MUSIC, HARMONY and INSTRUMENTATION. The articles on mo nodic composers include CACCINI, CAVALIERI, CESTI, PERI and MONTEVERDI, besides ARTUSI and BANCHIERI Who wrote against Monteverdi's earlier works with well-grounded demonstrations of their subversive effect on pure polyphony. The survival of poly phony in grimy and pompous decadence is represented by Pitoni, and later and more as a renascence by LOTTI. Early violin music is represented by BIBER and CORELLI.
The short career of PURCELL (q.v.) ends twenty years after the death of Schutz and ten years after the birth of Bach and Handel.
Almost any random quotation from Purcell might be by a com poser of the calibre of Bach or Handel. Purcell is one of the greatest contrapuntists that ever lived; one of the greatest in ventors of themes; one of the greatest masters of declamation; and a completely mature master of early orchestration. And his fellows in the English music of the Restoration, Pelham Hum frey, Child and Blow were no mean spirits. Burney devotes an
entire plate in his History of Music to examples of "Dr. Blow's crudities"; and later historians need look no farther afield for examples of intelligent prophesy. But our Restoration music lacks one thing; and that is power of composition. Purcell, in small dance-forms and short lyrics, is unsurpassable. But his only chance of getting through a sustained movement is when he writes on a ground-bass. In this fascinating forlorn hope of English music we see the fruit of nearly a century of bold endeavour ripening a generation too soon. Parry ascribes the patchiness of Purcell to the subtle humour of Charles II. in sending his best chorister to learn from Lully, the master of the French ballet opera, how to write English church music. But Lully is not patchy, and Purcell's music is a crazy-quilt, purple with fore shadowings of the music of the future.