Henry Purcell (1659 - 1695)

Full Anthems and Organ Music
Music on the Death of Queen Mary

We find it easy enough to accept that a Tchaikovsky or Mahler symphony is to some extent autobiographical, but with earlier music we assume that the composer's inner voice is likely to have been forestalled by the functional rôle that music inhabited in earlier centuries. In Henry Purcell's day, the job of a composer in the busy courts and churches of the Baroque was to provide a well-crafted commodity designed to compliment a patron, entertain him, or adorn a ceremony or liturgy with an appropriate musical setting-the day-to-day grind of fulfilling regular and significant obligations was not often conducive to self-motivated composition. Perhaps the sign of greatness in a Baroque composer is that in spite of the strictures of patronage the music communicates integrity, value, and individualism above and beyond the call of duty.

Purcell is one of very few comp