This wonderful five line anthem is an early composition – I'm not able to give a precise date but it certainly predates the the Gosling partbooks which places its composition date in the late 1670s – it was composed in other words when Purcell was still a teenager. The anthem's opening line shows the inflluence of Purcell's teachers but his use of harmony is already distinctively his own. At the second line 'Hear my prayer, O God …' Purcell moves to a solo trio and if you listen closely you can hear a brief snatch of his great eight-part setting of the same text (I wrote about 'Hear my prayer, O Lord', (Z15) here: Henry Purcell (1659-1695): Hear my prayer, O Lord | Saturday Chorale and here: Sunday Playlist: Henry Purcell – Hear my prayer – Dresdner Kreuzchor | Saturday Chorale give yourself a treat and listen to both performances). At 'for strangers are risen up' Purcell depicts the rise of the hostile strangers and tyrants by making them ascend upwards through the three voices but couners this rise of tyrants and enemies with a choral affirmation in the next line that God is his helper. The fourth line 'An offering of a free heart …' is taken by the three upper solo voices and is charming, it's also wonderfully well sung by trebles Mark Kennedy and James Goodman with countertenor James Bowman in tihs recording. The anthem ends with the chorus confidently proclaiming that God has delivered the psalmist 'out of all my trouble' and that he has seen 'his desire upon mine enemies'. This last line always makes me smile because every time I hear it I'm reminded of the how the teenage Purcell who was justly proud of having written a five-part choral rendition with a very clevely worked out five-part piece of counterpoint marked it in his manuscript as '5 in one'.
You'll find it together with its '5 in one' closing chorus below. Enjoy :-)
markfromireland
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Purcell's five-part full anthem Remember not, Lord, our offences (z50) is one of his masterpieces. It dates from around 1680 and makes highly effective use of harmony, discord, word-setting, and drama, in a piece of music shorter than the first movements of many of his other sacred works. The anthem's atmosphere is highly charged from the very first word which Purcell's sets as a block chord and then reiterates as the phrase moves towards 'our offences'. He then repeats the first phrase of the text in the relative major. Purcell makes his first use of counterpoint in the anthem at 'nor th' offences of our forefathers', and ratchets up the tension at 'neither take thou vengeance of our sins', by always countering it in at least one voice with the rising phrase 'but spare us, good Lord'. As the anthem progresses the calls for God to show mercy to 'spare us' become ever more strident and the sense of urgency is increased by Purcell's use of chromaticism and discord. The anthems climax comes with a desperate plea 'Spare us, good Lord' . The fifth line 'Spare thy people, whom thou has redeem’d' introduces a calmer and more supplicatory mood with more relaxed harmonies being heard at 'redeem'd' and a beautifully fluid melodic line at 'for ever'. Purcell ends the anthem as he began it with a prayer for salvation. It's sung below the King's consort choir conducted by Robert King. Enjoy :-).
Purcell set 'Sleep, Adam, and take thy rest' (Z195) in 1683 – which makes it his earliest solo devotional song. 'Sleep Adam's' lyricist is unknown but whoever they were they were surely pleased with Purcell's use of highly evocative pictorialisation which does full justice to the text. The song opens with the peacefully sleeping Adam being depicted in the voice's lower ranges as he awakes to see what God has done whilst he slept the singer's voice rises. As the as yet unnamed Eve is viewed for the first time the music brightens in key followed by a seven bar long arioso 'Flesh of thy flesh'. Adam is commanded to wake and embrace his bride but the lyricist added a caveat that he should beware being ensnared by her delights. Musically this is the highlight of the piece with its twining lines for voice and continuo evoking the idea of being ensnared by cords. It's sung below by the soprano Susan Gritton. Enjoy :-).
This magnificent anthem is to be found in that most important of Purcell's autograph collections copied before 1685 – the 'Royal' manuscript. I can't give you an exact composition date but between stylistic factors – such as the writing for strings, and the fact that it's in the 'Royal' manuscript it's safe to say that it must have been composed sometime between 1682 and 1685.
