Compositional Artifice in the Music of Henry Purcell

Alan Howard is a Fellow of Selwyn College, Cambridge, where he is Lecturer and Director of Studies in Music. His edition of Odes on the Death of Henry Purcell (2013) was published for the Purcell Society, and he has published widely on English music in journals including JRMA, Music and Letters, Early Music, Musical Times and Eighteenth-Century Music. He is also co-editor of the journal Early Music, a member of the Purcell Society committee, a General Editor of the Works of John Eccles and a trustee of Cambridge Early Music.

• Introduction; Part I. Purcell's 'Art of Descant': 1. In counterpoint: sources and analysis; 2. Artifice, Fugeing and fantazia; 3. 'The chiefest instrumental musick now in request': canzonas and other sonata fugues; 4. 'The power of the Italian notes': Purcell's sonatas as and in reception; Part II. 'Thou Didst Thy Former Skill Improve': 5. 'Celestial art[ifice]' in Hail, bright Cecilia; 6. Artifice and musical modelling; 7. Augmentation as artifice, artifice as augmentation; 8. 'Italian sonatas in orchestral garb'.

'This book documents a remarkable achievement. It not only offers direct insights into the creative processes of a great composer on a technical level, but also succeeds in getting, as it were, into his skin as he faced compositional problems - something not previously attempted in the case of Purcell (and all too rarely accomplished for any composer).' Bruce Wood, Bangor University