Appointed organist of Westminster Abbey at the age of 20, Henry Purcell (1658/1659–1695), considered by many historians to be the most important English composer between William Byrd and Edward Elgar, went on just three years later to also become the organist of the Chapel Royal. As the simultaneous holder of the two most influential posts in London, at a time when its cultural life underwent a dramatic revival following the accession of Charles II, Purcell was well placed to shape the musical life of a city which had been substantially refashioned following the Great Fire of 1666 which had destroyed two thirds of the medieval urban fabric. The new monarch, whose early years had been spent in exile in Catholic France, enjoyed considerable popularity due to his warm personality, the hedonism of the court, and general relief at the return to normality after a decade of republican rule by Cromwell and the Puritans. Following the restoration of the Stuart dynasty in 1660, the public theatres were re-opened, St. Paul’s Cathedral was rebuilt according to a design of the polymath Christopher Wren, and the aristocratic world of the court became consolidated at Westminster in distinct social separation from the mercantile City of London.
It was in this rejuvenated environment that Purcell devoted himself not only to the composition of sacred music, broadly defined to include odes and similar works addressed to the king and members of the royal family, but also to music for the London stage. His activities in this sphere, which includes his early Dido and Aeneas, a significant landmark in the national history of dramatic music, reached something of a climax during the 1690s. During these final years Purcell provided an impressive corpus of music for the stage including Diocletian, The Fairy Queen (an adaption of Shakespeare’s Midsummer Night’s Dream), and his dramatic masterpiece King Arthur, as well as a considerable amount of sacred music, odes, cantatas, and other miscellaneous pieces. In the last year of his short life, Purcell composed some of his most elaborate and magnificent works, including the Te Deum and Jubilate for St. Cecilia’s Day, and the well-known ode for Queen Mary, ‘Come ye sons of art’.
This seminar will consider Purcell’s output in all its variety, not merely in relation to the music of contemporary composers working both in England and on the Continent, but also in the specific urban context of London seen at a time when the city was undergoing an energetic process of radical social and cultural change.