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Henry Purcell (/ ˈ p ɜːr s əl /, rare: / p ər ˈ s ɛ l /; [n 1] c. 10 September 1659 [n 2] – 21 November 1695) was an English composer of Baroque music, most remembered for his more than 100 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.
Dido and Aeneas, from a Roman fresco, Pompeian Third Style (10 BC – 45 AD), Pompeii, Italy. Before Dido and Aeneas, Purcell had composed music for several stage works, including nine pieces for Nathaniel Lee's Theodosius, or The Force of Love (1680) and eight songs for Thomas d'Urfey's A Fool's Preferment (1688).
Purcell brings tension to the phrase with "hath but a short time to live", and the melody rises and falls with the words "he cometh up and is cut down like a flower". With "In the midst of life we are in death", an earlier setting of the fifth sentence, Purcell begins with a soprano part that is passed on to the choir.
Dido's Lament ("When I am laid in earth") is the closing aria from the opera Dido and Aeneas by Henry Purcell to a libretto by Nahum Tate. Dido's Lament chromatic fourth ground bass, measures 1–6 [1] It is included in many classical music textbooks to illustrate the descending chromatic fourth (passus duriusculus) in the ground bass.
In 1694, Thomas Betterton was given £50 to transform the play into an opera, and he commissioned Purcell to compose the music. [2] [3] Purcell, who died in November 1695, left music only for the Prologue and Acts II and III. His brother Daniel completed a masque for Act V. [4] The Indian Queen is one of Purcell's less often performed stage ...
Although he died aged only 27 he was highly influential on other English composers like William Turner (1651–1740), John Blow (1649–1708) and Henry Purcell (1659–95). [5] Early in his career Purcell wrote secular music, including for the theatre. Later, as organist of Westminster Abbey and the Chapel Royal, he devoted himself to sacred ...
As a court composer, Purcell was given the task of composing odes for the birthday of Queen Mary. Come, Ye Sons of Art, written for performance in April 1694, was the sixth and final ode: Queen Mary died at the end of that year. [2] 20th-century performances included the inaugural concert of the BBC Third Programme (the forerunner of Radio 3 ...
The Fairy-Queen (1692; Purcell catalogue number Z.629) is a semi-opera by Henry Purcell; a "Restoration spectacular". [1] The libretto is an anonymous adaptation of William Shakespeare's comedy A Midsummer Night's Dream. [2] First performed in 1692, The Fairy-Queen was composed three years before Purcell's death at the age of 35. Following his ...