Henry Purcell

At twenty, Henry Purcell succeeded John Blow as organist of Westminster Abbey in 1679, having sung as a chorister in the Chapel Royal and worked early as organ tuner and copyist within the royal establishment. He drew English consort counterpoint, French dance and overture, and Italian melody and dissonance into his music, using ground basses and the rhythm of English speech. Dido and Aeneas, his only fully sung opera and scarcely an hour long, includes Dido's lament over a descending chromatic ground. King Arthur, The Fairy Queen and The Indian Queen belong to a wholly different English genre, setting songs, dances and elaborate scenic music against spoken drama. He wrote odes for royal occasions, anthems, fantasias for viols and songs. Born in London, he died in 1695 at thirty-six and was buried beside the organ in Westminster Abbey. At eighteen he had already taken over from his teacher Matthew Locke as composer to the King's Violins, the string band modelled on the twenty-four violins of Louis XIV, and the Abbey post was followed by an appointment as one of the three organists of the Chapel Royal. He wrote for the trumpet in the royal odes and in the theatre music alike, and the instrument is praised in its own words in the ode Hail, Bright Cecilia. Later ages knew him as Orpheus Britannicus.