HenryPurcell.com is an independent, non-commercial guide to the life and music of Henry Purcell (c. 1659–1695). It is written for listeners: people who have heard Dido’s Lament at a funeral, the Rondeau in a school concert or the Cold Song in a club, and want to know where it came from.
We are not affiliated with any orchestra, record label, publisher, university or institution, and we do not accept payment for recommendations.
How we write
Purcell is a historian’s nightmare. The documents about his life are scarce, much of his music survives only in later copies, and a lot of what gets repeated about him, online and off, is legend. We try to separate the two. Where the facts are uncertain, such as his birth date, the date of Dido and Aeneas or the cause of his death, we say so. Where a story is a myth, such as the Trumpet Voluntary or the locked door, we explain where it came from.
Quotations from Purcell’s own time are taken from printed and documentary sources of the period. Song texts quoted in full, by Nahum Tate and John Dryden, are in the public domain.
Sources
Our main sources are the standard reference works and scholarship on Purcell, including the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Grove Music Online, Franklin B. Zimmerman’s catalogue and biography, the Purcell Society Edition, and the work of historians such as Peter Holman, Curtis Price and Bruce Wood. For scores, IMSLP (the Petrucci Music Library) has free editions of much of his music.
Corrections
If you spot an error, we want to know. Accuracy matters more to us than anything else on the site.
The portrait
The portrait of Purcell used across the site is attributed to John Closterman, c. 1695, in the National Portrait Gallery, London (NPG 1352). It is in the public domain.