H. Purcell: Ground "Crown the Altar" in D Minor from "Celebrate This Festival"

Downloads

• v2: Significant changes to match the manuscript source.
  • A: ground alone
  • B: with song melody (and repeated sections) from Orpheus Britannicus
• v1: Initial.

Comments

The piece is an arrangement of “Crown the Altar” from “Celebrate This Festival”, Z.321. It was also published after Purcell’s death in Orpheus Britannicus, book II. Thus, we have the following three lines of sources:

• Egerton 2959 for the harpsichord version (pages 19 and 20)
• Orpheus Britannicus book II, pub. 1702
• Sources of Z.321, earliest c.1693

The editor recently gained access to the sole original source of this piece, the Egerton 2959 manuscript at the British Library; v2 and subsequent versions have been prepared based off this source. Eg 2959 purports to be in William Croft’s hand: a sentence to that effect is on the front page, signed by the son of the manuscript’s second owner.

Two versions of the piece are presented here: the first, v2A (or newer), matches exactly the Egerton 2959 manuscript. The second, v2B (or newer), adds repeats to match the structure of “Crown the Altar” from Orpheus Britannicus and includes the vocal line from that publication.

The key of the piece in Eg 2959 (D minor) does not match Orpheus Britannicus (C minor) or the key of Z.321 (G minor); perhaps a manuscript source of Z.321 has a different key. In any case, the fact that the key is different from Orpheus Britannicus and that the arrangement transposed to C minor would comfortably fit on any harpsichord of the day (and indeed goes no further than the bassline in Orpheus Britannicus) lends credence to placing this arrangement before the publication of Orpheus Britannicus in 1702. Z.321 was performed first in 1693, giving a lower bound.

• mm.1: Middle voice, the last d is tied into the next mm only in this mm in 2959.
• mm.11: Modern editions often give syncopation on b cis; 2959 explicitly gives straight eighth notes here and on several other occasions.

v1

The musical text is from:

• 1926 “The Works of Henry Purcell” edition of “Celebrate This Festival”, Z.321

This piece was arranged by Purcell as a ground for keyboard, catalogued as Z.D222. The ornaments are from the version of Z.D222 in:

• 1964 edition “Miscellaneous Keyboard Pieces” edited by Howard Ferguson (Stainer & Bell, London)

Z.D222 omits certain parts of the original song; this version adds them again and keeps the ornaments added to Z.D222.