Saturday music spot: Arne's "Where the Bee Sucks"

Today someone suggested on X that there were few British native born composers of any significance between the death of Henry Purcell and the emergence of Elgar.

I strongly disagree.

Granted the most distinguished composer working in Britain in that era, Handel, was German born, but he moved to London to work in Britain - and he would never in a million years have done that if the place was a musical desert.

And apart from Handel some of my other favourite composers were British born and working between the death of Purcell and the rise of Elgar.

So for the next two weeks I shall be publishing a music spot every day and the vast majority will be pieces which flowed from the pens of native-born Brits who were composing between 1695 and 1889 (the publication date of Edward Elgar's first published work, "Salut d'Amour.")

I will include works by Thomas Arne, William Boyce, Maurice Greene, both Samuel and Samuel Sebastian Wesley, Sir Charles Villiers Stanford and others.

Charles Wood is only just before Elgar (he started publishing in about 1885 and my favourite Wood pieces came after Elgar published "Salut d'Amour)  so he may or may not be included.

Hubert Parry had his first two anthems published when he was only 17, in 1865, but he achieved commercial success in 1878 a decade before Elgar's first publication, and my favourite piece by Parry, "Blest pair of Sirens" was first performed two years before 1889 so that will be in the list too.

But we'll start with Arne's song "Where the bee sucks, there suck I," from an Opera version of Shakespeare's "The Tempest."


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