[In the following essay, Baldwin and Wilson discuss the lyrics and musical accompaniment of several of the songs in Durfey's Cinthia and Endimion.]

Carolyn Kephart, in her article on Durfey's A New Opera call'd Cinthia and Endimion (Theatre Notebook xxxix, 3), confined her consideration of the music to the four songs to be found in Day and Murrie's English Song-Books 1651-1702.¹ In fact, the situation is more complex and interesting: music for the opera survives elsewhere and two of the four settings listed by Day and Murrie may well not have been used in the 1697 production.

In his Music in the Restoration Theatre² Curtis Price lists three pieces of instrumental music, probably act tunes, in a manuscript in the Royal College of Music. These are headed “Cynthia & Endymion by D. P.” Earlier in the same manuscript there is “Cupid's dance in Cynthia and Endymion”, with no composer named. Daniel Purcell had been composing regularly for the Patent Company since shortly before the death of his brother Henry in November 1695 and the “D. P.” of the manuscript book can refer to no-one else. Indeed, we know he set one of the songs in Durfey's opera. The Harding Collection at the Bodleian Library contains a songsheet headed: “A Song in the OPERA call'd Cynthia & Endimion Set by Mr Daniel Purcell Sung by Mrs Linsey & exactly engrav'd by Tho: Cross”. The song is “The poor Endimion” from Act IV. This songsheet gives us the name of one of the 1697 performers, the young soprano Mary Lindsey in her first season on stage, and from it we can conjecture that Daniel Purcell set the musical sequence in Act IV of which this song is the opening. It also tells us that the setting of these words by David Underwood published in The Theater of Music II (1685) and so listed by Day and Murrie was not used when the piece was finally staged in 1697.

Roger Fiske's suggestion that the music was a collaboration between Daniel Purcell and Jeremiah Clarke,³ dismissed as misleading by Carolyn Kephart, does seem to be the case. A songsheet at the Royal College of Music, listed in the Thematic Catalog of the Works of Jeremiah Clarke⁴ by Thomas F. Taylor, contains Clarke's setting of Amphitrite's song “Kneel, O kneel”. This song comes towards the end of a long musical scene in praise of Cinthia in Act II so again it is likely that Clarke set the entire scene. The songsheet names the singer as Mrs Temple, a minor actress, singer and dancer.

The collaboration between Daniel Purcell and Jeremiah Clarke was to be continued in their music for The World in the Moon later in 1697 and in the very successful Island Princess of 1699.⁵ In both Cinthia and Endimion and The Island Princess music was also contributed by Richard Leveridge. The Druid's song in Act V of Cinthia and Endimion “Black and gloomy as the grave” is now definitely known to be by Leveridge. Day and Murrie ascribed it to “?Leveridge” because they were working from a songbook in the Harding Collection (then in Chicago) which lacked the titlepage but was thought to be Leveridge's A New Book of Songs (1697). No other copy of this book was then known, but there is now a complete copy in the British Library which shows that this conjecture was correct. Interestingly, and unusually, the song is printed in the bass clef. Leveridge, the company's bass, must have sung his own song, as well as taking part in the other musical scenes of the opera. He was a less experienced composer than the other two, for probably his first theatre song was written for Gildon's The Roman Bride's Revenge only a couple of months earlier. However, he went on to write over 160 songs as well as the much-performed “famous music” for Macbeth, and remained the leading English stage bass for over 50 years.

It seems possible that Henry Purcell's setting of the song in Act I “Musing on cares of human state”, the other piece in the 1685 Theater of Music II, may also not have been performed in 1697. The Purcell setting was never republished (except in a reissue in 1695 of some of the Theater of Music volumes under a different title) which suggests that those preparing the 1697 performances may have forgotten about its existence. Henry Purcell's music was a considerable “draw” for audiences at this time, and had a Purcell setting been revived one would expect to find it republished as a separate sheet or in one of the volumes of Orpheus Britannicus. The fact that the version printed in the playtext is slightly different to that set by Purcell also supports the theory that the song might have been reset for 1697.

Carolyn Kephart's suggestion that “'Twas when the sheep were shearing”, the remaining Day and Murrie song, was written specifically for Dogget to sing in the 1697 production must surely be correct. It seems likely that Durfey, as he often did, wrote the words to an existing ballad tune—and that this produced the most popular piece in the show. Claude Simpson, in The British Broadside Ballad and its Music⁶ points out that the tune quickly appeared in print, in the 1697 edition of Youth's Delight on the Flagelet and as a broadside of that year headed “An Excellent New Playhouse Song”.

For three musical scenes in the opera, the masque-like Prologue, the satirical dialogue between a nymph and a satyr in Act III and a dialogue between Zephirus and Iris in Act V there seems to be no evidence of the composer's identity, although it is unlikely that anyone other than Clarke, Purcell and Leveridge was involved. However, the music for the final triumphant scene does survive, in full score, although its connection with Durfey's opera has been completely overlooked. The last stage direction of the opera reads: “Then enter Mars and Minerva, and sing, while a Machine descends; and Cynthia, Endimion, Apollo and Hermes Enter, Endimion is chang'd into a Star, and with a Chorus the Opera concludes.” The words of the song are then given, beginning “The loud-tongu'd War, like Thunder”. The song is a battle piece, full of drums, trumpets and cannon and its last two lines are:

And now Immortal William's Name,
Resounds from Poll [Pole] to Poll.

British Library Add Ms 30934 ff 94 to 104 contains a work prefaced, on f 94, by the description “The following piece was composd by Mr Dan: Purcell upon King Williams return from Flanders and p^r.formd in ye play house”.⁷ It is in Daniel Purcell's hand except for ff 94b and 95 which “appear to be in the hand of Jer Clarke” according to a faint pencil note which may be by Vincent Novello, who once owned the volume. (The manuscript of Jeremiah Clarke's ode on Henry Purcell's death, also performed at Drury Lane, is bound in the same volume.) Clarke's two pages are instrumental and headed “Overture”, while the rest of the manuscript consists of Daniel Purcell's setting of the song at the end of Cinthia and Endimion: “The loud-tongu'd War”. The work is for bass and countertenor soloists, with a closing chorus. The solo passages, including trumpet and drum imitations by countertenor and bass respectively, are accompanied by continuo only and are interspersed by warlike snatches on oboes, trumpets and kettle drums. The final chorus repeats the words of the last two lines, praising “Immortal Williams name” accompanied by the previously-used instruments and by strings. The countertenor is named in the manuscript as Mr Freeman;⁸ the bass must have been Leveridge. Minerva, the Roman goddess of wisdom, could have been seen as a martial figure, suitable to be sung by a countertenor, or perhaps Daniel Purcell, in his eagerness to exploit Freeman—a specialist in songs with trumpet—chose to write the piece for two masculine deities.

William had returned from campaigning in Flanders in October 1696, about three months before the premiere of Cinthia and Endimion. It is possible that this two-part song with chorus had been performed in the theatre soon after William's return and was later used as the finale of Cinthia and Endimion. Alternatively, the description on the manuscript—not in Daniel Purcell's hand but that of the composer William Croft—could have been made on the evidence of the words and of a known theatrical performance, without knowledge of its place in Cinthia and Endimion. Interestingly, however, Thomas Dilke's The City Lady, premiered at Lincoln's Inn Fields at much the same time, also includes a welcome ode for William, “Give to the warrier loud and lasting praise”, set by John Eccles, that company's leading composer. In his dedicatory letter Dilke says: “I very well know that the Ode in the third Act seems to be introduc'd something unseasonably. It was made and set long since, in hopes of having it perform'd before the King, at his return from Flanders; and the Music being so finely compos'd by Mr. John Eccles, I was loath it shou'd be wholly lost to the Town.”

William was depressed and in poor health after his return to England. It is likely that both companies had welcome songs ready but had no chance to perform them before the King. The text of Cinthia and Endimion was advertised in mid January 1697, a week before that of The City Lady, but Robert Hume has argued that operas were generally published more quickly after their premieres than plays⁹ so it is not certain which of the two pieces was presented first. Presumably one of the companies had the idea of using its two or three month old welcome ode and the other followed suit. The words of Eccles's piece are specifically those of a welcome ode (for instance “See the Mighty Nassau's come, / Richly fraught with Honours home”) and would have seemed more inappropriate a few months later than Durfey's. Dilke's placing of the ode in Act III while the characters are eating a “small repast” is also less successful than Durfey's use of Daniel Purcell's piece as the finale of the opera to form a joint apotheosis of William and Endimion. Daniel Purcell's work is rousing stuff—likely to send an audience home from the opera in happy and patriotic mood.

Notes

1. Cyrus L. Day and Eleanore B. Murrie, English Song-Books 1651-1702, A Bibliography, 1940.

2. Curtis A. Price, Music in the Restoration Theatre, 1979, 204-5.

3. Roger Fiske, English Theatre Music in the Eighteenth Century, 1973, 8-9.

4. Thomas F. Taylor, Thematic Catalog of the Works of Jeremiah Clarke, 1977, 58.

5. The London Stage (Part 1, 1660-1700), 1965, 505, dates the premier of The Island Princess as November 1698. However, Judith Milhous and Robert D. Hume in “Dating Play Premieres from Publication Data, 1600-1700”, Harvard Library Bulletin, 22, 1974, 400-2, have shown that the work was probably first performed in February 1699.

6. Claude M. Simpson, The British Broadside Ballad and its Music, 1966, 721.

7. This description led Rosamond McGuinness, in her English Court Odes 1660-1820, 1971, 22, to assume that the work was written for William's return after the Peace of Ryswick (September, 1697). The appearance of the words in Cinthia and Endimion, published several months earlier, shows this to be impossible and, besides, the work is quite inappropriate for the celebration of a peace treaty.

8. John Freeman, the countertenor singer, had been on stage since 1692, first in the United Company and then in Rich's Patent Company. He left the stage in 1700 for a long career in the choirs of the Chapel Royal, St Paul's Cathedral and Westminster Abbey. The actor John Freeman was, in 1697, in the Lincoln's Inn Fields company. Unfortunately, The Index to the London Stage (Ben R. Schneider, Jr, 1979, 326) has treated these two performers as one person.

9. Robert D. Hume, ‘Opera in London, 1695-1706’, in British Theatre and the Other Arts, 1660-1800, ed. Shirley Strum Kenny, 1984, 73.