The English Orpheus

Henry Purcell1659 – 1695

The Life · Essentials

Henry Purcell Facts

The essential facts about England’s greatest Baroque composer, plus a few that rarely make the textbooks.

By the HenryPurcell.com editors · Updated

In brief. Henry Purcell (c. 1659–1695) was an English Baroque composer and organist, born and buried in Westminster. He was organist of Westminster Abbey by about twenty, wrote Dido and Aeneas, served three monarchs and died at thirty-six. He is often called the greatest English composer before Elgar.

Purcell is one of those figures whose fame outruns the documents. We have hundreds of his compositions and only a few dozen facts about his life. Here are the ones worth knowing, the surprising ones, and a couple of popular “facts” that are not true at all.

The basics

  1. He was born in Westminster in 1659, probably in September. The exact date is unknown; 10 September is often given but cannot be proved.
  2. He died on 21 November 1695, aged 36, at his house in Dean’s Yard, in the shadow of Westminster Abbey. No cause of death was recorded. (More here.)
  3. He is buried in Westminster Abbey, beneath the site of the organ, in the north choir aisle.
  4. He worked for three courts in a row: Charles II, the Catholic James II, and then the Protestants William III and Mary II, surviving a revolution in between.
  5. He was a Chapel Royal choirboy, trained by Henry Cooke, then Pelham Humfrey, then John Blow.
  6. He became organist of Westminster Abbey around the age of 20, in 1679, succeeding his teacher Blow, who stepped aside for him.
  7. He married Frances around 1680. They had at least six children, but only two, Edward and Frances, survived childhood.
  8. His brother Daniel Purcell was also a composer. He finished Henry’s last semi-opera, The Indian Queen.

The music

  1. His best-known work is the opera Dido and Aeneas, first performed, as far as we know, at a girls’ boarding school in Chelsea in 1689.
  2. Dido and Aeneas lasts only about an hour. It is one of the shortest great operas in the repertoire.
  3. He wrote around 800 works. Scholars identify them by Z numbers, from the catalogue of the American musicologist Franklin B. Zimmerman, published in 1963.
  4. He set more English words than any composer of his time, and his setting of the language is still the benchmark for English song.
  5. He loved the ground bass, a short bass line repeated over and over. Dido’s Lament, Music for a While, the Evening Hymn and Sound the trumpet are all built on one.
  6. Most of his stage works aren’t true operas. King Arthur and The Fairy Queen are semi-operas, spoken plays with large musical scenes.
  7. The score of The Fairy Queen was lost for 200 years, until it turned up in the library of the Royal Academy of Music in the early 1900s.

The surprising ones

  1. He wrote filthy drinking songs. Purcell composed dozens of catches, rounds for men to sing in taverns, and many of their lyrics are bawdy enough that Victorian editors left them out or rewrote them.
  2. He was a singer as well as an organist. A 1692 report says he sang a countertenor solo, “with incredible graces,” in the first performance of his own ode Hail, bright Cecilia.
  3. He got into trouble over money at a coronation. In 1689 he sold seats in the Westminster Abbey organ loft to spectators at the coronation of William and Mary, and had to hand the money over.
  4. His funeral music for Queen Mary was played at his own funeral, eight months later.
  5. His music opens A Clockwork Orange. Wendy Carlos’s synthesiser version of the Queen Mary funeral march plays over Kubrick’s opening titles.
  6. Klaus Nomi and Sting have both recorded his Cold Song.
  7. His tune is the theme of Britten’s Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra. It is the Rondeau from his music for the play Abdelazer.
  8. His music is played at the Cenotaph every Remembrance Sunday. An arrangement of Dido’s Lament is part of the traditional music before the silence.

Two myths

  1. He did not write the famous Trumpet Voluntary. That is Jeremiah Clarke’s Prince of Denmark’s March. (The full story.)
  2. He almost certainly didn’t die of being locked out by his wife, or of poisoned chocolate. Both stories appeared long after his death. The likeliest cause is a long illness such as tuberculosis.

Questions people ask

What is Henry Purcell famous for?

Henry Purcell is famous as the greatest English composer of the Baroque era and one of the greatest English composers of all time. He is best known for the opera Dido and Aeneas and its lament ‘When I am laid in earth’, the semi-operas King Arthur and The Fairy Queen, the Music for the Funeral of Queen Mary, and the Rondeau from Abdelazer.

What is Henry Purcell’s most famous piece?

His most famous piece is Dido’s Lament, ‘When I am laid in earth’, from Dido and Aeneas (1689). Other very well-known works are the Rondeau from Abdelazer, the March from the Music for the Funeral of Queen Mary, Music for a While and the Cold Song from King Arthur.

Was Henry Purcell a Baroque composer?

Yes. Purcell (c. 1659–1695) lived in the middle of the Baroque period (roughly 1600–1750) and is its leading English composer. He was a generation older than Bach and Handel, who were both born in 1685.

What is a fun fact about Henry Purcell?

Purcell wrote dozens of catches, rounds for men to sing in taverns, many with lyrics so bawdy that Victorian editors refused to print them. The composer of England’s most solemn funeral music also wrote some of its rudest drinking songs.

How do you pronounce Purcell?

In British English it is usually pronounced PUR-sul, with the stress on the first syllable. The American pronunciation pur-SELL is also heard, but the first-syllable stress is generally regarded as correct for the composer.

Was Henry Purcell an English composer?

Yes. Purcell was born and died in Westminster, London, and spent his entire career in England, working for the English court, the Chapel Royal, Westminster Abbey and the London theatres.