- markable, since he worked with equal power in stately and
thoughtful church music, in festal odes and tributes, in purely chamber music, and in every grade of opera. The culmination of his dramatic efforts came when he was joined by Dryden as a poetic collaborateur. Even before he died, his superiority was well discerned, while now he appears as one of the most creative geniuses of the century. It is a tragedy of history that his career was not only so short, but so utterly devoid of consequence. After him no native English writer appeared to fill his place or continue his work.
Pelham Humphrey (d. 1674, aged 27) was a choirboy in the Chapel Royal
when it was organized afresh in 1660, and wrote anthems before he was 17.
In 1664 the king sent him to France, where he was a pupil of Lully. In 1666
he reëntered the Chapel for a year, and in 1672 became choirmaster, with the
title of composer as well. His compositions include 25 anthems and many
songs, some written for the masque The Tempest (1667). In these appears
that taste for declamatory passages which suggests his latent operatic talent.
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Henry Purcell
Henry Purcell (d. 1695, aged 37), the most famous of a musical family, early
left an orphan, became a choirboy in the Chapel Royal, first under Cooke,
then under Humphrey, later studying
also with Blow.
His evident genius led
in 1675 to his setting a play by Tate
(later poet-laureate), and its success
encouraged him to put forth songs and
musical dramas in quick succession.
In 1680 he became organist at Westminster
and in 1682 also at the Chapel,
turning his attention for a time to anthems,
chamber music and numerous
festal odes. His compositions include,
besides 3 services and at least 100
anthems, a great number of solo and
other songs and some good chamber
pieces, almost 40 dramatic works,
both masques or plays with incidental
music and full operas, of which King
Arthur (1691) is chief. The number
of important poets who furnished texts
is extraordinary, including Shadwell,
Tate, Beaumont and Fletcher, Congreve, D'Urfey and Dryden, and the versatile
instinct with which he supplied settings for their varied plays shows a
dramatic artist of the first order. While claiming that his wish was to introduce
the "seriousness and gravity" of "the most famed Italian masters,"
and catching from the French also a taste for dances, he contributed powerful
ideas peculiar to himself.
