composer would simply change the tempo and key-signature and go straight
on, so that the scrappiness is only apparent. In this ode an instance
occurs. There are fourteen numbers, but the last three are in reality
one--a chorus, a quartet and a chorus repeating the opening bars of the
first chorus. In a modern composition all would have run on with never a
double bar. Purcell seems to have had no opportunity of designing
another ode on the same broad scale as this. At any rate, he never did
so, and the ode which did more than any other of his achievements, save,
perhaps, the _Yorkshire Feast-Song_ of 1689, to convince his
contemporaries of his greatness, abides as his noblest monument in this
department of music.

Just as by writing music for plays which will never be acted again
Purcell cut off his appeal to after generations of play-goers, so by
writing anthems on a model sadly out of place in a sacred service he hid
himself from future church-goers. King Charles liked his Church music as
good as you like, but lively at all costs, and the royal mind speedily
wearying of all things in turn, he wished the numbers that made up an
anthem to be short. So Purcell wasted his time and magnificent thematic
material on mere strings of scrappy, jerky sections. The true Purcell
touch is on them all, but no sooner has one entered fairly into the
spirit of a passage than it is finished. Instrumental interludes--if,
indeed, they can be called interludes, for they are as important as the
vocal sections--abound, and might almost be curtain-tunes from the
plays. Nothing can be done to make these anthems of any use in church.
Eighteenth and nineteenth century editors have laid clumsy fingers on
them, curtailing the instrumental bits; but nothing is gained by this
rough-and-ready process, as no Purcell has ever appeared to lengthen the
vocal portions. As Purcell left the anthems, so we must leave
them--exquisite fragments that we may delight in, but that are of no use