13-05-2025
Purcell shaped classical music – here are the pieces that prove it
After the death of Henry Purcell in 1695, his friend the organist Henry Hall wrote a notable couplet: 'Sometimes a HERO in an Age appears/But scarce a PURCELL in a Thousand Years'. Unfortunately, the prediction turned into near-prophesy, as English music produced no-one to rival Purcell's genius, arguably until Elgar, 200 years later.
Purcell died far too young at 36, but he had made his mark. His memorial in Westminster Abbey says that he has 'gone to that Blessed Place where only his Harmony can be exceeded', a stirring remembrance of a composer who changed the course of British music and continues to have a unique resonance for our time.
Now, after a century of the early music revival, Purcell's stock as a reinventor of a truly British musical style has never been higher – but what does this have to tell us about his unique achievement? Take his dramatic music: no-one has written a lament of the depth and intensity of Dido's 'When I am laid in earth' from Dido and Aeneas, with its piercing cries of 'Remember me!'. No-one has written dance music of the exuberance and sophistication displayed in The Fairy Queen, with its bubbling rhythms and intoxicating energy.
There are some very specific things which made Purcell a revolutionary in the English music of his era, but which also binds him securely to our own time. Here are some reasons he matters – and the music you should listen to.
1. Purcell was a musical magpie
His style was cosmopolitan and outward-looking. Like all the best British composers, he drew inspiration from the melting-pot of styles around him. When you listen to the dazzling Passacaglia from King Arthur 'How happy the lover', its lilting triple time flow and endless variations over a repeated set of harmonies are clearly derived from the French passacaglias of Lully and his contemporaries.
On the other hand, Purcell's trio sonatas reflect precisely the innovations of the Italian style that Corelli pioneered, with two violins contesting contrapuntally. Yet behind this is the English tradition of equal-voiced counterpoint that Purcell first explored in his chromatically adventurous Fantazias for viols, written when he was in his 20s: it's a distinctive, heady stylistic brew.
Sonatas in 3 parts: Christopher Hogwood/Academy of Ancient Music
2. Purcell enjoyed rumbustious fun
There was no condescending snobbish division for him between the intense spiritual language of his church anthems like the sublime 'Remember not Lord our offences', and the bawdy catches he wrote for coffee and ale-houses – in which the texts of these rounds become ever more salacious the more vocal parts are added and the texts can be heard combined.
Listen: Remember O Lord our offences/Simon Preston/Christ Church Cathedral Choir
Purcell in Court and Tavern: Mark Brown/Pro Cantione Antiqua
3. Purcell loved a good tune
He set English words better than anyone (maybe until Arthur Sullivan), and his melodies have a natural flow that was sensed by Benjamin Britten, who arranged many of them to sing with his partner Peter Pears. In the 1940s, Michael Tippett heard the countertenor Alfred Deller sing 'Music for a while shall all your cares beguile' and said that 'in that moment, the centuries rolled back'. What could be more perfectly shaped than the melody of 'If love's a sweet passion'? Or the descriptive melisma of 'I attempt from love's sickness to fly….'?
Purcell songs realised by Britten: Allan Clayton/Joseph Middleton
4. Purcell knew how to sell his wares
He grew up in the shadow of Westminster Abbey where his family worked, and never moved from the area (sadly, none of the places he lived survive, nor can exact addresses be found, so he has no Blue Plaque). As a young boy he survived the Plague of 1665 and the Great Fire of 1666; he trained and sang as choirboy until his voice broke, when he repaired instruments and grew in composing skills, becoming Organist at the Abbey.
He was determined to advance his own cause; his contemporary Thomas Tudway said that 'he had the most commendable ambition of exceeding everyone of his own time', an aim in which we may say he totally succeeded. There were bumps along the way: he was censured for selling places in the organ loft for the Coronation of William and Mary, making the large sum of £500 which he had to repay to the authorities. He formed a friendly alliance with the publisher John Playford and his son Henry, who sold music at the Inner Temple, and Purcell's wife Frances continued to publish and circulate his music, especially his songs, after his all-too-early death.
A Purcell Songbook: Emma Kirkby/Anthony Rooley/Christopher Hogwood
5. Purcell was a master of his craft
From his earliest years in Westminster he would have practised music and studied it every day of his life. His expressiveness, whether in complex counterpoint or simple melody, came from a total mastery of the musical techniques he had available to him. Nowadays there seems to be a scepticism that the study of musical notation, and harmonic practice, are necessary to composers.
Yes, we value improvisation and spontaneity, and they were vital to Purcell's style, but for him they were built on the foundation of impeccable learning and constant practice. When we read in a contemporary account that the air 'Tis nature's Voice' in his Ode Hail bright Cecilia was 'sung with incredible graces by Mr Purcell himself', we can be sure that the elaboration and freedom applied to his music was based on fundamental mastery of the language.
6. Purcell provides one model for future music education
When Benjamin Britten was commissioned to write after the Second World War what was then rather patronisingly called a 'Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra', he chose a theme from Purcell's theatre music.
It was a way of demonstrating, brilliantly, how it could be varied to show the character of all the different instruments of the orchestra, across strings, woodwind, brass, percussion and harp, building a tremendous fugue which is combined at the close with Purcell's melody – the piece is now more often known as the Variations and Fugue on a Theme of Purcell. It could be the starting point for new explorations of contemporary music scoring in a new generation.
Britten/Purcell Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra: Andrew Davis BBC SO
7. Purcell inspired future generations
Britten and Tippett venerated Purcell at a time when they wanted to cast aside the legacy of the 20 th -century English pastoral tradition, which had been caricatured as the 'English cowpat' school of music depicting 'a cow looking over a gate'. Instead, they reached much further back in English musical history and Purcell's imprint can be heard in much of their work.
Purcell later entered the world of techno music and film: Wendy Carlos took the hypnotic march from the Funeral Music for Queen Mary (with its hypnotic drum beats that had actually been added by their 20 th -century editor Thurston Dart) and turned it into a powerful piece for Moog synthesiser. That turned up as the scary opening music to the score for Stanley Kubrick's film adaptation of A Clockwork Orange. One way or another, Purcell had achieved a place alongside the greats of Western music.
Nicholas Kenyon, the Telegraph's Chief Opera Critic, gave the inaugural Purcell Lecture at the Stationers Hall, London this month
