ten years of life, there is no saying how
far he might have developed the power of devising massive choral
designs, for we see