ROGER QUILTER
Upon Drinking in a Bowl
[To wine and beauty] (1914)1
VULCAN, contrive me such a Cup
As Nestor2 us’d of old;
Shew all thy Skill to trim it up,
Damask it round with Gold.
Make it so large, that, fill’d with Sack
Up to the swelling Brim,
Vast Toasts on the delicious Lake,
Like Ships at Sea, may swim.
[Engrave not Battel on his Cheek:
With War I’ve nought to do;
I’m none of those that took Mastrick;
Nor Yarmouth Leaguer knew.3
Let it no name of Planets tell,
Fix’d Stars, or Constellations:
For I am no Sir Sidrophel,4
Nor none of his Relations.]
But carve thereon a spreading Vine,
Then add two lovely Boys;
Their Limbs in amorous Folds intwine,
The Type of future Joys.
Cupid and Bacchus my Saints are;
May Drink and Love still reign:
With Wine I wash away my Cares,
And then to cunt again.
ROGER QUILTER: from Five Jacobean Lyrics, Op. 28 (1926)
A song
[The jealous lover] (1923)
My dear Mistress has a Heart
Soft as those kind looks she gave me;
When with Love’s resistless Art,
And her Eyes she did enslave me.
But her Constancy’s so weak,
She’s so wild, and apt to wander;
That my jealous Heart wou’d break,
Should we live one day asunder.
Melting Joys about her move,
Killing Pleasures, wounding Blisses;
She can dress her Eyes in Love,
And her Lips can arm with Kisses.
Angels listen when she speaks,
She’s my delight, all Mankinds wonder:
But my jealous heart would break,
Should we live one day asunder.
COLLEY CIBBER
(1671–1757)
Cibber! Write all thy Verses upon Glasses,
The only way to save ’em from our A—s.
ALEXANDER POPE: from Epigrams Occasioned by Cibber’s Verses in Praise of Nash
Actor, playwright, theatre manager, Cibber was an important figure in eighteenth-century English drama. His parents were wealthy, and he was born in the then new and fashionable suburb of Southampton Street, Bloomsbury Square. His father, who had been apprenticed to the London sculptor John Stone, was himself a celebrated sculptor whose most famous work, two huge statues in Portland stone that were designed for the gates of the new madhouse, St Mary’s of Bethlehem (‘Bedlam’), represented Melancholy and Raving Madness. These moving works, portraits of two inmates of the asylum, including Daniel, Oliver Cromwell’s mad porter, are now in the Guildhall. Though Cibber’s plays were greatly admired by Smollett and Walpole, none of them has stood the test of time; one of them, indeed (The Non-Juror, 1717), was ridiculed in a pamphlet by Pope, who also chose Cibber as the anti-hero in the final edition of The Dunciad. Nonetheless, he was appointed Poet Laureate in 1730, and wrote a handful of poems, including the sentimental ‘The blind boy’, that are still read. His most entertaining work remains An Apology for the Life of Mr. Colley Cibber (1740), an autobiography that paints a vivid picture of early eighteenth-century theatrical life, in which he calls Fielding ‘a broken wit’ – thus provoking the novelist to pen a withering, anti-Cibber satire in the opening chapter of Joseph Andrews.
Cibber was an important figure in the ‘operatic war’ that divided English musical life between 1715 and 1718 into two factions: those who espoused the English Restoration masque, and those who wished to develop Italian opera. Cibber’s preface to his own Venus and Adonis (‘A Masque’) and Myrtillo (‘A Pastoral Interlude’) speaks volumes about the seriousness of his intent, and can be compared to Mozart’s celebrated letter to Professor Anton Klein, dated 21 March 1785, in which he expresses the fervent hope that one day a German opera house might be founded for opera to be sung in German:
The following Entertainment is an Attempt to give the Town a little good Musick in a Language they understand. […] We are so far from establishing Theatrical Musick in England, that the very Exhibition or Silence of it seems entirely to depend on the Arrival or Absence of some Eminent Foreign Performer […] It is therefore hoped, that this Undertaking, if encourag’d, may in time reconcile Musick to the English Tongue.
Cibber has been much mocked by Pope, Fielding and others, but his intentions to promote English music were admirable – a pity, then, that Pepusch’s 1715 settings of Cibber’s libretti were so feeble. The attractive coloured bust of Cibber in London’s National Portrait Gallery is arguably a truer likeness of the man than Pope’s caricature in the Dunciad.
FRANZ SCHUBERT
The blind boy
[translated as ‘Der blinde Knabe’, D833, by Jacob Nicolaus de Jachelutta Craigher] (1825/1827)1
O say! what is that thing call’d light,
Which I must ne’er enjoy;
What are the blessings of the sight,
O tell your poor blind boy!
You talk of wondrous things you see,
You say the sun shines bright;
I feel him warm, but how can he
Or make it day or night?
My day or night myself I make
When e’er I sleep or play;
And could I ever keep awake
With me ’twere always day.
With heavy sighs I often hear
You mourn my hapless woe;
But sure with patience I can bear
A loss I ne’er can know.
Then let not what I cannot have
My cheer of mind destroy:
Whilst thus I sing, I am a king,
Although a poor blind boy.
(Haydn, Hurlstone)
ISAAC WATTS
(1674–1748)
In the pulpit, though his low stature, which very little exceeded five feet, graced him with no advantages of appearance, yet the gravity and propriety of his utterance made his discourses very efficacious. […] He did not endeavour to assist his eloquence by any gesticulations; for, as no corporeal actions have any correspondence with theological truth, he did not see how they could enforce it. At the conclusion of weighty sentences he gave time, by a short pause, for the proper impression.
SAMUEL JOHNSON: Lives of the English Poets (1779 and 1781)
One of nine children, Watts grew up in an atmosphere of religious nonconformity – his mother nursed him as a baby outside Southampton Gaol, where her husband had been imprisoned for dissent. Not a member of the Church of England, Watts refused a scholarship to Oxford or Cambridge, and trained instead at the Dissenting Academy at Stoke Newington. He was attached for several years as minister at Mark Lane Chapel in London, where he was by all accounts an inspiring teacher; but when his health deteriorated, he spent the last thirty-six years of his life as a house-guest at the homes of Sir Thomas and Lady Abney. Dissatisfied with the hymns he heard in church, he wrote nearly 700 of his own, most of which break free from the strict metrical paraphrases of the Bible that had been the norm. His publications include The Christian Doctrine of the Trinity […] Asserted and Prov’d (1722), Logick; or The Right Use of Reason in Enquiry after Truth (1725) and The Art of Reading and Writing in English (1721), which was used as a university and college text book. Popular at the time, but since mocked, were his Divine Songs Attempted in Easy Language for Children (1715), which Lewis Carroll satirized in Alice in Wonderland. Other collections of verse include: Horae Lyricae (1706), Hymns and Spiritual Songs (1707) and The Psalms of David Imitated (1719). Samuel Johnson felt that many of the hymns lacked ‘sprightliness and vigour’ (Lives of the English Poets), but the best have an undeniable resonance and express subjective religious experience in a way that was new. According to
Ian Bradley in The Daily Telegraph Book of Hymns, ‘When I survey the wondrous Cross’ is the first hymn in the English language to use the personal pronoun ‘I’.
WILLIAM CROFT
Man frail, and God eternal
[Our God, our help in ages past]1
Our God, our help in ages past,
Our hope for years to come,
Our shelter from the stormy blast,
And our eternal home.
Under the shadow of thy throne
Thy saints have dwelt secure;
Sufficient is thine arm alone,
And our defence is sure.
Before the hills in order stood,
Or earth received her frame,
From everlasting thou art God,
To endless years the same.
Thy Word commands our flesh to dust,
Return, ye sons of men;
All nations rose from Earth at first,
And turn to earth again.
A thousand ages in thy sight
Are like an evening gone;
Short as the watch that ends the night
Before the rising sun.
The busy tribes of flesh and blood,
With all their lives and cares,
Are carried downwards by the flood
And lost in following years.
Time, like an ever-rolling stream
Bears all its sons away;
They fly, forgotten as a dream
Dies at the opening day.
Like flow’ry fields the nations stand
Pleas’d with the morning light;
The flowers beneath the Mower’s hand
Lie withering e’er ’tis night.
Our God, our help in ages past,
Our hope for years to come,
Be thou our guard while troubles last,
And our eternal home.
EDWARD MILLER
Crucifixion to the world by the Cross of Christ
[When I survey the wondrous cross] (1790)1
When I survey the wondrous Cross,
Where the young Prince of Glory died,
My richest gain I count but loss,
And pour contempt on all my pride.
Forbid it, Lord, that I should boast
Save in the death of Christ my God;
All the vain things that charm me most,
I sacrifice them to his blood.
See from his head, his hands, his feet,
Sorrow and love flow mingled down;
Did e’er such love and sorrow meet,
Or thorns compose so rich a crown?2
His dying crimson, like a robe,
Spreads o’er his body on the Tree;
Then am I dead to all the globe,
And all the globe is dead to me.
Were the whole realm of nature mine,
That were a present far too small;
Love so amazing, so divine,
Demands my soul, my life, my all.
JOHN GAY
(1685–1732)
Of Manners gentle, of Affections mild;
In Wit, a Man; Simplicity, a Child:
With native Humour temp’ring virtuous Rage,
Form’d to delight at once and lash the age:
Above Temptation, in a low Estate,
And uncorrupted, ev’n among the great:
A safe Companion, and an easy Friend,
Unblam’d thro’ Life, lamented in thy End.
ALEXANDER POPE: ‘On Mr. Gay’
Born in Barnstaple, Gay was brought up by his uncle. Ten years old when his father died, he was apprenticed to a silk mercer in London, before returning disillusioned to Devon. His first publication, Wine, appeared in 1708 and written to celebrate the Union of Scotland with England. The Fan (1713), dedicated to Pope, attempts to imitate The Rape of the Lock – and the way it compares humans with animals anticipates his Fables (1727), which were illustrated by Bewick (1779) and William Blake (1793), and remain the most popular of his poems. Gay’s first success, The Shepherd’s Week (1714), was written as a pastoral in the manner of Pope’s opposition to Ambrose Philips. Trivia (1716) was described by William Irving in his biography of Gay as ‘without question the greatest poem on London life in English literature’. Three Hours after Marriage appeared in 1717 and was written in collaboration with Arbuthnot and Pope. Poems on Several Occasions was published in 1720. A friend of Pope and Swift, Gay wrote some thirteen satirical plays and a great deal of polemical verse, but it was only with The Beggar’s Opera (1728) and its sequel, Polly (1729), that he achieved celebrity status, although both have been overshadowed by the updated version by Brecht and Weill (Die Dreigroschenoper, 1928). The satire pokes fun at opera seria: the quarrel between Polly and Lucy clearly parodies the real life rivalry between Francesca Cuzzoni and Faustina Bordoni, who had famously come to blows during a performance of Bononcini’s Astianatte; and the character of Macheath was such a blatant caricature of corrupt government and the Prime Minister, Sir Robert Walpole, that Gay’s sequel, Polly, was banned. While Gay was writing The Beggar’s Opera, he asked Swift and Pope for advice, both of whom were pessimistic about its prospects. Congreve was more positive: ‘Either it will take greatly or it will be damned confoundedly.’ The work triumphed, and the premiere at Lincoln’s Inn Theatre on 29 January 1728 was followed by a run of sixty-three performances. Alexander Pope, in Notes to ‘The Dunciad’, wrote:
The vast success of it was unprecedented, and almost incredible: What is related of the wonderful effects of the ancient Music or Tragedy hardly came up to it: Sophocles and Euripides were less follow’d and famous. It was acted in London sixty-three days, uninterrupted; and renew’d the next season with equal applauses. It spread into all the great towns of England, was play’d in many places to the 30th, and 40th time, at Bath and Bristol 50, &c. It made its progress into Wales, Scotland, and Ireland, where it was performed 24 days together. It was lastly acted in Minorca. The fame of it was not confin’d to the author only; the Ladies carry’d about with ’em the favourite songs of it in Fans; and houses were furnish’d with it in Screens. The person who acted Polly [Lavinia Fenton], till then obscure, became all at once the favourite of the town; her Pictures were ingraved and sold in great numbers; her Life written; books of Letters and Verses to her publish’d; and pamphlets made even of her Sayings and Jests. Furthermore, it drove out of England the Italian Opera, which had carry’d all before it for ten years.
Benjamin Britten made a version of The Beggar’s Opera, premiered by the English Group and conducted by the composer on 24 May 1948. In a programme note for the first night he wrote:
The tunes to which John Gay wrote his apt and witty lyrics are among our finest national songs. These seventeenth and eighteenth century airs, known usually as ‘traditional tunes’, seem to me to be the most characteristically English of any of our folksongs. They are often strangely like Purcell and Handel: may, perhaps, have influenced them, or have been influenced by them. They have strong, leaping intervals, sometimes in peculiar modes, and are often strange and severe in mood.
The film with Sir Laurence Olivier (1953) used a version by Sir Arthur Bliss. Gay also contributed to the libretti of Handel’s Acis and Galatea (1732). He suffered from an intestinal disorder and was buried in Westminster Abbey. His epitaph, written by himself, reads:
Life is a jest, and all things show it;
I thought so once, and now I know it.
GEORGE FRIDERIC HANDEL: from Acis and Galatea (?1718)1
O ruddier than the cherry!
O sweeter than the berry!
O nymph more bright
Than moonshine night,
Like kidlings blithe and merry.
Ripe as the melting cluster!
No lily has such lustre;
Yet hard to tame
As raging flame,
And fierce as storms that bluster.
ANON: from The Beggar’s Opera (1728)
Gay wrote the text of The Beggar’s
Opera and selected the tunes from a variety of sources, most notably Thomas Durfey’s Pills to Purge Melancholy and John Playford’s English Dancing Master. He also availed himself of traditional airs and dances from Scotland, Ireland and France, as well as using melodies by a variety of composers that include Purcell, Jeremiah Clarke, John Eccles, Henry Carey and Handel – the introduction to Act II, for example, borrows a march from Rinaldo. The duet, printed here, is set to the melody ‘Over the hills and far away’. Gay’s original intention was to have the songs sung unaccompanied, but John Rich, manager of the Lincoln’s Inn Fields theatre, urged him to have the text harmonized and the play accompanied by a small orchestra. The task was given to Johann Christoph Pepusch, a German émigré, who was the theatre’s musical director.
The Penguin Book of English Song Page 19