Purcell, Henry - Food of Love, The - Agnew, Paul (tenor)

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"Henry Purcell is often considered the quintessentially English composer representing almost alone a golden age of British music, but Henry was born at a key moment in the turbulent days of the seventeenth century in England and perhaps that fabled English musical language was pronounced with a distinctly continental accent. Purcell must have heard a great deal of French music during his formativeyears and equally have known well the monarch's taste. His voice is as distinctive as any truly great composer, but the building blocks of his musical language must certainly, and by necessity, have included a whiff of garlic. It may be a surprise to the British to fi nd out how popular Henry Purcell's music is to this day in France, but then, it is perhaps because the French recognise in him something of their own. The challenge faced by performers is therefore to illustrate this text to best advantage with all the resources available to them. They must choose the instrumentation according to its character, but also decide on the phrasing, the dynamics, the note lengths, the articulation, the respirations, with the aim of sticking closely to the text, to the music of its language, the rhythm of the consonants and the meaning of the words, so as to highlight the poetry and its affects. All of this of course demands a high degree of complicity between them."
(Paul Agnew)