Reversal and rhetoric in Purcell’s sonatas

Abstract

Alon Schab’s book marks something of a landmark in the Purcellian literature: the first major study to focus on the composer’s instrumental music, and on a single genre at that—the 22 trio sonatas published respectively in 1683 (Twelve Sonnata’s of III Parts) and 1697 (Ten Sonata’s in Four Parts, for an identical ensemble of violins and bass a3 plus continuo, in spite of the different title). The former of these publications, engraved by Thomas Cross and self-published by Purcell, marked an audacious entry into the world of printed music for a young composer keen to advertise his musical credentials as well as his social pretensions (see Cheryll Duncan, ‘Henry Purcell and the construction of identity: iconography, heraldry and the Sonnata’s of III Parts (1683)’, Early Music, xl/2 (2016), pp.271–88). By contrast with the engraved sophistication of this volume, the posthumous 1697 set has attracted far less attention as a publication: ‘printed carelessly’ from movable type, ‘the motivation behind [it] was most likely Purcell’s widow’s pragmatic attempt to benefit from her late husband’s estate’ (p.20). As Schab notes, however, as one of two key sources for a number of the works it contains, the 1697 print is actually part of a much more interesting story: autographs for seven of the 1697 works survive in the earlier manuscript British Library, Add. Ms. 30930, with frequent divergence from the texts that would eventually find their way into print. Moreover, they coexist in that manuscript with the primary sources of all of Purcell’s three- and four-part Fantazias, together with the two In Nomines, the ‘Fantazia upon One Note’ and assorted other consort works, a body of repertory that assumes greater importance as one progresses through Schab’s book—to the extent, indeed, that the study is concerned really with Purcell’s instrumental music as a whole, in spite of the more restrictive title.