The augmented 6th in England in the late 17th century

A companion blog to my review article in Early Music XLI/3 (2013), 477–93.

[yourmurdredpeacedestroy]

Another example from Giovanni Battista Draghi, who died this week in 1708 (buried 13 May). This is from the climax of the showpiece ground bass aria for alto, ‘The soft complaining flute’, from his 1687 Cecilian ode From Harmony, from Heavenly Harmony. The augmented sixth is an obvious possibility for this point in the ground, but Draghi keeps it in reserve until just the right moment to use it for maximum impact. 

[yourmurdredpeacedestroy]

Three years ago this first week in May I was in Oxford for a brief research trip when I spotted these hoardings outside the Weston Building of the Bodleian Library (click to display here): 

What should I find under ‘P’ but a page from the Bodleian’s autograph manuscript of Purcell’s Cecilian Ode, Hail, Bright Cecilia (manuscript Mus.c.26), and moreover the very page to contain a expressive augmented sixth of the Phrygian Cadence type from the opening bass solo:

My own snap of the passage in question unfortunately cut off part of the bass part, but still shows off the beautiful reproduction; you’d almost think it a photograph of the manuscript itself: 

And here is the obligatory transcription: 

You can see all of the images that were displayed on the hoarding on the Bodleian Library’s website. 

[yourmurdredpeacedestroy]

The second of two posts inspired by my trip to Bangor for a research seminar. The other person I managed to catch up with there was John Cunningham, whose work on an edition of Restoration Trio Sonatas for the Purcell Society was ongoing as I was working on the article. He and Peter Holman were kind enough to let me have a sneak preview, and among the several augmented sixths I harvested at the time was this remarkable example from the G minor trio sonata by Giovanni Battista Draghi:

The augmented sixth here clearly comes about as a chromaticised passing note; what is unusual is that the upper part then proceeds upwards to its expected note of resolution while the bass continues to hold the flattened sixth degree as a pedal beneath. By the time the bass resolves, the augmented sixth above has been cancelled out by a major sixth, setting up the 7–6 suspension in the following bar.

[yourmurdredpeacedestroy]

Last Tuesday saw me in Bangor for a research seminar at the School of Music, talking about compositional artifice in Purcell’s later music. I was made to feel very welcome at what was an extremely well-supported session. It was good to catch up with two colleagues working on seventeenth-century English music in particular, who in turn inspire two posts of which this is the first.

Here we have a nicely idiosyncratic example from John Blow, which was among several that Bruce Wood was kind enough to supply when I was in the early stages of work on the article. The passage is from the end of the Act Tune at the close of Act II of Venus and Adonis, and in many ways is a very standard example of the augmented sixth produced by chromatically diverging lines. The twist is in the resolution, though. Bruce’s accompanying gloss, which I hope he won’t mind me including, says it all: ‘additional bangs per buck from the magically unexpected first-inversion mediant triad which follows’.

[yourmurdredpeacedestroy]

Today has been mostly spent travelling to and from Huddersfield to give a workshop for potential Cambridge and other university applicants as part of Selwyn’s contribution to the HE+ scheme. The participants had some fun deriving simple minuets from the tables published in 1781 by the Abbé Maximilian Stadler, and discussing the results. You can read about and try out this fascinating early experiment in aleatoric music (-cum eighteenth-century musical parlour game) at the excellent Opus Infinity website.

Neither Stadler’s ‘randomly-generated’ minuets nor the slightly more interesting pieces by Mozart and Haydn that we looked at alongside them venture as far as the augmented sixth, however, so my inspiration for this post must be altogether more tenuous: here, then, is a nice little example of the augmented sixth produced by chromatic passing note from Purcell’s ‘The Blessed Virgin’s expostulation’, brought to you courtesy of Virgin Trains’ 15 minutes of free wifi!

[yourmurdredpeacedestroy]

I’m thinking a bit about Purcell’s King Arthur at the moment, as I prepare my contribution to ‘Fairest Isle’: Love and Nationalism in Purcell’s King Arthur at Hughes Hall on Saturday 16 April.

‘You say, ’tis love’ is the opening of an extended soprano and bass dialogue that follows Venus’ decision to settle in the isle of Britain (the celebrated song ‘Fairest Isle’, in Purcell’s music for the fifth act). The soprano begins with a passionate arioso, an augmented sixth coming about as a result of the chromatic passing note C sharp in the voice just before the opening bass pedal resolves. The interval itself is thus created with an implied E flat in the continuo realisation, and the chord produced – rather unusually – in inversion.

Of course, some players may prefer an E natural on the second beat of the bar – and would be perfectly justified in interpreting the incomplete figures in this way. The result would be something like what Ellis calls an ‘evaded’ augmented sixth; further examples to follow in future posts...

[yourmurdredpeacedestroy]

Three for the price of one in this post, chosen for its relevance to a very rewarding concert I conducted with The Cantus Singers of Cambridge on 19 March. We closed the first half with Pelham Humfrey’s superb symphony anthem ‘O Lord My God, why hast thou forsaken me’ (this first line sung by the solo bass in yet another transformation of Dowland’s ‘Lachrimae’ theme, incidentally). As Ellis notes in his book, augmented sixths tend to hunt in packs, and there are three in this extraordinarily expressive anthem:

(i) sung by the tenor near the start of a verse for alto and tenor; a classic ‘chromaticised Phrygian cadence’:

(ii) at the end of another verse, this time for alto, tenor and bass; another Phrygian progression, though this time lacking the suspension:

(iii) this time closing the ‘A’ section of a triple-time, dance-inspired symphony for the strings, the chromaticised Phrygian cadence with suspension strengthening the imperfect cadence:

What’s interesting about Humfrey’s use of the augmented sixth is that although like other contemporaries he clearly associates it with extreme textual images (as in (i) here), he is also quite willing to use it in a more functional way (as in (ii) and (iii)).

[yourmurdredpeacedestroy]

For this first post I thought I’d better begin where the whole process started, with this small detail in the continuo part of Jeremiah Clarke’s ode ‘Come, come along for a dance and a song’, composed in 1696 to commemorate the death of Henry Purcell the previous year. Apart from anything else, I thought it would at least explain the blog address.

The snippet shown is from the end of a solo treble movement that begins about a third of the way into the work, in which the singer interrupts the revelry of the shepherds and nymphs onstage to deliver the crushing news of ‘Strephon’s’ (=Purcell’s) death. The slash through the continuo figure ‘6′ – instructing the continuo player to supply a G sharp, thereby creating the interval of an augmented sixth with the B flat in the bass – is clearly visible in the manuscript, though it had been ignored in the previous edition and does not feature in the fine recording by the Parley of Instruments.

In preparing my own edition, I therefore had to decide whether the augmented sixth was a plausible sonority for this repertoire, a question which led me first to Mark Ellis’s recently-published book (see about) and ultimately to my own hunt for augmented sixths in the music of Clarke’s contemporaries and compatriots. As you will see in the coming weeks and months, the result was an extensive list – some seventy or so at the last count. And yes, this detail made it into the final text of the edition.