The Pierian Sodality of 1808, which this winter gave us the splendid Bach-Handel concert, concludes its season with a concert in Paine Hall Friday evening. On the program are included Mozart's Haffner Symphony, the seldom performed "Stabat Mater" of Pergolesi, and a Purcell suite arranged by Mr. Holmes from unpublished manuscripts in the British Museum.

Henry Purcell composed at a time when the mediaeval religious tradition of the Renaissance had disintegrated into a purely secular art. The English Restoration, especially, was accompanied by an important efflorescence of secular music. One can easily appreciate the role of the Puritan Revolution in creating the new spirit. The seventeenth century Puritan, with his austere morality and his mystic absorption in God, could neither enjoy music nor understand its function. To him music was a sensual pleasure, and as such was a barrier to the contemplation of eternal truths. It had no place in the Church service. In this situation one can sense the death-rattle of religious music; already dying, it must have perished unwept when the source that nourished it dried up. With the advent of the Restoration, a corresponding burst of secular music was due. If there had been any trend toward a revitalization of Church music, it would have been stifled by the personality of the king. When Charles II attended church, he did not want music that expressed the inner essence of the ritual. He wanted to be amused and entertained; he wanted lively rhythms and catchy melodies, something to hum while waiting for the service to be over. Thus we have the peculiar fact of an age in which scarcely a drop of true religious music was composed.

Purcell expressed completely this secular spirit; his comprehensive genius seized on certain formulae of taste, and forged them into a style which at once satisfied popular demand and his own individuality. Eccentric rhythms, unusual and striking harmonics, surprises in melodic line: all of these fill the pages of his scores. The restless gaiety of the court made variety an essential ingredient in all art, but few succeeded as well as Purcell in pouring into this exacting mold their own genius. Pergolesi, in Italy fifty years later, was still struggling for artistic homogeneity. Incongruously juxtaposed in the "Stabat Mater" are passages of extreme spiritual content and passages which sound more than anything else like comic opera. Decades were to elapse before a style as unified in spirit as that of Purcell's was to evolve in Italy.