Henry Hall,

Dialogue on the Death of Henry Purcell

Introduction

Henry Purcell’s sudden and unexpected death on 21 November 1695 at the age of 36 came
as a considerable shock to London’s artistic community. Within a few weeks poetic tributes
began to appear, and before long some of them had been set to music by his colleagues and
followers. Of these, three survive complete today: John Blow’s setting of Dryden’s ode
‘Mark how the lark and linnet sing’, for two countertenors, two recorders and continuo,
Jeremiah Clarke’s full-scale choral and orchestral ode ‘Come, come along for a dance and a
song’, and the present work, Henry Hall’s ‘Yes, my Aminta ’tis too true’, for soprano, bass,
two recorders and continuo. The main source of Clarke ode, British Library, Add. MS
30934, has a note in William Croft’s hand that the work was ‘perform’d upon the stage of
Druery Lane play house’, so it may have been given in a staged form, with the singers
dressed as shepherds and shepherdesses. Hall’s work is a dialogue between a shepherd and a
shepherdess, and may have been performed on the same occasion in a similar manner.

Henry Hall was well qualified to commemorate Purcell. He was born in about 1656,
and so was two or three years older than Purcell. They had both been children in the Chapel
Royal choir and had studied composition together under John Blow. Purcell remained in
London while Hall worked as a provincial organist, first at Wells and Exeter cathedrals and
then at Hereford, where he remained until his death in 1707. Hall was an accomplished poet
as well as a composer, and wrote the text of ‘Yes, my Aminta’ as well as the music. A version
of it survives in two anthologies of Hall’s poems in the Brotherton Library, University of
Leeds, Brotherton Collection, MSS Lt 6, ff. 9-9v and Lt q5, pp. 52-53. Lt q5, p. 80 also
contains another poetic tribute to Purcell by Hall, published in a revised version in the first
volume of Orpheus Britannicus (1698), p. vi. Hall’s musical setting survives in two sources: his
incomplete autograph score, Christ Church, Oxford, Mus. 1212(B), and a complete score in
Bodleian Library, Oxford, Tenbury MS 1232, ff. 11-15v, the latter a composite volume
apparently compiled by William Croft and subsequently owned by the Winchester organist
James Kent. The autograph starts at the top of a page at b. 29, so it seems that the first leaf,
which would have contained bb. 1-28, has been lost. This edition uses the autograph as the
primary source except for bb. 1-28, supplied from the Tenbury manuscript.

In the Leeds manuscripts the poem is a dialogue between two male shepherds
(entitled in Lt q5 ‘A Dialogue between Palemon and Alexis Lamenting the Death of the
Incomparable Mr. Henry Purcell’), but in the musical sources the characters are Aminta, a
shepherdess, and an unnamed bass shepherd, and the text is more extended, ending with a
chorus for both the characters; in the Leeds poem the characters just alternate and Alexis
ends with the words ‘Once in an Age a Heroe here appears, / But scarce a Daphnis in a
thousand years’. The extended version of the poem seems to be a revision made by the
author to make it suitable for setting to music, enabling him to cast one of the protagonists
as a soprano (presumably a woman rather than a boy), and thus to cast it as a work for
soprano, bass with two recorders and continuo – a scoring used by Purcell in his symphony
songs ‘Soft notes, and gently rais’d’ Z510 and ‘How pleasant is this flow’ry plain and grove’
Z543.
In the dialogue Aminta tells how the death of Daphnis (Purcell) stopped the birds
singing and prevented her from playing her pipe. They discuss Purcell’s ability to write music
mirroring the passions of love and war, and then the shepherd describes the composer’s
funeral, in music that aptly refers both to a funeral march and the tolling of bells. The scale
motif in the instruments is probably a deliberate reference to the famous prelude of Purcell’s
Bell Anthem, ‘Rejoice in the Lord alway’ Z49. The work ends with a chorus in which Hall
seems to be urging their colleagues to pay respect to Purcell by abandoning their profession.
‘Yes, my Aminta’ is his only substantial secular work to survive complete; most of his
surviving output consists of anthems and services written for Hereford. It is closest in style
to the dialogues and symphony songs Purcell wrote in the early 1680s, and follows them in
its use of adventurous harmonies and sensitive, declamatory word setting.

Peter Holman,
Colchester,
June 2008

References:

F. Zimmerman, Henry Purcell, 1659-1695: his Life and Times (Philadelphia, 2/1983).
Odes on the Death of Henry Purcell, The Parley of Instruments / R. Goodman and P. Holman,
Hyperion CDA66578 (1992).
T. Trowles, ‘The Musical Ode in Britain c.1670-1800’, Ph.D. thesis (University of Oxford,
1992).
O. Pickering, ‘Henry Hall of Hereford’s Poetical Tributes to Henry Purcell’, The Library, 6th
series, 16 (1994), 18-29.
----------------, ‘Henry Hall of Hereford and Henry Purcell: a Postscript’, The Library, 7th
series, 3 (2002), 194-198.
B. Wood, ‘Henry Hall’, Grove Music Online, ed. L. Macy, at www.grovemusic.com (accessed 29
May 2008).
Christ Church Library Music Catalogue, comp. J. Milsom, at http://library.chch.ox.ac.uk/music
(accessed 29 May 2008).