San Francisco to Nottingham via Seventeenth Century London!

 This morning I travelled back in time three centuries and went to the other side of the world – all in a micro second! I stood on the steep hills of San Francisco admiring the cable cars. I walked through San Francisco’s Chinatown and, of course,  I stood and looked down on the great Golden Gate Bridge, the sun reflecting on the waters of the bay swirling beneath. And then, a micro second later, I stood on the streets of seventeenth century London. It was a chilly  but bright March morning. Solemn, silent crowds stood around me – many in tears. And then in the distance, I heard a solemn muffled drum beat, the crowds craned their necks............... All in a micro second! Let me explain!

I used to love gadgets. I could play for hours adjusting the setting on my stereo system. I could programme the old video machine like a whizz. I  used to love a car with a dash board full of dials and instruments like a space rocket. Now I just get confused! I just want things to work! I’ve just been trying to release a new tooth brush from its plastic packing – and filled the bathroom with expletives! But, of course, despite my failing abilities with modern technology I am also acutely aware that it is so much part of our lives. Where would we be today without it? Much technology is essential now to the maintenance of our  lives – in hospitals, in the kitchen, in industry – but other applications simply make our lives pleasanter. My Kindle, for example, allows me to take a very large library easily fitting into my pocket when I go off on holiday. My i-Pod allows me to carry nearly half of my CD collection within its 16 gigabytes – all in my shirt pocket! Over a week’s non-stop playing – operas, symphonies, pop, the entire works of the Beatles and the Rolling Stones, hours of the output of JS Bach, all Bob Dylan’s output, Beethoven..............all in my pocket!

My mental picture of San Francisco.
In micro seconds the sounds of San
Francisco are in my Nottingham kitchen

I was thinking about this when I put my radio on at breakfast time this morning and it was at this point that  I was transported across the globe to San Francisco and then back in time to  seventeenth century London – all in a micro second! The tuner radio on my stereo system is internet based and is tuned in permanently to  1.FM – OTTO’S BAROQUE from San Francisco. The whole day and whole night non-stop baroque – no disc jockeys, only a very occasional advert from California. The music is an absolute joy – and coming all the way around the world. If I wish I can tune into stations in the middle of Africa or Russia  or far out on tiny islands in the Pacific. I can listen to news broadcast in Adelaide and hear the same things that my Australian friends are listening to. I just find it amazing! But, wall to wall baroque, all the way from America’s west coast  is, for me, wonderful! It might seem a bit sad, but as I listen I can imagine I’m driving along the freeway and approaching the Golden Gate Bridge, the sun shining and Bach playing on the car radio. I hear the one or two adverts on the station and instantly feel that in some small way I am part of the San Francisco community. The world truly is becoming a smaller place!

Well, this morning when I switched on,  a familiar and favourite piece came out of the speakers and into my kitchen. It was  music by Henry Purcell – the beautiful – Thou Knowest Lord from the Funeral Sentences for Queen Mary, written only a few years after America had been ‘discovered’ and certainly, California was unknown to Purcell. And yet here it was crossing cyberspace from San Francisco and arriving, in the blink of an eye, in my kitchen in Nottingham! What, I wonder, would Henry Purcell have made of it?

My radio station comes through
cyberspace from here

Purcell, indisputably the greatest English composer, was a child of his time and the story of his life and works tells of a different age and of some of the very  greatest events in the history of England. He was born in 1659 - a propitious time - and lived through some of the monumental events of English history - the Great Fire of London, the Great Plague, the rebuilding of London including St Paul's and  the restoration of the monarchy after the period of the Commonwealth under Oliver Cromwell. The restoration  heralded a period in which music and arts flourished again after institutional music of all kinds was stifled during the Commonwealth..  

Purcell’s father and uncle were both Gentlemen of the Chapel Royal and Purcell joined as a boy chorister in 1667.  In 1673 his voice broke and he received a bursary to continue his musical education studying composition and organ with John Blow.  In 1679 he succeeded Blow as organist of Westminster Abbey and from that time onwards wrote with equal skill and imagination for the church, the court, the theatre and for his royal patrons.

Henry Purcell - the greatest of
English composers - like Mozart
produced some of the world's
very great music and was dead
by his mid thirties.

For the whole of his musical life Purcell worked for and walked with kings. He served at the colourful court of Charles II. It is said that he was composing from the age of nine  and we know for certain that in 1670, aged eleven he composed an ode for the King’s birthday.  He looked on as the less likeable King James dug his own political grave. He was present as the ‘Glorious Revolution’ heralded the arrival of William and Mary. Throughout the period he composed for successive monarchs and state occasions and at the same time composed for the rapidly growing London theatre. He was London’s busiest and most sought after composer, adored and revered by his contemporaries. During his career he worked closely with writers of the day. He collaborated on several occasions with Thomas Betterton a distinguished dramatist and then with the great seventeenth century poet John Dryden, which led to two of his greatest successes The Fairy Queen and King Arthur. Although much of his life was spent composing sacred music and music for great national events he will forever be remembered for his opera Dido and Aeneas one of the formative pieces of the English musical tradition. And from Dido, his  composition Dido’s Lament: When I am laid in Earth has become one of the world’s great and instantly identifiable pieces – used throughout the world to mark  the mourning of the dead. Similarly his composition for King Arthur contains some of the very great English music for example the beautifully exquisite Fairest Isle or, the ahead of its time and atmospheric, ‘cold song’ in the Frost Scene. And, 250 years after Purcell’s death another great English composer, Benjamin Britten used Purcell’s Rondeau from Abdelazar as the theme for his Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra – a piece that millions of young people all over the world have grown up with.

But, for me, of all the wonderful music composed by Purcell, one stands head and shoulders above the rest: The Funeral Sentences for the Death of Queen Mary. Purcell’s last royal duty was to provide music for Queen Mary’s funeral in 1695. The Queen had died of smallpox in December 1694 at the young age of 32. She lay in state until March 1695 and the music that Purcell composed for this solemn event is amongst the most stirring and moving in English music. From the opening muffled drum beats to the achingly beautiful anthem Thou knowest Lord, which came through cyberspace to my kitchen this morning,   Purcell’s affection for the young Queen is obvious. He had served four monarchs but Mary was the one to whom he was closest. He had  composed a birthday ode for her each year. Her death, to both  Purcell and wider English society, was the seventeenth century equivalent of the death of Diana, Princess of Wales. The Funeral Sentences are amongst the most beautiful and solemn ever written.  Although Queen Mary  had been Queen for only five years, Purcell and all England held her in very high esteem. The dignified simplicity, the beauty and brevity and the  quiet emotion of the pieces reflects Purcell’s own sorrow and restrained grief at his Queen’s passing.

A contemporary print of Queen Mary's funeral -
the black cloths and handrails clearly visible.

The court mourning and the lying in state were sumptuous occasions costing over £100,000 -  a huge amount in those days. In London black cloths were hung from the houses in even the poorest districts and black handrails were set up throughout the London streets. During the procession Purcell’s Funeral March was played and the Sentences sung by a following choir. The Sentences were sung again as part of the funeral service. I defy anyone to not be moved by the solemn drum beats at the start of the Sentences – indeed, I have read that for any percussionist, to play the drum beats of the Sentences is the greatest thrill and honour so evocative and stirring are they. When those drum beats floated out of my stereo speakers this morning my thoughts turned from  San Francisco, home of the radio station, to the streets of seventeenth century London, and I was there in the crowd waiting for the cortège to pass.

The great and terrible  twist in the tale was that Purcell did not realise when he composed the great piece that in less than a year he too would die and five days after his death the music that he had composed for the death of his Queen would be played again at his own funeral in Westminster Abbey. ‘The greatest genius we ever had’ it was eulogised at his funeral.  And again many thousands lined the London streets to pay homage.

The young Queen who so inspired
Purcell and who was so
loved by her nation

Purcell was 36 at his death. The cause is uncertain. Tuberculosis is often cited but the generally accepted reason is that he caught a chill after returning home late one night from a visit to the theatre and drinking with friends at an inn. His wife had locked him out and he slept out of doors on a cold wet night. He is buried adjacent to the organ in Westminster Abbey and at his funeral, the crowds again lined the London streets –as they had done a year before for Mary’s passing. And the same drum beats were heard across London.

Many musicologists place Purcell in the same bracket as Bach, Handel and Mozart – arguably the very greatest composers who have ever lived. It doesn’t matter, like Bach, Handel and Mozart his music has helped make the world what it is. For me I would place him adjacent to Bach and a little ahead of Handel and Mozart – but then I’m biased! Musicologists often make the point that Purcell, above all other composers, used language beautifully. His music is not just glorious music, the use and structure of his English adds to the music's beauty. Listen to Dido's Lament or Fairest Isle or indeed any other of Purcell's librettos and you hear English in its purest, most beautifully expressed form.  

And my Internet radio and my I-Pod
 and the rest of technology allow me to
share the royal barge with
King George 1st and listen as the
king did to Handel's great music in 1717

But, as I said when I began this rambling piece, what would Purcell have made of it? This seventeenth century man? When he composed his operas and odes and funeral sentences he could never in his wildest dreams have imagined that three centuries later his work would be crossing the world in micro seconds, from one continent to the next; sent from places that he was completely unaware of and being listened to by people like me in my own kitchen on the other side of the world. What would he have thought if he had known, or even suspected, that the whole of his life’s musical output could be easily stored on a tiny electronic machine that fits into the palm of my hand and with which  I can listen to his Funeral Sentences, his odes, his operas  as I drive or walk or lie in bed!

The young Glenn Gould records the Goldberg
in 1955. A recording which set the music world
on fire and established Gould as the
definitive interpretor of Bach. I carry it with me
always on my i-Pod

And think of what technology has done for us all. The advent of the early gramophone, the record player, the stereo system, the CD, the MP3 players, computers, internet.........the list is endless means that all this is accessible. I can bring the world of Purcell into my home. I can listen to the stirring muffled drum beats of the Funeral Sentences and hear what the silent crowd lining the streets of London heard  as the young Queen’s cortège  passed by. I can listen to Handel’s Water Music and almost be on the royal barge with Handel  and his group of musicians as they  float down the Thames entertaining King George 1^st .  I can share a piano stool with the greatest exponent of Bach, the Canadian pianist Glenn Gould in 1955 New York, as his fingers fly across the keyboard recording the greatest and definitive version of what many regard  the most perfectly constructed and structured piece of music ever written – the Goldberg Variation. Or, I can be transported back to 1733 and stand in the Thomaskirche in Leipzig and listen to the first strains of Bach's great B Minor Mass as it is heard for the first time. The Mass, often referred to as the supreme musical achievement of mankind was finally completed by Bach seventeen years later - by which time he was blind and near to death. Technology allows me to re-enter that world.   And, I can listen to Beethoven’s Ninth and almost be there on that night in 1824 when it was first performed in Vienna.  As I listen to the final rousing chorus of Ode to Joy at the conclusion of the Ninth I can picture that first audience  applauding  and the profoundly deaf Beethoven still facing his orchestra, baton in hand, totally unaware of the tumultuous applause behind him. I can picture the contralto  on the night,  Caroline Unger, walking over and turning Beethoven around to accept the audience's cheers and applause. In my mind’s eye I can see what a witness on the night saw, "the public received the musical hero with the utmost respect and sympathy, listened to his wonderful, gigantic creation with the most absorbed attention and broke out in jubilant applause, often during sections, and repeatedly at the end of them." The whole audience acclaimed him  five times with standing ovations; there were handkerchiefs in the air, hats, raised hands, so that although Beethoven could not hear the applause he could at least see the ovation gestures.

A contemporary sketch
(made during the concert) of
Beethoven conducting the first
performance of the Ninth (1824).
Technology allows me to hear
what the audience heard
but was denied Beethoven
 because of his deafness

I can do all this because of technology!

So, although I may swear and curse when I fumble again with the hundreds of buttons on the  TV remote, or try to make sense of the DVD player’s menu; although opening the plastic packaging of my new toothbrush tests my patience and my stress levels are guaranteed to rise when I squirt beetroot juice all over me as I open the supermarket’s plastic packaging; although knowing which button on the washing machine I should press to get my clothes clean is a total mystery to me; I also know that technology has widened, enhanced and improved our lives enormously. It gives us opportunities undreamed of by Purcell and people of previous generations. With one click of a computer mouse I can access knowledge and information from all over the world. In my mind I can journey, as I soak up this knowledge, to the places from whence it came – San Francisco or seventeenth century London. I can reach into the inner most thoughts of people like Purcell or Bach who lived centuries before I was born and equally feel part of a community thousands of miles away from me as I listen to their local commercials, news and views on my internet radio. And then, with another click of the button, I can read about the beliefs and philosophies of ancient civilizations or the world’s greatest thinkers or the values and traditions of societies far from mine. I have instant access to the news - not just what my own newspapers tell me but what those of America, Australia, France, Germany, China, India tell me. This is power indeed. The events in England in the past few weeks relating to News International, the police and the government prove the point - knowledge is power. In Purcell's time monarchs were reluctant to give the masses knowledge by giving them the opportunity to read or access to education for they feared this would give them power. But today, the whole world, it seems has access, if they choose to use it, to knowledge and understanding.   And at a personal level  this power that we have been given also allows me to read the views of other bloggers – ordinary people like myself - and in doing so, I believe makes the world smaller and I hope more aware and tolerant of the views of the rest of humanity. It makes me realise what opportunities the young of today have to be the most knowledgeable, aware, understanding and tolerant generation ever – for what is an ‘information society’ for unless it is to make you knowledgeable and aware. And if you are knowledgeable and aware then I believe that you cannot be anything else other than tolerant and understanding.

It is truly marvellous.