91Èȱ¬

Henry Purcell was born in London in 1659 and probably never left the city. He spent most of his career working as organist at Westminster Abbey. Yet in his 36 years, he made a huge contribution to Britain's musical culture.

Perhaps one of England's greatest composers, he may well have been writing music when he was only 8-years-old and developed a mature compositional style very early on.

He is remembered particularly for his consummate skill in the fields of theatre music and opera, composing one of the earliest surviving examples of opera in the English language (Dido And Aeneas) as well as a vast quantity of sacred music, and numerous court odes and domestic songs.

Purcell began his musical life as a chorister in the Chapel Royal. Appointed Organist of Westminster Abbey at the age of only 19 (where, legend has it, his predecessor John Blow resigned in order to make way for what he considered a greater talent). By his mid-20s he was a prominent figure at the Chapel Royal, in the London theatre, and at court.

His frequent collaborator, the poet John Dryden, rightly believed that "in Purcell we have found an Englishman equal with the best abroad", and Benjamin Britten commented in 1945, "I had never realised before I met Purcell's music that words could be set with such ingenuity, with such colour".