Mourning Purcell

Abstract

The first several months of 1695 proved to be one of Henry Purcell’s most active and productive periods. For Drury Lane, he created the impressively varied set of incidental pieces for Abdelazer, the substantial masque of Cupid and Bacchus for Timon of Athens, and—though the date of the premiere is uncertain—most likely the full-blown semi-opera The Indian Queen too (save the music from the last act, later added by Daniel Purcell). The large-scale ode Who can from joy refrain?, noteworthy for its brilliant trumpet writing, flowed from his pen by 24 July, in time to celebrate the Duke of Gloucester’s sixth birthday. More privately, Purcell continued to arrange particular theatre songs for presumably more intimate performances in his autograph songbook (London, Guildhall Library, Ms. Safe 3). He also faced the substantial task, in March, as organist of Westminster Abbey, of presiding over the music for the state funeral of Mary II, who had succumbed to smallpox late in December 1694. Mary’s obsequies surely gripped all of London’s attention, and Bruce Wood’s sorting out of the various musics used for the processional and the service—including Purcell’s funeral sentence ‘Thou knowest, Lord’ and his instrumental march and canzona—suggests that significant coordination was required. (See Wood, ‘The first performance of Purcell’s funeral music for Queen Mary’, in Performing the music of Henry Purcell, ed. M. Burden (Oxford, 1996), pp.61–81.)