curious mind. He knew perfectly well what he liked, and insisted on
having it. He disliked the old Catholic music; he disliked quite as much
Puritan psalm-singing--that abominable cacophony which to-day is called
"hearty congregational singing." He wanted jolly Church music, sung in
time and in tune; he wanted secular, not sacred, music in church. But
his taste, though secular, was not corrupt--the music-hall Church music
and Salvation Army tunes of to-day would probably have outraged his
feelings. His taste coincided with Purcell's own. Along with some of the
old-fashioned genuine devotional music, Purcell must have heard from
childhood a good deal of the stamp he was destined to write; he must
often have taken his part in Church music that might, with perfect
propriety, have been given in a theatre. All things were ripe for a
secular composer; the mood that found utterance in the old devotional
music was a dead thing, and in England Humphries had pointed the new
way. Purcell was that secular composer.

One spirit, the secular, pagan spirit, breathes in every bar of
Purcell's music. Mid-Victorian critics and historians deplored the
resemblance between the profane style of the stage pieces and the sacred
style of the anthems and services. Not resemblance, but identity, is the
word to use. There is no distinguishing between the two styles. There
are not two styles: there is one style--the secular style, Purcell's
style. Let us pause a moment, and ask ourselves if any great composer
has ever had more than one style. Put aside the fifth-rate imitators who
now copied Mozart, and now Palestrina, and could therefore write in as
many styles as there were styles to copy, and not one of them their own.
There is no difference between the sacred motets and the secular
madrigals of the early polyphonists. Bach did not use dance-measures in
his Church music, but in the absence of these lies the entire
distinction between his Church and his secular compositions; the