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1 Chapter 1 : Henry Purcell Biography, Songs, Music, & Facts blog.quintoapp.com This famous Henry Purcell operas list contains various bits of information, such as what language they were composed in and what genre the popular Henry Purcell opera falls under. There are a lot of well-known Henry Purcell operas out there so this list is a great way to learn about the ones you haven't heard of before. Switch to Russian This portrait of Purcell was published as the frontispiece to his Sonatas of III parts for 2 violins and bass with organ or harpsichord published in Engraving, presumably taken from a painting now lost. Many details of his life are still obscure: Whether it was, or, he was lucky to be born in the culminating point of English history, at the time of the restoration of the monarchy and the established Church after the Puritan Commonwealth period, when the government closed the theaters and outlawed Anglican worship. This period of English history, opening with the accession of King Charles II and lasting from until the end of XIIth century is regarded by many as the golden age of English music. He had a fine voice, was a skillful performer on the lute and played the organ in Westminster Abbey and of course became the first teacher of Henry Purcell junior. After the death of his father, Henry was taken under the protection of his Uncle Thomas, also a gentleman of the Chapel Royal. By his influence, Henry was admitted as one of the Children of the Chapel Royal. That time, at the age of eight, he wrote his first music. After his voice broke in he left the Chapel Royal. In the young composer became an organist for Westminster Abbey, where he had formerly been an organ tuner and had handwritten copies of organ music. In, appointed composer-in-ordinary for the Royal violins with public and official recognition, Purcell returned to Chapel Royal as an organist. His death at the age of 37 was obviously hastened by overwork. Purcell died in, most likely due to pneumonia. Henry Purcell began a new era in music. During the English history Restoration period, a very important time in English history, he did more then any other composer for music of the church, the theater, the concert room, and the chamber. At that time music was demanded to be more for eyes than for ears. In the Chapel Royal music was regarded as a entertainment at the same style, as the fashion which composed in the court. Purcell provided a number of verse anthems and full anthems for the liturgy. Traditionally, Purcell is regarded as the first English opera composer. His theater music in particular made his name familiar to many who knew nothing of his church music or the odes and welcome songs he wrote for the court. They are plays, in which the action is accompanied by incidental music. It sometimes provides scope for an overture, interlude, ballet airs, dances, but at the same time it allows scope for recitatives, vocal airs, duets, choruses. Only one work can be defined as an opera: Definitely, Purcell was the first among English composers who set the English language in song. Unlike Italian operas, the recitatives in his musical dramas gain the maximum effect when they are sung in strict time. Englishmen maybe more then any other nationality keeps the ritual impoertance in traditions and celebrations. This is why it is not a surprise, that Purcell, being a royal composer, wrote a number of Odes, Welcome Songs and incidental pieces for other celebration of royal occasion. He had a considerable quantity of solo songs and songs for two or more voices, combining vocal cantilena often male alto, tenor and bass with thorough instrumental bass. In pure instrumental music, the position of the composer is unique. Though he was an organist, he did not pay attention to writing for keyboard instruments, such as organ and harpsichord. For educational purposes he had written several suites for harpsichord solo, taking themes from popular theater tunes. But with string music â such as 12 sonatas in III parts and sets of fantasias for violin â his style is very close to contemporary Italian composers. Much of his instrumental music was written for practical purposes, as fantasias for string and orchestra, i. His string sonatas were neither advanced in technique nor served to display virtuosity. He also wrote some pieces for trumpet and violin, as Sonata in D major, which is still performed today. Purcell is often unfairly accused of luck of individuality. The very first of his works were written in old English style like that of Orlando Gibbons, William Byrd, etc. Like Lully, Purcell often used a vertical style of writing, in which each note of the melody is supported by a cord. Like Lully again, Purcell sometimes doubled voice part in the bass of his harmony. Following the example of Lully, Rossi, etc. Towards the latter half of the century a simpler form of work influenced by Italian composers supplanted instrumental music in several parts, in which the middle parts of Page 1

2 the musical texture, were replaced by music for keyboard. Purcell, above all, had a particular affection for this rhythm. Besides of being a master of word-setting â emphasizing more important words by music phrase construction, and being exceptionally accurate in the placement of accents, as his predecessors and contemporaries composers he used keys with remarkable consistency. Some of these â G minor for death, F minor for horror, witches and the like, F major and B flat major for pastoral scenes. Beyond these common effects Purcell often used C minor to depict melancholy, seriousness, mystery, or feeling of awe; E minor might be called his key of hate. And, of course such usual exigencies of performance like C and D major are often linked with triumph, ceremonies, reinforced by trumpets, which normally played in those keys. But even fair criticism can not diminish the role of Henry Purcell in both English and World music. Even staying near with such great his contemporaries as Bach and Handel he cannot be ranked as better or worse â he was different, he was irreplaceable in his time, in his country, in his culture. And he made a contribution to development of classical music. Page 2

3 Chapter 2 : List of Operas by Henry Purcell - blog.quintoapp.com The list of operas created by the composer Henry Purcell. In his father died and Henry went to live with his uncle, Thomas Purcell, who was very kind to him. Soon Henry was singing in the Chapel Royal. This was the best musical training a boy could have in England. Henry sang in the choir until his voice broke in Purcell may have been composing already when he was nine. When Humfrey died Purcell studied with the famous composer John Blow. He went to Westminster School. In he was made organist at Westminster Abbey. He started writing music for the theatre. He also wrote church music, including an anthem for a singer called John Gostling who had a very good, deep bass voice. Purcell wrote several anthems for him during his life. One is called "They that go down to the sea in ships". It goes down to a low D. Another portrait of Henry Purcell Later career and death[ change change source ] In, Blow, who had been made organist of Westminster Abbey in, resigned so that the years-old Purcell could have his job. Purcell then spent the next six years just writing sacred religious music. Later he went back to writing music for the theatre, including the first English opera Dido and Aeneas. In Purcell became organist of the Chapel Royal. He did this job as well as being organist at Westminster Abbey. His first printed composition, Twelve Sonatas, was published in Music printing was expensive in those days, so it was unusual to have something printed. He continued to write music including odes to the king and royal family. In, he wrote two of his finest anthems, "I was glad" and "My heart is inditing", for the coronation of King James II. In he wrote more theatre music. Sometimes this music was for masques a kind of ballet with some singing as well, sometimes it was music for tragedies, e. In, he wrote King Arthur, also written by Dryden. In these works the characters in the plays do not sing, they speak their lines. Death[ change change source ] He was very famous when he died in, possibly from tuberculosis. His wife and two of his six children survived him. Purcell is buried next to the organ in Westminster Abbey. His epitaph reads, "Here lyes Henry Purcell Esq. Before the Restoration Oliver Cromwell had been ruling England for nearly 20 years. Most music had been banned. People were therefore very glad to be able to make music again, and they wanted lots of songs and instrumental music in their plays. Opera, however, was not wanted. In Europe opera was very popular in countries such as Italy, Germany and France, but it did not become popular in England until Handel came to England in and introduced Italian opera. Dido and Aeneas is an exception because it is a real opera: It is quite short, lasting just one hour. It contains the famous lament When I am laid in earth sung by Dido. Purcell wrote a very large amount of music for the church. This includes anthems and service settings. Although he was an organist he wrote very little for organ. He wrote chamber music, including some very beautiful fantasias for viols. Influence[ change change source ] Although Purcell was recognized as a great composer at the time he did not have much influence on other composers after his death. He was the last in a line of great English musicians in the 16th and 17th centuries. After his death English music was not as important as it had been. In the 18th century the music heard in England was largely imported from the continent, e. Page 3

4 Chapter 3 : Henry Purcell - Simple English Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Henry Purcell (/ ˈ p ÉœË r s É l / or / p ÉœË r ˈ s É l /; c. 10 September - 21 November ) was an English composer. Although incorporating Italian and French stylistic elements into his compositions, Purcell's legacy was a uniquely English form of Baroque music. Why is he not performed more often today? It largely comes down to a question of style. He belongs to the generation before Bach, Handel, Vivaldi and Telemann: He emulated the prevailing French and Italian styles of Lully and Corelli when it suited him, but always retained a distinctive Englishness in the folk-like quality of his best tunes and a seriousness, bordering on sadness, which pervades much of his music. He was also unfortunate to have pumped his best music into plays and so-called semi-operas, which are not realisable today as originally intended. Further impeding universal popularity, Purcell did not write any all-purpose ceremonial music like Handel, or flamboyantly virtuoso music like Vivaldi. Then there is the virtual absence of the man himself â only a few scant biographical details and no sharply defined character on which to hang a huge and diverse output. Any Purcell biographer has to fill out the story with social and political history, so few are the hard facts documenting his brief year existence. He certainly lived in exciting times, so much so that no-one bothered to write much about a mere musical genius. Purcell was born into a family of court musicians the year before Charles II was invited to restore the monarchy. The Restoration was a time of new theatres, a new court orchestra and a new Chapel Royal with the brightest crop of new boys ever known: Their teacher was the kindly Captain Cooke and, outside the Chapel, Purcell came under the influence of the worldly and slightly mad Matthew Locke who introduced him to the delights of the theatre and prepared him for the realities of working as a musician in London. In the s, when he was spectacularly realising his early promise, the pattern of his work was composing anthems and service music for the Abbey and the Chapel Royal. Altogether more extrovert were the one-off odes, royal welcome and birthday songs. When off duty, he studied the old consort music of Byrd and Gibbons and wrote a collection of the finest of all viol fantasias for private performance and, one assumes, his own edification. He also ventured into print with a set of Italianate sonatas for two violins and bass. Purcell perfectly preserved natural speech patterns, even when the music is highly decorated. His songs can be divided into two categories. The Chapel Royal had suffered less than one might expect under the Roman Catholic regime, but Queen Mary breathed new life into the arts, becoming a patron like no other Purcell ever knew. The odes he wrote for her birthdays include some of his best music. From, when he was 31 years old, until the day he died, Purcell produced a huge amount of music of the highest quality. All his major stage works fall within this time, as do the Queen Mary odes, Hail, bright Cecilia, the huge collection of hymns and religious dialogues called Harmonia sacra, the theatre suites and a flood of individual vocal pieces for all occasions, collected and published posthumously as Orpheus Britannicus, the alpha and omega of English song. These are elaborately staged plays with extensive incidental music, masques, pageants and ballet sequences. Though featuring some great music, they are rarely revived. Luckily, what may be lacking in the semi-operas is more than made up for by Dido and Aeneas. Closely following Virgil, Purcell and his librettist have Aeneas abandon his lover Dido to fulfill divine destiny. If there was ever a reason as to why Purcell should not be forgotten, it is to be found in the concise and poignant expressions of Dido â a true, epic opera reduced to the human level. Page 4

5 Chapter 4 : Henry Purcell blog.quintoapp.com Henry Purcell, (born c., London, Englandâ died November 21,, London), English composer of the middle Baroque period, most remembered for his more than songs; a tragic opera, Dido and Aeneas; and his incidental music to a version of Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream called The Fairy Queen. See Article History Henry Purcell, born c. Purcell, the most important English composer of his time, composed music covering a wide field: In all these branches of composition he showed an obvious admiration for the past combined with a willingness to learn from the present, particularly from his contemporaries in Italy. With alertness of mind went an individual inventiveness that marked him as the most original English composer of his time as well as one of the most original in Europe. His father was a gentleman of the Chapel Royal, in which musicians for the royal service were trained, and the son received his earliest education there as a chorister. From to he tuned the organ at Westminster Abbey and was employed there in â 76 to copy organ parts of anthems. A further appointment as one of the three organists of the Chapel Royal followed in He married in or and had at least six children, three of whom died in infancy. Purcell seems to have spent all his life in Westminster. Daniel Purcell had also been brought up as a chorister in the Chapel Royal and was organist of Magdalen College, Oxford, from to The nine four-part fantasias all bear dates in the summer of, and the others can hardly be later. Purcell was here reviving a form of music that was already out of date and doing it with the skill of a veteran. Probably about the same time he started to work on a more fashionable type of instrumental musicâ a series of sonatas for two violins, bass viol, and organ or harpsichord. Twelve of these were published in, with a dedication to Charles II, and a further nine, together with a chaconne for the same combination, were issued by his widow in Possibly he lacked experience in writing for voices, at any rate on the scale required for works of this kind; or else he had not yet achieved the art of cloaking insipid words in significant music. By he had acquired a surer touch, and from that time until, when he wrote the last of his birthday odes for Queen Mary, he produced a series of compositions for the court in which the vitality of the music makes it easy to ignore the poverty of the words. The same qualities are apparent in the last of his odes for St. Most of his theatre music consists simply of instrumental music and songs interpolated into spoken drama, though occasionally there were opportunities for more extended musical scenes. From that time until his death, he was constantly employed in writing music for the public theatres. In these works Purcell showed not only a lively sense of comedy but also a gift of passionate musical expression that is often more exalted than the words. The tendency to identify himself still more closely with the Italian style is very noticeable in the later dramatic works, which often demand considerable agility from the soloists. Some of his church music may be earlier than that, but it is not possible to assign definite dates. The decline of the Chapel Royal during the reigns of James II and of William and Mary may have been responsible for the comparatively few works he produced during that period, or, alternatively, he may have been so busy with stage music and odes that he had little time or inclination for church music. The style of his full anthems, like that of the fantasias, shows a great respect for older traditions. His verse anthems, on the other hand, were obviously influenced, in the first instance, by his master at the Chapel Royal, Pelham Humfrey, who had acquired a knowledge of Continental styles when he was sent abroad to study in the mids. The most notable feature of these latter works is the use of expressive vocal declamation that is pathetic without being mawkish. The same characteristics appear in the sacred songs he wrote for private performance. Of these the anthem is the more impressive; the Te Deum and Jubilate suffers on the whole from a forced brilliance that seems to have faded with the passage of time. Many of the songs are quite substantial pieces, incorporating recitative and arias on the lines of the Italian solo cantata. A favourite device used widely by Purcell in his secular music, though rarely in his anthems, was the ground bass a short melodic phrase repeated over and over again as a bass line, with varying music for the upper parts. The chaconne in the second set of sonatas uses the same technique with impressive results. Works of this kind represent the composer at the height of his capacity. Purcell seems to have abandoned instrumental chamber music after his early years. His keyboard music forms an even smaller part of his work: After his death his widow published a collection of his harpsichord pieces, Page 5

6 instrumental music for the theatre, and the Te Deum and Jubilate ; and the publisher Henry Playford issued a two-volume collection of songs titled Orpheus Britannicus and, which went through three editions, last appearing at midth century. The first volume was published in, the second in From to volumes appeared at intervals. Then the scheme was in abeyance until, when a volume of miscellaneous odes and cantatas was published. It was finally completed in 32 volumes in Revision of earlier volumes proceeded simultaneously with the issue of later ones, beginning with a revised edition of Dioclesian in Page 6

7 Chapter 5 : Henry Purcellâ s Dido and Aeneas in Text and Music HENRY PURCELL ( - ) Henry Purcell was one of the greatest English composers, flourishing in the period that followed the restoration of the monarchy after the Puritan Commonwealth period. In all his works he achieved a happy merger of English traditional styles with the new baroque principles from Italy. Henry Purcell was probably born in Westminster, then a city separate from London. His parents lived in Great Almonry near the abbey, until his father died in, at which time the family removed to nearby Tothill Street South. Young Henry was adopted by his uncle Thomas Purcell. The earliest official document bearing his name is the royal warrant for his dismissal from the Chapel Royal choir, dated Dec. In the Westminster School rolls a Henry Purcell, very likely the composer, is named as a scholar. He also was paid small amounts as a copyist and for tuning the organ at the abbey. In, upon the death of Matthew Locke, Purcell became a member of the Chapel Royal as composer-in-ordinary for the violins and in succeeded John Blow as organist at the abbey. Shortly thereafter Purcell married Frances? Peters, who bore him six children, only two of whom survived infancy. In he set a beautiful and moving elegy to Matthew Locke "Gentle Shepherds, ye that know" for which he may also have written the text. By the end of he finished not only almost all the elegant, deeply expressive fantasias and innomines but many of the trio sonatas and early songs as well. The following year, perhaps merely as a formality, Purcell was required to take the sacrament of the Church of England in public, an event which may point to some suspicion that he had Papist sympathies. Purcell was commissioned to supply music for the coronation ceremonies of William and Mary, which took place on April 11, Purcell began the new trend in with the opera Dido and Aeneas, which contains the moving lament "When I am laid in earth. Purcell died while composing The Indian Queen in, and his brother Daniel was asked to write the additional act. Westrup, Purcell, which provides a concise and perceptive account of the man and his music. Zimmerman, two volumes of which have been published: His Life and Times An Analytical Catalogue of His Works Moore, Henry Purcell and the Restoration Theatre, which combines literary and musical insights in a fascinating study. Oxford University Press, Duffy, Maureen, Henry Purcell, London: Dupre, Henri, Purcell, New York: Thames and Hudson, University of Pennsylvania Press, Encyclopedia of World Biography. Copyright The Gale Group, Inc. Chapter 6 : Henry Purcell's Operas - Michael Burden - Oxford University Press Born in, Henry Purcell was the finest and most original composer of his day. Though he was to live a very short life (he died in ) he was able to enjoy and make full use of the renewed flowering of music after the Restoration of the Monarchy. Chapter 7 : Purcell's Works: Purcell's Works (Operas and Semi-Operas) Purcell's Works: Purcell's Works (Operas and Semi-Operas) Dido and Aeneas. Dioclesian. King Arthur. Opera () Dido and Aeneas [N Tate] Z/1: Overture-Act Chapter 8 : Purcell - Composers - Classic FM Composer Henry Purcell ()'s first opera and one of the earliest English operas, Dido and Aeneas was written around and premiered shortly after at the Josias Priest Girls School in London. Chapter 9 : Famous Henry Purcell Operas List of Popular Operas by Henry Purcell In the dedication of Henry Purcell's opera, Dioclesian, to the Duke of Somerset, he declared, "As Poetry is the harmony of Words, so Music is that of Notes; and as Poetry is a rise above Prose and Oratory, so is Music the exaltation of Page 7

8 Poetry. Page 8