Henry Purcell
by Maureen Duffy
Category: 1659-1695

"Henry Purcell set to music an entire age. Endlessly resourceful and dazzlingly innovatory, Purcell's music instantly evokes the energy and confidence of Restoration England. The age of Pepys and Dryden--of elegance, wit, and boundless creativity--gave birth to an audacious new theatre and, in Purcell's operas, to a new musical form. It was also an age of violence and suspicion. In the decade before Purcell's birth the people had executed their king. Treason was no longer unthinkable. Popish plots, coup attempts, invasion scares, international double-dealing... England seethed with conspiracies, real and imagined. Purcell, court musician to three reigns, was forced to tread a delicate path between the opposing factions. A working musician, Purcell was organist and harpsichordist as well as composer; tuner and repairer as well as performer. He also wrote music for every conceivable occasion: for the Church and for the theatre, for the chamber and for the great occasions of State. Purcell moved easily through the echelons of London society: from the quiet of the chapel royal to the raucous taverns. King and courtiers, actresses and innkeepers, tradesmen and artist... Purcell knew all the characters that comprised the constant flux of London life. Maureen Duffy, unsurpassed in her treatment of the modern capital city, now captures the sights, sounds and the flavour of a very different London. New documentary evidence, gleaned from a scrupulous investigation of original documents and sources, together with a novelist's instincts have enabled her to create the most vivid and illuminating portrait yet of England's greatest--and most elusive--composer." --Dust jacket.