Music
The "Frost Scene" in the third act has always attracted praise from critics. Edward J. Dent wrote that "The Frost Scene is one of Purcell's most famous achievements" with "its bold contrasts of style, and the masterly piling up of the music to a climax at the end of the chorus ''Tis love that has warmed us'." Thomas Gray, commenting on the 1736 production, described it as "excessive fine" and claimed that the Cold Genius' solo was "the finest song in the play." This aria ("What power art thou who from below") is accompanied by shivering strings, probably influenced by a scene from Act IV of Jean-Baptiste Lully's opera Isis (1677) but, as Peter Holman writes, Purcell's "daring chromatic harmonies transform the Cold Genius from the picturesque figure of Lully (or Dryden, for that matter) into a genuinely awe-inspiring character - the more so because Cupid's responses are set to such frothy and brilliant music." It has been suggested that the whole scene was inspired by the Frost fairs held on the Thames during the 1680s.
Venus' act V air "Fairest Isle" achieved wide fame, inspiring Charles Wesley's hymn Love Divine, All Loves Excelling to the same tune.
Read more about this topic: King Arthur (opera)
Famous quotes containing the word music:
“Nearly all the bands are mustered out of service; ours therefore is a novelty. We marched a few miles yesterday on a road where troops have not before marched. It was funny to see the children. I saw our boys running after the music in many a group of clean, bright-looking, excited little fellows.”
—Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822–1893)
“The further jazz moves away from the stark blue continuum and the collective realities of Afro-American and American life, the more it moves into academic concert-hall lifelessness, which can be replicated by any middle class showing off its music lessons.”
—Imamu Amiri Baraka (b. 1934)