Henry Purcell (1659–1695)

Pete Townshend of The Who has often cited Henry Purcell as one of his biggest influences, both in his composing and his guitar styles. Townshend draws particular attention to the long, thunderous, suspended chords that open Pinball Wizard to make his point. The claim may at first appear outlandish, but the two composers have more in common than first meets the ear. Both are English. Both work fluently in imported musical idioms (in Purcell’s case, Italian; in Townshend’s case, American) to create music that is utterly English.

The critic and novelist Peter Ackroyd, in his novel English Music and elsewhere, has remarked on the unique part that music traditionally plays in English life. It tends to be celebratory, ceremonial, and popular. The English like songs and tunes they can hum and dance to. They have never produced a composer of the magnitude of Bach, Mozart or Beethoven. On the other hand, their cultural identity—their “Englishness”—finds expression in a vibrant musical vernacular with deep roots in folk forms, and embraces courtly, popular, religious, and European classical traditions. This can be traced from the earliest songs through the English Baroque to the present day. It includes, among others, the composer Thomas Tallis (c.1510–1585), John Dowland (1563–1626), Purcell, Edward Elgar (1857–1934), Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872–1958), Benjamin Britten (1913–1976), and Pete Townshend (b. 1945).

Henry Purcell was born in London in 1659. His father was a gentleman of the Chapel Royal and played at the royal court. Henry joined the choir of the Chapel Royal and left in 1679, when his voice changed. He became an organist at Westminster Abbey, was appointed “Composer-in-Ordinary” for the Royal Consort of Viols in 1682, became “His Majesty’s Organ-Maker and Keeper” in 1683, and was appointed chief organist at the Chapel Royal the same year. He died, probably from pneumonia and overwork in 1695.

During his short life Purcell wrote for the church, the theater, the concert hall, and the court. His instrumental works include fantasias for viols, works for organ and other keyboards, and sonatas for strings that show a powerful Italian influence while also extending older English traditions of contrapuntal writing. His theatrical music mostly consists of songs and incidental music for plays, but during the last five years of his life, he created music for new entertainments that incorporated song, dance, and dramatic action. These colorful “semi-operas” had much in common with modern musicals. They could be patriotic pageants, like King Arthur, or the British Worthy (1691); pastoral fantasy, like The Fairy Queen (1692); historical epic, like The Prophetess, or the History of Diocletian (1690); or Shakespearian romance, like The Tempest, or the Enchanted Island (1695). He also wrote the first English work that can properly be called opera. His Dido and Aeneas (1689) absorbed Italian influences into a dramatic fabric that was entirely English, and created the English taste for opera that Handel was to exploit 20 years later. Dido’s searing lament, “When I Am Laid in Earth,” is regarded by many as the greatest single contribution that the English ever made to western music.

Purcell excelled in many forms of music. He was arguably the greatest songwriter of his day, and he ranged easily from religious solemnity to theatrical bawdy. During his lifetime, he enjoyed vast popularity, but he appeared to be eclipsed shortly after his untimely death by Handel. It was only in the twentieth century that he was restored to his proper eminence. One of the last pieces that he wrote was Queen Mary’s Funeral Music (1695). The tragic intensity and curious modernity of this harrowing piece has made it a favorite of the later twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. With its dark cadences and its long drawn-out chordal suspensions, it seems to speak across time in a language that we understand perfectly. It was used to great effect by Stanley Kubrick in A Clockwork Orange (1971). David Bowie has used it to create an apocalyptic mood to open his shows. Its central section also can be clearly heard in the recurring organ figures of The Who’s “We Won’t Get Fooled Again.” Sadly, Queen Mary’s Funeral Music was played at Purcell’s own funeral at Westminster Abbey only ten months after he composed it.