Purcell died at the age of thirty-seven—­being granted only two years more of life than Mozart and only six years more than Schubert.  He is the moon of English music and his melodies are as exquisite and as silvery and as full of enamoured radiance as the tintinnabulations of the moonbeams themselves.  But unfortunately for English music this beautiful moon, who is the most nearly great of all the composers England has furnished the world, was speedily obscured in the blinding glare of the sun of English music which came shouldering up from the east, and which has not yet sunk far enough in the west to cease from dazzling the eyes of English music-makers.  But of Haendel as a lover, we must postpone the gossip till we have mouthed one of the most delicious morsels in musical scandal, a choice romance that is said to have affected Purcell very deeply.

The story concerns the strenuous career of Alessandro Stradella, and when you read it you will not wonder that it should have made a great success as an opera, or that it gave Flotow his greatest popularity next to “Martha,” even though its conclusion was made tamely theatrical.

CHAPTER VI.

THE STRANGE ADVENTURES OF STRADELLA

There are historians, sour and cynical, who have tried to contradict the truth of the life story of Stradella as Bourdelot tells it in his “Histoire de la Musique et de ses Effets,” but they cannot offer us any satisfactory substitute in its place, and without troubling to give their merely destructive complaints, and without attempting to improve upon the pompously fascinating English of old Sir John Hawkins, I will quote the story for your delectation.

Certain it is that there was a composer named Stradella, and that he was an opera composer to the Venetian Republic, as well as a frequent singer upon the stage to his own harp accompaniments.  He occupies a position in musical history of some importance.  The following story of his adventures is no more improbable than many a story we read in the daily newspapers—­and surely no one could question the credibility of the daily newspapers.  But here is the story as Hawkins tells it.  As the cook-books say, salt it to your taste.

“His character as a musician was so high at Venice, that all who were desirous of excelling in the science were solicitous to become his pupils.  Among the many whom he had the instruction of, was one, a young lady of a noble family of Rome, named Hortensia, who, notwithstanding her illustrious descent, submitted to live in a criminal intimacy with a Venetian nobleman.  The frequent access of Stradella to this lady, and the many opportunities he had of being alone with her, produced in them both such an affection for each other, that they agreed to go off together for Rome.  In consequence of this resolution they embarked in a very fine night, and by the favour of the wind effected their escape.