Poets and texts that Purcell set

[doversoul1]

The (extra) Early Music Show Sunday 0.00. This looks enticing.

Catherine Bott is joined by the author Jonathan Keates to discuss some of the poets and texts that Purcell set. The music in the programme illustrates Purcell's versatility as a composer for poets, and includes examples of settings of non-biblical religious texts, the poetry of the odes, and some of the individual art songs.

[ardcarp]

Bit off topic, but since Purcell set My Beloved Spake maybe I could mention yesterday's Sundat Worship on R4 from Worcester College Oxford which was all about The Song of Songs (aka Song of Solomon) and its love poetry. I've led a sheltered life and know almost nothing about the academic side of Old Testament texts, but the speaker clearly stated that its author was a woman. Is this widely known? I've heard homo-erotic interpretations of the said text, but this is a new one on me.

[mikerotheatrenestr0y]

Somewhere in my house, I have The Bible Designed To Be Read As Literature, which, as I recall, printed the Song of Songs as a dialogue between a man and a woman, without stating that a woman had written it. The BDTBRAL points out that the OT is the equivalent of having Shakespeare, Homer, Gibbon and Samuel Smiles' Self-Help [with a few pages of Mrs Beeton] all bound up in one volume, so it's not surprising that a sexy play with a left-handed lover should have ended up in there as well. [Don't forget Palestrina's settings of the texts, or the wonderful Johann Christoph Bach here.

[subcontrabass]

Bit off topic, but since Purcell set My Beloved Spake maybe I could mention yesterday's Sundat Worship on R4 from Worcester College Oxford which was all about The Song of Songs (aka Song of Solomon) and its love poetry. I've led a sheltered life and know almost nothing about the academic side of Old Testament texts, but the speaker clearly stated that its author was a woman. Is this widely known? I've heard homo-erotic interpretations of the said text, but this is a new one on me.

I have not seen any recent scholarship on this text, but the older view was that the book is a compilation of independent love songs by unknown authors.