Henry Purcell

The English composer Henry Purcell was born in London in 1659. Purcell developed his own distinctive style in the mixing of instrumental, solo vocal and choral music, but it was the vocal aspect of his work that proved most lastingly influential.

Purcell’s only opera, Dido and Aeneas, was composed to a libretto by Nahum Tate, and first performed in Chelsea in 1689. In Dido’s lament, “When I am laid in earth,” the music fuses perfectly with the words to express the character’s resignation. Purcell and Tate were drawing on their knowledge of Italian opera, with its customary use of lament as climax.

John Playford, the most prominent music publisher of that day, wrote in 1698 of Purcell, who was at that point just three years dead, that he was “especially admired for … having a peculiar genius to express the energy of English words, whereby he moved the passions of all his auditors.”