Music for St Cecilia’s Day from Purcell to Handel. By Bryan White

Abstract

As well as making a handsome outer cover for Bryan White’s new book (something that recent Boydell volumes are doing particularly well), Godfrey Kneller’s fine c.1703 portrait of Elizabeth, Lady Cromwell as St. Cecilia—pictured playing the organ and surrounded by plump putti—neatly draws attention to many of the key observations of White’s study. Kneller’s painting dates from the very end of the near-continuous eighteen-year period during which St Cecilia’s day (22 November) had been marked annually in London society with the performance of an ode to the saint followed by feasting. In latter years a sermon and sacred music at St Bride’s church, Fleet Street, had been added prior to the main festivities, which were usually held at Stationer’s Hall (a short walk up Ludgate Hill in the direction of St Paul’s Cathedral). Lady Betty, as Cromwell was known, paid Kneller £15 for ‘A Cecilia for Mr Congreve’...