One point of similarity is that both had a lot to do with waves of that foreign music sweeping over Albion's shores. Purcell with all that French stuff which came flooding in with Charles II, Handel with, well, himself! - and the Italian opera craze as well.

Certainly if one were to call them the two greatest English Baroque composers one would perhaps not meet with too many contrary opinions. (And if one did one might gently point out that Handel spent more or less his entire life as a mature composer on the Septic Isle.)

tp I did not hear the programme you mention, but I would seriously question this one if  you mean he was what I would call a Roman Catholic.  His favourite royal patron was Queen Mary II (or at least his odes and funeral music for her are his most impressive royal commissions) and she was only Queen because her father, James II, had been forced to leave the country due to being a Roman Catholic.  In that sense he was clearly supporting the Protestant establishment.

It was a period when there was hysterical suspicion of Roman Catholicism, and I cannot imagine Purcell could have retained his position as organist of Westminster Abbey if there was the least possibility he was not a good Anglican.

However, there is an interesting comparison with Bach as regards the church texts they set.  (This probably only reflects the choice of text by their employers, but does indicate their religious milieu.)  Whereas there is a definite protestant tone to the text of Bach's arias (lots of personal devotion to Jesus), Purcell's church music as far as I know only set words of scripture and the services of the Church of England.

Well, he did write *quite* a lot of music.(by modern standards).  More would have been nice though!


I have to say that, while I haven't listened to his keyboard works, and I would probably be quite a lot more sensitive to them than what I'm to mention, that I find his chamber and general instrumental music to be much less interesting than his vocal music.  Maybe I need to work on that...

Maybe. I don't find his trio/quartet sonatas so very interesting, but the fantasies for viols certainly are (albeit, given that they were intended as compositional exercises by the young Purcell, based clearly on the styles of one or other of his predecessors) and there are some isolated littles masterpieces like the "Three parts on a ground" in D minor. The keyboard music is absolutely charming (if very shortwinded), consisting of eight suites and a few independent pieces. Some of the keyboard pieces are arrangements of vocal music. I would imagine they work much less well on the piano than Bach.

Okay, I agree with you here, I think, having managed to track down recordings of the harpsichord suites (Tilney) and Viol fantasies (Phantasm).    I'm going to have to head to the library to check out the harpsichord scores in person, because the pieces on the Tilney disk seem to have rather unusual/pathological/interesting melodic lines, and phrasing in general.  I'm not sure if it's an issue of my sensitivity to the texture that leaves me feeling so bored during the sonatas, or if it's maybe because I've been conditioned by my experience to think that some great vocal line is going to enter any minute.