Henry Purcell – the greatest musical genius these islands have ever produced

My wife was due to sing in our church choir recently and needed to listen to Purcell’s “My Heart is Inditing”, which contains some tricky entries. As the piece busts iTunes 10-minute rule for buying single tracks, we downloaded a whole double compilation album of the composer’s work, and I’ve been listening to almost nothing else since.

I’d heard lots of Purcell’s music over the years without necessarily being aware that he was the composer. For instance, I was surprised to discover in my thirties that Britten’s Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra was based on Purcell’s "Rondo" from Abdelazer, and it took  years from my slow-moving brain to register the fact that the extraordinarily moving Funeral Music for Queen Mary used in A Clockwork Orange (see the video at the top of this post) was another Purcell composition.

It was after buying a CD of Dido and Aeneas during one of my periodic bouts of discovering classical music about fifteen years ago that I began to appreciate just what a towering, glorious genius the man was – for instance, the heart-rending "Dido’s Lament" (“When I am Laid in Earth”) is one of the greatest arias in all opera:

We even have Purcell to thank for the BBC World Service signature tune, "Lillibullero" – okay, he probably pinched his “A New Irish Tune” from elsewhere, but, without him, we probably wouldn’t know it today.

Purcell's highlights are seemingly endless: the wonderful fanfare of human voices in “Blow up the Trumpet in Sion”; “Ode for St Cecilia's Day”; “In Our Deep Vaulted Cell” ("The Echo Dance" or "Dance of the Furies"); and an apparently famous piece I only heard for the first time yesterday, the extraordinary “Cold Song” from the semi-opera, King Arthur:

For some odd reason, I resisted Baroque music until my early forties, but I’m slowly catching up, and I’m now happy to agree with those who believe Bach to be the greatest composer who ever lived, and that Purcell is the greatest composer these islands have ever produced.

The Great Man died at the height of his considerable fame in 1695 at the age of 36, and his genius has hardly gone unrecognised here or abroad since – for instance, he shares, with Bach and Handel, the honour of a feast day in the liturgical calendar of the American Episcopal Church. What’s odd is that it would be another two centuries before the emergence of another truly great English composer in the form of Elgar.  

If you’re a Purcell enthusiast, or a classical music aficianado, I apologise for wasting your time (and for being so ignorant). If, on the other hand, you’d like to hear more of the Purcell’s sublime music, I strongly recommend The Classical Guide to Purcell, released in 2008 by Warner Classics, and a snip at just £4.99 on iTunes.