Henry Purcell

Henry Purcell (c. 10 September 1659 – 21 November 1695) worked as a composer and organist during the middle Baroque period. His output was enormous: he wrote over one hundred songs, the tragic opera *Dido and Aeneas*, and incidental music for a version of Shakespeare’s *A Midsummer Night’s Dream* retitled *The Fairy Queen*. Though his musical style drew on Italian and French influences, it remained distinctly English. Purcell is widely regarded as one of England’s finest composers. Purcell was born in 1659 on St Ann’s Lane in Westminster, just a few hundred yards west of Westminster Abbey. His father, also named Henry Purcell, had an older brother Thomas, a musician who sang at the coronation of King Charles II as a gentleman of the Chapel Royal. The elder Henry had three sons: Edward, Henry, and Daniel, the youngest of whom also became a prolific composer and, after Henry’s death, wrote much of the final act of *The Indian Queen*. When the father died in 1664, young Henry came under the care of his uncle Thomas, who treated him with great kindness. Thomas arranged for Henry to become a chorister and study first under Captain Henry Cooke, Master of the Children, and later under Cooke’s successor Pelham Humfrey, a pupil of Lully. The composer Matthew Locke, a family friend, likely influenced the young Purcell, especially through his semi-operas. When Henry’s voice broke in 1673, he left the Chapel Royal choristers and became an assistant to John Hingston, the king’s keeper of wind instruments. Purcell is said to have been composing by age nine, though the earliest work definitely his is a birthday ode for the king written in 1670, when he was eleven. Dates for his compositions are often uncertain despite extensive research. The three-part song *Sweet tyranness, I now resign* is thought to be a childhood work. After Humfrey’s death, Purcell studied under John Blow. He attended Westminster School and in 1676 became a copyist at Westminster Abbey. His earliest known anthem, *Lord, who can tell*, dates from 1678; its text is a psalm for Christmas Day and for morning prayer on the fourth day of the month. In 1679, Purcell wrote songs for John Playford’s *Choice Ayres, Songs and Dialogues* and an unnamed anthem for the Chapel Royal. A letter from his uncle Thomas reveals that this anthem was written for the Rev. John Gostling, then at Canterbury, who later became a gentleman of the Chapel Royal. Gostling possessed an extraordinary basso profondo voice with a range of at least two octaves, from D below the bass staff to the D above it. Purcell composed several anthems for him, though few dates are known. The most notable is *They that go down to the sea in ships*, written in gratitude for King Charles II’s escape from shipwreck. Gostling, who had been part of the royal party, assembled verses from the Psalms and asked Purcell to set them. The anthem opens with a passage covering Gostling’s full range, starting on the upper D and descending two octaves to the lower. Between 1680 and 1688, Purcell wrote music for seven plays. His chamber opera *Dido and Aeneas*, a landmark in English dramatic music, likely dates from this period; its earliest performance may have been before the documented one of 1689. The libretto was by Nahum Tate, and the opera was performed in 1689 with Josias Priest, a dancing master and choreographer at Dorset Garden Theatre. Priest’s wife ran a boarding school for young gentlewomen, first in Leicester Fields and later in Chelsea, where the opera was staged. It is sometimes called the first genuine English opera, though that title usually goes to Blow’s *Venus and Adonis*; like Blow’s work, *Dido and Aeneas* uses Italian-style recitative rather than spoken dialogue. Each opera runs under an hour. *Dido and Aeneas* never reached the public theatre, though it was popular in private circles. It was widely copied, but only one song was printed by Purcell’s widow in *Orpheus Britannicus*; the full work remained in manuscript until 1840, when the Musical Antiquarian Society published it under Sir George Macfarren’s editorship. This opera gave Purcell his first chance to set a dramatic text continuously to music, and it remained his only work where music carried the entire drama. The story comes from Virgil’s *Aeneid*. In early 1679, Purcell produced two important stage works: music for Nathaniel Lee’s *Theodosius* and Thomas d’Urfey’s *Virtuous Wife*. That same year, John Blow resigned as organist of Westminster Abbey—a post he had held for ten years—in Purcell’s favor. Purcell then focused almost entirely on sacred music for six years, cutting his ties with the theatre. He likely wrote his two stage works before taking up the organist position.