Symbolic Forest

Musicology news of the week: the discovery by a Manchester University academic, Rebecca Herissone, that one of the best known pieces by composer Henry Purcell was largely rewritten seventy years after Purcell’s death, and that the original version is probably lost.

She’s only guessing, of course. Her logic goes: the only copy we have of Purcell’s Come Ye Sons Of Art was written out in 1765, by a chap who rewrote several other pieces by Purcell. So, he probably rewrote this one too. Circumstantial, but there you go. She has “reconstructed the original”, which was relatively easy because the rewriter wasn’t a very good composer himself.^*

Quite apart from the slightly spurious validity of her reconstruction – given that she’s producing what she thinks Purcell himself ought to have originally written, isn’t there a risk of her producing a pastiche herself? – what amuses me is the idea that bad remixers have been around on the musical scene for years. It’s nice to know that the bad cover version isn’t something that’s only been around for fifty years.

* I’m going by what she said in a radio interview this morning, on Radio 4. But if the second composer was so awful, how come his version has been one of the most popular “Purcell” pieces ever since?

Keyword noise: Baroque music, circumstantial, Come Ye Sons Of Art, Henry Purcell, music, pastiche, Rebecca Herissone, remix, Robert Pindar.