| GREEN MAN PRESS - EARLY MUSIC EDITIONS | ||
George Jeffreys (c1610-1685) Little is known of George Jeffreys’ early life, but he is said
by Anthony Wood, a contemporary historian, to have been descended from
Matthew Jeffries, a vicar-choral at Wells, and to have been appointed
joint organist with John Wilson at the court of Charles I at Oxford in
1643. Before this however, he had written songs for a musical entertainment
which was played before the King at Cambridge in 1631, and set some verses
by Sir Richard Hatton. At some time after the siege of Oxford in 1646,
he became steward to the Hatton family, where he remained until his death
in 1685. He held no other official post as a musician. |
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| Jef 3 | Three Motets for alto/high tenor, bass, and continuo
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Jeffreys’ work consists of a substantial body of mainly vocal music, most of it sacred. The three pieces in this edition are taken from a series of pieces headed ‘Mottects’. They could well have served as anthems in an act of public worship, or as a contribution to private devotions in a formal setting such as that of the royal court, or an aristocratic house. All show the influence of the new Italian style which Jeffreys admired - he made manuscript copies of over one hundred sacred works by Carissimi, Grandi, Reggio and others, contained in BM Add MS 31479, as well as of a quantity of secular Italian music, to be found in Christ Church Oxford, MS 787-80.
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| Jef 6 | Three devotional Songs for solo bass and continuo Praise the Lord,
O my Soule
- English anthem based on Psalm 104
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All three pieces come from the autograph score book in the British Library, which contains most of Jeffreys' surviving works. They show Jeffreys' familiarity with the Italian stile nuovo, and display the adventurousness of his writing compared to many of his contemporaries. |
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| Jeffreys & Purcell | ||
| Jef 7 | Duets for basses
for two basses and continuo |
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| The text of With notes
that are both loud and sweet may be by Jeffreys himself, and is full
of vivid imagery. The style is of the piece is declamatory, but has many
passages of effective word setting. Both voices suggest the angels descending
by swooping down to bottom E, and there is a telling chromatic phrase on
the word “Cry”. The piece displays Jeffreys’ interest
in the Italian style, and is characterised by the irregular phrase lengths
that are typical of him. It is clearly not intended for church use, and
was probably “for private chapels or other private meetings”
as were Child’s 1639 Italianate psalm settings. Purcell’s
anthem Awake ye Dead was published by Henry Playford in the second
volume of Harmonia Sacra, 1693. This was to be a collection of ‘DIVINE
HYMNS/AND/ DIALOGUES:/ WITH/A THOROW-BASS for the Theorbo-Lute,/ Bass-Viol,
Harpsichord, or Organ./ Composed by the Best MASTERS of the Last and Present
Age.’ His second edition of 1703 claimed “four Excellent Anthems
of the late Mr H. Purcell’s never before Printed”. The virtuosic
nature of this piece is a reminder that some notable bass voices were
available to Purcell – possibly John Gostling and John Bowman, who
both served in the king’s Private Music . This piece contains much
conspicuous word painting, as for example the florid descending passages
for “the clatt’ring Orbs come down”. The words are by
Nahum Tate, who was poet laureate from 1692, and who provided the libretto
for Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas. |
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| Jeffreys | ||
| Jef 8 | Three dialogues for soprano, bass and continuo
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| These delightful pieces
are written in a style which is both declamatory, showing the influence
of the Italian stile nuovo, and at the same time attractively melodic. The
first two dialogues are clearly intended as straightforward entertainment;
their theme the conventional one of the reluctant lover. In Lovely Sheaphard,
the Queen of the Night makes a proposition to Endimion which he cannot refuse.
In the second, Why sigh you swayne?, the shepherd seems ripe for
the picking, and needs only a little persuading to fall for the nymph.
The third dialogue, Heu me miseram,
is quite different in content and intention, and is startling in its dramatic
intensity. It would have been intended as a non-liturgical devotional
work, and depicts the encounter of Mary Magdalene with the risen Christ
in the garden on Easter morning. It has been described as “one of
the finest scenas by a 17th century composer, and certainly comparable
with the best compositions in this genre by Schütz and Purcell”. |
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