''Welcome to all the pleasures'', Z. 339, is a 1683 composition by

Henry Purcell Henry Purcell (, rare: September 1659 – 21 November 1695) was an English composer. Purcell's style of Baroque music was uniquely English, although it incorporated Italian and French elements. Generally considered among the greatest E ...

, the first of a series he wrote in honour of the patron saint of music,

Saint Cecilia Saint Cecilia ( la, Sancta Caecilia), also spelled Cecelia, was a Roman virgin martyr and is venerated in Catholic, Eastern Orthodox Church, Orthodox, Anglican Communion, Anglican, and some Lutheran churches, such as the Church of Sweden. She b ...

.From between 1680 and 1695 twenty-four of Purcell’s

Ode An ode (from grc, ᾠδή, ōdḗ) is a type of lyric poetry. Odes are elaborately structured poems praising or glorifying an event or individual, describing nature intellectually as well as emotionally. A classic ode is structured in three majo ...

s and Welcome Songs survive: four celebrate St Cecilia’s day.
Odes, Vol. 1 – ''Royal and Ceremonial Odes''
Hyperion Records) It was commissioned by an organisation called "The Musical Society" for performance in London on 22 November 1683.

Words

Purcell set a text by Christopher Fishburn, a relatively obscure figure who was related to Sir

Christopher Wren Sir Christopher Wren PRS FRS (; – ) was one of the most highly acclaimed English architects in history, as well as an anatomist, astronomer, geometer, and mathematician-physicist. He was accorded responsibility for rebuilding 52 churches ...

. (subscription required) It begins Welcome to all the pleasures that delight Of ev'ry sense the grateful appetite. Hail, great assembly of Apollo's race. Hail to this happy place, this musical assembly That seems to be the arc of universal harmony.

Music

The music is for vocal soloists, chorus and an ensemble of

baroque The Baroque (, ; ) is a style of architecture, music, dance, painting, sculpture, poetry, and other arts that flourished in Europe from the early 17th century until the 1750s. In the territories of the Spanish and Portuguese empires including t ...

instruments consisting of four-part strings (1st and 2nd violin, viola, cello) and

basso continuo Basso continuo parts, almost universal in the Baroque era (1600–1750), provided the harmonic structure of the music by supplying a bassline and a chord progression. The phrase is often shortened to continuo, and the instrumentalists playing th ...

. As well as accompanying the singers, the instruments feature in an

overture Overture (from French ''ouverture'', "opening") in music was originally the instrumental introduction to a ballet, opera, or oratorio in the 17th century. During the early Romantic era, composers such as Beethoven and Mendelssohn composed overt ...

(called "symphony") and

ritornelli A ritornello (Italian; "little return") is a recurring passage (music), passage in Baroque music for orchestra or choir, chorus. Early history The earliest use of the term "ritornello" in music referred to the final lines of a fourteenth-century ...

. The piece takes about 18 minutes to perform.

Movements

Notable performances

The venue of the first performance in 1683 was York Buildings which is regarded as London's first regular concert hall. It was built on land previously occupied by York House. The piece received its

Proms The BBC Proms or Proms, formally named the Henry Wood Promenade Concerts Presented by the BBC, is an eight-week summer season of daily orchestral classical music concerts and other events held annually, predominantly in the Royal Albert Hal ...

premiere in 1963 when it was conducted by George Malcolm. The soloists were

Alfred Deller Alfred George Deller, CBE (31 May 1912 – 16 July 1979), was an English singer and one of the main figures in popularising the return of the countertenor voice in Renaissance and Baroque music during the 20th century. He is sometimes referre ...

(countertenor), Wilfred Brown (

tenor A tenor is a type of classical music, classical male singing human voice, voice whose vocal range lies between the countertenor and baritone voice types. It is the highest male chest voice type. The tenor's vocal range extends up to C5. The lo ...

) and

John Shirley-Quirk John Stanton Shirley-Quirk CBE (28 August 19317 April 2014) was an English bass-baritone. A member of the English Opera Group during 1964–76, he gave premiere performances of several operatic and vocal works by Benjamin Britten, recording these ...

(

baritone A baritone is a type of classical male singing voice whose vocal range lies between the bass and the tenor voice-types. The term originates from the Greek (), meaning "heavy sounding". Composers typically write music for this voice in the r ...

).Thu 29 Aug 1963 Royal Albert Hall
Proms performance archive. bbc.co.uk.

Publication

The work appeared in print in 1684, the year after its first performance. The publisher was

John Playford John Playford (1623–1686/7) was a London bookseller, publisher, minor composer, and member of the Stationers' Company, who published books on music theory, instruction books for several instruments, and psalters with tunes for singing in churche ...

and the work was printed by his nephew John Playford the Younger. John Playford the Elder was at the end of his career and by this stage had handed most of the running of his business near London's

Temple Church The Temple Church is a Royal peculiar church in the City of London located between Fleet Street and the River Thames, built by the Knights Templar as their English headquarters. It was consecrated on 10 February 1185 by Patriarch Heraclius of J ...

to his son

Henry Henry may refer to: People *Henry (given name) *Henry (surname) * Henry Lau, Canadian singer and musician who performs under the mononym Henry Royalty * Portuguese royalty ** King-Cardinal Henry, King of Portugal ** Henry, Count of Portugal, ...

Eulenberg Eulenberg is a municipality in the district of Altenkirchen, in Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany Germany,, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It is the second most populous country in Europe a ...

brought out a miniature score in 1964. It was edited by

Walter Bergmann Walter Bergmann may refer to: * (1864–1950), German infantry general * Walter Bergmann (1902–1988), German-born harpsichord and recorder player and music editor * Walter Bergman (born Walter Bergmann, 1913–1986), South African numismatist *Wal ...

, who had played harpsichord on the 1959 recording of the work.Zimmerman, Franklin B.
Review (untitled)
''Notes'', vol. 22, no. 4, 1966, pp. 1311–1312. (Accessed via JSTOR, subscription required).

Keyboard arrangement

After his father's death, Henry Playford went on to publish a keyboard arrangement of one of the numbers from the work, "Here the deities approve", under the title "A new ground" (a

ground bass In music, an ostinato (; derived from Italian word for ''stubborn'', compare English ''obstinate'') is a motif or phrase that persistently repeats in the same musical voice, frequently in the same pitch. Well-known ostinato-based pieces include ...

forms the basis of the piece). It appeared in the compilation "The second part of Musick's handmaid" (1689), and is now catalogued as ZT 682.

Selected discography

Commercial recordings are mainly by British conductors, a notable exception is the Belgian

Philippe Herreweghe Philippe Maria François Herreweghe, Knight Herreweghe (born 2 May 1947) is a Belgian conductor and choirmaster. Herreweghe founded La Chapelle Royale and Collegium Vocale Gent and is renowned as a conductor, with a repertoire ranging from Rena ...

who conducts the

Collegium Vocale Gent Collegium Vocale Gent is a Belgian musical ensemble of vocalists and supporting instrumentalists, founded by Philippe Herreweghe. The group is dedicated to historically informed performance. Founding and program Collegium Vocale Gent was founded ...

in a 2007 version. Versions include: *

and the Deller Consort on

Vanguard The vanguard (also called the advance guard) is the leading part of an advancing military formation. It has a number of functions, including seeking out the enemy and securing ground in advance of the main force. History The vanguard derives fr ...

(recorded 1959). Review (untitled)
''

The Musical Quarterly ''The Musical Quarterly'' is the oldest academic journal on music in America. Originally established in 1915 by Oscar Sonneck, the journal was edited by Sonneck until his death in 1928. Sonneck was succeeded by a number of editors, including Car ...

'', Vol. 46, No. 3 (Jul., 1960), pp. 408-410. Accessed via JSTOR 22 September 2019 (subscription required). * Robert King in his complete series of the Purcell odes on Hyperion (recorded 1988). *

Andrew Parrott Andrew Parrott (born 10 March 1947) is a British conductor, perhaps best known for his pioneering "historically informed performances" of pre-classical music. He conducts a wide range of repertoire, including contemporary music. He conducted th ...

Erato In Greek mythology, Erato (; grc, Ἐρατώ) is one of the Greek Muses, which were inspirational goddesses of literature, science, and the arts. The name would mean "desired" or "lovely", if derived from the same root as Eros, as Apollonius o ...

(recorded 1988)

Notes

References

{{reflist Odes and welcome songs by Henry Purcell 1683 compositions