On March 2 (4th Sunday in Lent) the choir will sing Choral Evensong. The canticle setting and anthem on that occasion will be by John Blow (1649-1708), one of the greatest English composers in the second half of the seventeenth century, perhaps second only to his friend and colleague Henry Purcell (1659-1695).
Blow was born in the market borough of Newark-on-Trent in Nottinghamshire. His family origins were humble, but his musical talents were impressive enough that he was one of five boys from Newark and Lincoln conscripted by Henry Cooke in the winter of 1660-61 for the choir of the Chapel Royal, newly refounded on the restoration of the monarchy under Charles II. After his voice broke, Blow continued his musical studies in London under Cooke and others. In 1668 he was appointed organist of Westminster Abbey, and in 1669 he received the first of many court appointments, in this case as a keyboard player. In March 1674 he became a Gentleman of the Chapel Royal, and in July of that year succeeded Pelham Humfrey (1647-1674) as the Chapel’s Master of Children. In 1679 he resigned his position at Westminster Abbey in favor of Henry Purcell, but resumed it on Purcell’s death. Meanwhile, on the sudden and violent death of Michael Wise in 1687—Anthony Wood wrote that Wise was “knock’d on the head and kill’d downright by the Night watch at Salisbury for giving stubborne and refractory language to them”—Blow succeeded him in the position of Almoner and Master of the Choristers at St. Paul’s Cathedral. In this capacity he had the task of reconstituting the cathedral choir, disbanded since the Great Fire of 1666. He took part in the inauguration of Christopher Wren’s new cathedral in 1697.
Throughout his career, Blow was prolific as a composer in many genres. His works include court odes, solo songs, a good deal of music for harpsichord and organ, and the court masque Venus and Adonis, a work that furnished the principal model for Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas. Nevertheless, Blow regarded himself principally as a composer for the church, as he said explicitly in his dedication to Queen Anne of the vocal collection Amphion Anglicus (1700). He was among the composers routinely called upon to furnish music for special festive occasions. Among his most celebrated anthems is “God spake sometime in visions”, a major work with orchestra, and just one of three written for the coronation of James II in 1685. Another of his orchestral anthems, “I was glad”, was written for the opening of the new St. Paul’s Cathedral in 1697.
The music for our March Choral Evensong will include Blow’s Magnificat and Nunc Dimittis in D minor, sometimes called the Service in the Dorian Mode, as the key signature is without sharps or flats. It is a concise setting with a certain austerity as befits the season of Lent. The anthem will be “Salvator mundi”, a setting of an antiphon from the Order for Holy Unction. The text is familiar in English as “O Saviour of the world, who by thy cross and precious blood hast redeemed us; save us and help us, we humbly beseech thee, O Lord.” It is one of nine pieces by Blow with Latin texts. The circumstances of their composition are unknown. Their style is very Italianate, and it is possible that they were intended for one of the Catholic chapels in London, possibly the private chapel of Catherine of Braganza, Charles II’s queen. Bruce Wood, writing in the
New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians describes “Salvator mundi” as “an eloquent essay in the use of bold dissonance and pathetic chromaticism.”
--WJG
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