Henry Purcell (1659 – 1695) was an English composer.
His style of Baroque music was uniquely English,
although it incorporated Italian and French elements.
Generally considered among the greatest English opera
composers, Purcell is often linked with John Dunstaple
and William Byrd as England's most important early
music composers. No later native-born English composer
approached his fame until Edward Elgar, Ralph Vaughan
Williams, Gustav Holst, William Walton and Benjamin
Britten in the 20th c...(+)
Henry Purcell (1659 – 1695) was an English composer.
His style of Baroque music was uniquely English,
although it incorporated Italian and French elements.
Generally considered among the greatest English opera
composers, Purcell is often linked with John Dunstaple
and William Byrd as England's most important early
music composers. No later native-born English composer
approached his fame until Edward Elgar, Ralph Vaughan
Williams, Gustav Holst, William Walton and Benjamin
Britten in the 20th century.
With Let mine eyes run down with tears, dating from
around 1682, we come to one of Purcell’s greatest
masterpieces. Jeremiah’s desolate text is treated to
a five-part vocal texture, accompanied only by basso
continuo. The composer’s rich harmonic and melodic
language is at its most original, and pictorialisation
is present in almost every phrase from the opening
downward melisma representing tears, through the
desolate setting of ‘broken’, the false relation on
‘great breach’ and the scotch snap and jagged
downward leap for ‘very grievous blow’. The tenor
and bass are provided with a graphic recitativo-like
section at ‘If I go forth into the field’ (with
notable word-painting for the word ‘sick’), before
the five voices unite for a pathos-laden setting of
‘Hast thou utterly rejected Judah? Hath thy soul
loathed Sion?’. Purcell uses his five voices with
consummate skill, passing short phrases such as ‘Why
hast thou smitten us?’ mournfully, almost angrily,
between them, and then uniting at moments such as
‘And there is no healing for us’.
The build-up at ‘We looked for peace, and there is no
good’ is almost unbearable in its tension. The
simplicity of the first chorus ‘We acknowledge, O
Lord’ comes as a relief from such tensions but
desolation quickly returns, with the pleading phrases
punctuated with repetitions by each voice in turn of
the word ‘remember’ and the desperate cry of ‘Oh
do not disgrace the throne of thy glory’. After the
tenor’s ‘Are there any among the vanities of the
gentiles’ a brighter mood emerges with ‘Art thou
not he?’ before the final chorus, more hopeful in its
mood of resignation, gives grounds for optimism and
closes one of the most remarkable pieces of the
age.
Source: Wikipedia
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Purcell).
Although originally composed for Voices (SSATB) & Basso
Continuo, I created this interpretation of the "Let
mine eyes run down with tears" (Z.24) for Winds (Flute,
Oboe, English Horn, French Horn & Bassoon) & Strings (2
Violins, Viola & Cello).