Purcell’s style

French and Italian In his string writing, Purcell shows familiarity with direct, florid Italian style. The elegant features of the French, with its characteristic dotted rhythms, were also part of his palette, particularly in overtures and dances – which no doubt satisfied Charles II’S demand for ‘something he could tap his foot to’! ‘We have found an Englishman equal with the best abroad,’ wrote playwright John Dryden (pictured below).

Ground bass Purcell set some of his most exquisite melodies over a ground bass – the repeated notepattern so effective in songs such ‘When I am laid in earth’ and ‘Music for a while’. Henry Playford, who published Volume One of Purcell’s Orpheus Britannicus, noted the composer’s ‘particular genius to express the energy of English words, whereby he mov’d the passions’. Popular touch Purcell’s music found fans in the streets and fairs with ‘hit tunes’ such as If love’s a sweet passion named on the penny broadsheets sold by rough-singing pedlars. Others became popular country dances, while his bawdy, ingenious catches had wide appeal. In consort In his Fantasias for viol consort Purcell was writing for a medium that was virtually obsolete in his day; but the reedy, homogenous sound offered scope for personal invention, mixing counterpoint and chromaticism with dissonances.