page_title: Henry Purcell
section_title: Influence and reputation
hierarchical_section_title: Henry Purcell / Influence and reputation
caption_attribution_description: English: This sculpture, located in a small park at the corner of Victoria St. and Broadway in Westminster, London, is called "The Flowering of the English Baroque" by Glynn Williams, and was erected in 1994. It's a memorial to Henry Purcell commissioned by the Westminster City Council. The engraving (illegible in this photo) reads "HENRY PURCELL 1659 - 1695". Various modifications to try to deal with low quality of original photo (downscaling, sharpening, reduced saturation), but we really need a better photo of this sculpture.
context_page_description: Henry Purcell was an English composer. Although it incorporated Italian and French stylistic elements, Purcell's was a uniquely English form of Baroque music. He is generally considered to be one of the greatest English composers; no later native-born English composer approached his fame until Edward Elgar, Ralph Vaughan Williams, William Walton and Benjamin Britten in the 20th century.
context_section_description: After his death, Purcell was honoured by many of his contemporaries, including his old friend John Blow, who wrote An Ode, on the Death of Mr. Henry Purcell (Mark how the lark and linnet sing) with text by his old collaborator, John Dryden. William Croft's 1724 setting for the Burial Service, was written in the style of "the great Master". Croft preserved Purcell's setting of "Thou knowest Lord" (Z 58) in his service, for reasons "obvious to any artist"; it has been sung at every British state funeral ever since. More recently, the English poet Gerard Manley Hopkins wrote a famous sonnet entitled simply "Henry Purcell", with a headnote reading: "The poet wishes well to the divine genius of Purcell and praises him that, whereas other musicians have given utterance to the moods of man's mind, he has, beyond that, uttered in notes the very make and species of man as created both in him and in all men generally."
  Purcell also had a strong influence on the composers of the English musical renaissance of the early 20th century, most notably Benjamin Britten, who arranged many of Purcell's vocal works for voice(s) and piano in Britten's Purcell Realizations, including from Dido and Aeneas, and whose The Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra is based on a theme from Purcell's Abdelazar. Stylistically, the aria "I know a bank" from Britten's opera A Midsummer Night's Dream is clearly inspired by Purcell's aria "Sweeter than Roses", which Purcell originally wrote as part of incidental music to Richard Norton's Pausanias, the Betrayer of His Country.
  Purcell is honoured together with Johann Sebastian Bach and George Frideric Handel with a feast day on the liturgical calendar of the Episcopal Church (USA) on 28 July. In a 1940 interview Ignaz Friedman stated that he considered Purcell as great as Bach and Beethoven. In Victoria Street, Westminster, England, there is a bronze monument to Purcell, sculpted by Glynn Williams and erected in 1994.
  Purcell's works have been catalogued by Franklin Zimmerman, who gave them a number preceded by Z.
  A Purcell Club was founded in London in 1836 for promoting the performance of his music, but was dissolved in 1863. In 1876 a Purcell Society was founded, which published new editions of his works. A modern-day Purcell Club has been created, and provides guided tours and concerts in support of Westminster Abbey.
  Today there is a Henry Purcell Society of Boston, which performs his music in live concert and currently is online streaming concerts, in response to the pandemic. There is a Purcell Society in London, which collects and studies Purcell manuscripts and musical scores, concentrating on producing revised versions of the scores of all his music.
  So strong was his reputation that a popular wedding processional was incorrectly attributed to Purcell for many years. The so-called Purcell's Trumpet Voluntary was in fact written around 1700 by a British composer named Jeremiah Clarke as the Prince of Denmark's March.
caption: "The Flowering of the English Baroque", bronze memorial sculpture by Glynn Williams in a small park on Victoria St, Westminster.
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