A widespread belief holds that history ultimately favors creative and original artists, even if they failed to receive recognition during their lifetimes. The British singer-songwriter Nick Drake (1948–1974), whose fame emerged primarily after his untimely death, described this belated recognition — and perhaps even prophesied his own story — in his song 'Fruit Tree': “Fame is but a fruit tree, so very unsound, it can never flourish till its stock is in the ground; so men of fame can never find a way till time has flown far from their dying day... Protected by your place in the past, they’ll know at last.” This inherently Romantic notion may well encourage young artists to create work that is not “pandering,” as they do not expect immediate public appreciation. At the same time, this prevalent idea is not without a trace of determinism, and it overlooks the complex processes that shape an artist’s legacy and public afterlife — as well as the agency of those who control access to, or rights over, the artist’s oeuvre. The study of the reception of artists and musicians in recent decades offers ample evidence that the fruit tree’s flourishing — to borrow Drake’s metaphor — depends not only on the trunk being buried in the soil, but also on the soil’s quality, the weather, the rainfall, and, often, the presence of a faithful gardener.
The reception of the composer Henry Purcell (1659–1695), which is the focus of this article, offers a complex case study from which broader insights can be drawn about the shaping forces behind posthumous recognition. Although Purcell was regarded in his lifetime as a successful and important composer, I argue that the efforts of two of his admirers succeeded in elevating his memory into the realm of myth during the first decade after his death, presenting him as a kind of “British Orpheus” — a distinction not afforded to most of his contemporaries. This article examines the actions of Purcell’s widow, Frances Purcell (d. 1706), and of Henry Playford (1657–1709), the publisher with whom Purcell worked closely in his final years. I suggest that their attempts to locate lost manuscripts and their editorial decisions concerning the posthumous publication of his works played a crucial, and perhaps even intentional, role in constructing Purcell’s image for posterity. The early posthumous shaping of Purcell’s legacy — a process that contemporary discourse might describe as branding — offers insight into the mechanisms by which a historical figure is translated into the realm of cultural mythology. This translation can be broken down into discrete, tangible actions: estate management, publishing strategies, biographical framing, and the adoption of symbolic identifiers. A close analysis of these actions can inform our broader understanding of how historical memory is crafted, particularly in the case of composers and creative artists. For scholars of Purcell’s music, understanding this formative period is essential for assessing the authority of various sources and, by extension, for producing critical editions of his works.
Henry Purcell occupies a unique position in English cultural history. He has held a central place in English musical historiography ever since the monumental histories of John Hawkins (1719–1789) and Charles Burney (1726–1814), published in the 1770s. Purcell was never wholly forgotten, nor did he undergo a process of “rediscovery.” Some of his compositions — including the so-called Golden Sonata, the opera King Arthur, and various sacred works — were reprinted multiple times throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and remained in active performance.
During the nineteenth century, Purcell’s output was increasingly perceived as exceptional in comparison to his Restoration-era contemporaries. In fact, it appears that nineteenth-century advocates sought to “relocate” Purcell by more than half a century — back into the Elizabethan Golden Age, the era of Byrd, Morley, and Dowland. The Musical Antiquarian Society, founded in 1840, helped shape the emerging canon of national English music by publishing a nineteen-volume series of works by twelve early English composers — all but one of whom were born in the sixteenth century. The youngest among them, John Hilton, was born in 1599 — sixty years before Purcell. Despite being chronologically separate from the others, Purcell was allotted no fewer than four volumes in the series, underscoring his perceived centrality to the English tradition.
From the late nineteenth century onward, Purcell’s importance to the broader history of European music gained increasing recognition. Leading twentieth-century composers — including Stravinsky, Poulenc, and above all Britten — praised him both in word and in music. Today, Purcell’s works are performed worldwide; his operas are standard repertoire in major opera houses; and his music is featured in the soundtracks of major films.
What accounts for such an exceptional and continuous reception, spanning a period that saw dramatic shifts in public taste, prevailing conceptions of music and creativity, the structure of British society, and of course, the changing political agendas throughout the rise and decline of the British Empire? In her overview of the reception of Purcell and the study of that reception, Rebecca Herissone offers no fewer than four factors—each under Purcell’s control during his lifetime—that may explain his success for a certain period following his death: his rapid adaptation to the new cultural and economic conditions in 1690s London; his shift of creative focus from personal patronage by aristocrats and royalty to the commercial market; the publication of works in genres that were enjoying a commercial boom and thus continued to ride the wave of success after his death; and the high profile of his work (particularly in the theatre) in those years, which amplified the sense of loss and tragedy surrounding his premature death at the age of 36.
These four factors may explain why some of Purcell’s works continued to appeal to the English public in the early decades of the 18th century, but they do not account for how his image as a paradigmatic composer of the past endured, for more than three centuries, through the dramatic social, economic, and cultural changes that Britain experienced after his death. Indeed, the tireless print and publishing efforts of the widow Frances Purcell and of Henry Playford until the widow’s death—between 1696 and 1706—are also mentioned by Herissone as a significant factor. However, I believe this aspect deserves separate consideration, precisely because it took place after the composer’s death and was therefore beyond his control. The publishing process, though carried out in real time and likely driven by the pragmatic profit motives of both parties involved, brought about a deep change in the way Purcell (and perhaps composers in general) was perceived by English society. Soon, the image of Henry Purcell shifted from that of a talented and successful young man who had died prematurely to that of a mythic figure—“the British Orpheus”—whose long shadow would loom over English composers for centuries to come. Just as he was regarded as an innovator in life, so in death Purcell proved ahead of his time: his mythic persona became a national symbol in a way reminiscent of the “national” composers of the 19th century—Mikhail Glinka in Russia, Giuseppe Verdi in Italy, or Bedřich Smetana in Bohemia.
Henry Purcell lived in a time of great historical and cultural change in England in general, and in London in particular. As an infant, he witnessed the restoration of the English monarchy under Charles II, who was then succeeded by his Catholic brother, James II, and later, in the Glorious Revolution of 1688, by the Protestant monarchs William III and Mary II. The reorganization of the Chapel Royal after years without a monarch, the adoption of French musical taste at Charles’s court, the shifting financial status of the royal household, and changes in the employment of musical personnel with the succession of monarchs—all these had direct impacts on Purcell’s professional life, from his childhood as a choirboy in the Chapel Royal, through his role as apprentice keeper of royal instruments, to his later position as an established court composer. The sudden death of Queen Mary II in late December 1694 brought about a significant reduction in royal musical patronage. By that time, however, Purcell (who in any case did not outlive the queen by much) had already shifted the center of his activity to the theatre.
Indeed, no less dramatic changes were taking place in the world of English theatre at that time. In 1694, the London theatre company known as the United Company faced an existential crisis due to a conflict between its leading actors and management. After the period of mourning for the queen, this conflict reached a point of no return, and the company split into two competing troupes—the departing actors settled in the Lincoln’s Inn Fields Theatre, while the parent company, operating under royal patent (The Patent Company), continued to stage productions at its two venues, Drury Lane and Dorset Garden. The companies were locked in fierce competition. Grand productions of the kind that had built Purcell’s theatrical reputation—The Prophetess (1690), King Arthur (1691), and The Fairy Queen (1692)—were now beyond the financial and logistical capabilities of either troupe.
Alongside the changes in court and on the theatrical stage, this was also a time when new methods were being devised for how composers and publishers used the printing press to disseminate their works and shape their public personas. John Playford (1623–1687), Henry Playford’s father, entered the field of music printing in the early 1650s and adopted a novel publishing strategy, distinct from the practices of early 17th-century England: he shifted focus from publishing volumes dedicated to the works of a single composer to anthologies featuring pieces by several composers, and he aimed to produce inexpensive, accessible editions that would generate profit from multiple sales to the general public, rather than rely on a single patron’s fee for a dedication. His song collections catered to a broad audience of amateur musicians and were financially successful, leading to further volumes and the flourishing of his publishing house. Playford’s treatise An Introduction to the Skill of Music (1654) was designed to educate and support this same amateur audience, and clearly fulfilled a growing demand in English society—it was printed in no fewer than 19 editions by 1730.
The young Purcell operated within this same publishing system—first with John Playford and, after his death, with his son Henry. Purcell began publishing his songs in the Playford family’s anthologies in the late 1670s and continued to contribute both as a composer and as editor of collected volumes. Notably, he authored an important theoretical treatise titled 'A Brief Introduction to the Art of Descant: Or, Composing in Two, Three, Four, or More Parts', which was included from the twelfth edition onward of An Introduction to the Skill of Music.
Nevertheless, not long after his works began to appear in Playford’s anthologies, Purcell began to adopt an ambitious and individual approach to print publication, investing both effort and money in producing music books devoted exclusively to his own compositions. Following the revolution initiated by John Playford Sr., the publication of single-composer volumes was generally considered a commercial risk. This type of publication was typically associated with immigrant composers or relatively unknown musicians who relied on teaching for their livelihood and sought to showcase their abilities in hopes of attracting students.
Purcell’s first two publications of this kind—Sonnata’s of III Parts in the Italian style (1683) and his Ode for St. Cecilia’s Day (1684)—were groundbreaking. The sonata book was intended as a calling card: engraved in high-quality technique, it featured a portrait of the young composer, a title page listing the royal appointments he had recently received, and music reflecting the latest continental fashions. In the preface, Purcell explicitly stated that he had aimed to produce “a just imitation of the most famed Italian masters.” The Ode for St. Cecilia’s Day served as testimony to his participation in the concert at which it was performed—an event that had already become an annual tradition under the patronage of a circle of influential supporters. Alongside the ambitious folio edition of The Prophetess, or The History of Dioclesian—in the spirit of the sumptuous opera editions of the great French composer Jean-Baptiste Lully—and several more modest publications, these ventures collectively portray a composer who devoted considerable thought and resources to shaping his public image as a modern and fashionable musician, thoroughly versed in the refined stylistic idioms of both Italian and French music, and esteemed both at court and beyond.
A simple quantitative review of Purcell’s music published posthumously during the period under examination in this article reveals that Frances Purcell (hereafter Frances) and Henry Playford (hereafter Playford) undertook an editorial and publishing enterprise no less substantial than that which Purcell himself had dared to initiate during his lifetime. Their major projects included a book of keyboard works, a collection of instrumental theatre music, two sacred anthems, a second book of sonatas, and an anthology of songs that was subsequently expanded into a second volume, the two together known as Orpheus Britannicus (hereafter OB). Most of these volumes were issued in more than one edition over the period in question, with some continuing to be reprinted into the first half of the eighteenth century. Among these, OB contributed most significantly to the lasting association between Purcell and the mythological figure of Orpheus—the musician whose playing could tame wild beasts and move the gods of the underworld to release his beloved Eurydice.
From their first publication—the collection of keyboard works—Frances and Playford demonstrated that their printed music books were conceived as luxury products. Like Purcell’s youthful Sonatas, the keyboard collection was engraved, produced in quarto format, and prefaced with a detailed theoretical explanation of keyboard performance. The sacred anthems were presented in an impressive 48-page folio score; the theatre music appeared in a 176-page folio volume. For comparison, the most extensive folio Purcell published during his lifetime—The Prophetess—comprised 173 pages of music. The theatre collection and the second book of sonatas, which followed several months later in a more modest 80-page format, marked a further development in the sophistication of the publishing venture—not only in terms of scale and prestige, but also editorially. While it is likely that the keyboard works and the sacred anthems were available in the composer’s autograph scores, requiring little to no editorial intervention, the later collections involved repertory that had to be gathered from a variety of manuscript sources. Close analysis of these materials suggests that they sometimes required adaptation, completion, or even reconstruction. The various volumes of OB set a new standard for both editing and production. The first volume (1698, OB.I/1) contained 248 pages of music; the second (1702, OB.II/1) had 176 pages; and the expanded second edition of the first volume (1706, OB.I/2) included no fewer than 286 pages.
The posthumous publication of Purcell’s works was no simple undertaking. To ensure financial viability, the widow had to activate her late husband’s network of connections, petitioning noble patrons—particularly noblewomen—to sponsor these ventures. Over time, Frances developed and refined her rhetorical style in the dedications she wrote to these patrons. In July 1696, she published the book of keyboard pieces, dedicated to Princess Anne of Denmark (the future Queen Anne); early in 1697 came the sacred anthems, dedicated to Nathaniel Crew, Bishop of Durham; and soon after, the instrumental theatre music, dedicated to Charles Seymour, Duke of Somerset. In all three dedications, Frances employed a familiar and somewhat worn argument: the sponsorship of these known connoisseurs would serve as the best possible endorsement in the eyes of prospective buyers.
In July 1697, Frances published the second book of sonatas, dedicating it to Rhodia Cavendish. Formerly Rhodia Cartwright, she had been a pupil of Purcell in the early 1690s and had recently married the MP Lord Henry Cavendish in 1696. The dedication, written only shortly after the marriage, is clearly shaped by gendered considerations and departs from conventional formulas in favor of a rhetoric tailored specifically to its dedicatee:
I was desirous that it might not want the Patronage of our Sex, for whose Honour, as well as for the Credit of this Work, I have presum’d to place Your Ladyship’s Name, before these Sheets.
She continues:
As noted, little is known about Cavendish beyond the fact that she had recently ascended to higher social standing through marriage. It is likely that Frances saw in this a window of opportunity: the former student of the late composer, now elevated in status and wealth, might well have been eager to enter the world of patronage and associate her new surname with England’s most celebrated composer.
Frances’s next dedication—for OB in 1698—was addressed to Lady Annabella Howard and again incorporated gendered dimensions, albeit more subtly. The preface was significantly longer than previous dedications and contained a paragraph highlighting the esteem in which Purcell held the literary work of Howard’s husband, the poet and playwright Robert Howard:
Another great Advantage, to which my Husband has often imputed the Success of his Labors…has been the great Justness both of Thought and Numbers which he found in the Poetry…of that Honourable Gentleman, who has the dearest and most deserved Relation to your Self, and whose Excellent Compositions were the Subject of his last and best Performance in Music.
The final paragraph of the preface offers a detailed description of the memorial tablet erected over Purcell’s grave in Westminster Abbey, financed by Lady Howard.
The three dedications to female patrons descend in rank in an unexpected direction—from the 38-year-old Princess Anne, to Annabella Howard, who had served as one of Anne’s Maids of Honour and was not yet 22 at the time of OB.I/1’s publication. It appears that Frances Purcell identified patrons for whom financial support of music publication was a novel opportunity—perhaps even an appealing one. She tailored her dedications accordingly, perhaps with a hint of knowing irony. What did she mean, for instance, by the “wonderful progress” made by the newly married Rhodia Cavendish? And why does she refer to her late husband simply as “my husband,” while describing Robert Howard as “that Honourable Gentleman…related to Your Ladyship”? Did she attempt to flatter Howard with a respectable portrayal and to downplay the fact that she was the poet’s fourth wife and fifty years his junior? In the dedications to his young female pupils, did the widow attempt to create an image of Purcell as a darling of high-society young ladies? And how does this process intersect with his transformation into a mythical, Orpheus-like figure?
Before examining the editorial aspects of Orpheus Britannicus, we must consider the remarkable title chosen for this songbook, and the cultural charge that this title carries. The title reflects both continuity and innovation. Continuity is evident in the use of a familiar formula—a two-word Latin title—a format used in countless music book titles since the earliest days of printed music in the early sixteenth century. Often such titles clearly alluded to the book’s content; for example, Cantiones sacrae was a common title for collections of sacred motets, used both in England—by Thomas Tallis and William Byrd in 1575, and Byrd again in 1589 and 1591—and on the continent—by Croce (1605), Sweelinck (1619), and Scheidt (1620). At other times, titles offered no more than a vague hint of the repertoire's nature, such as in various collections of secular songs published in England: Comes amoris, or the Companion of Love (1687 and onwards), Vinculum societatis, or the Tie of Good Company (1687), Thesaurus musicus (1693), and Deliciae musicae (1695). The innovation lies in the use of a Latin formula to refer to the deceased composer, and in the implied claim about his exceptional status. The title coined a catchy epithet for the composer, elevating him to the level of the powerful mythological musician and asserting a parallel between Orpheus’s uniqueness in myth and Purcell’s uniqueness in the history of English music. This innovation did not go unanswered by Purcell’s teacher, John Blow (1649–1708), who outlived him and managed to oversee the publication of his own song collection, in which he attempted to cast himself in a similar light, as the Amphion Anglicus (1700).
The use of classical rhetoric and mythological imagery to describe composers, particularly posthumously, began around 1400. In the English context, one prominent example is William Byrd’s lament for his colleague Thomas Tallis: “Ye sacred Muses, race of Jove, / whom Music's lore delighteth, / Come down from crystal heav’ns above / to earth where sorrow dwelleth: / In mourning weeds, with tears in eyes: / Tallis is dead, and Music dies.” Purcell himself, after the death of his mentor Matthew Locke, dedicated to him the elegy “What hope for us remains.” The anonymous author of that lament described Locke’s powers to heal pain, to rouse men to battle, and to soothe their souls. The Orphic reference is implicit: the lyre, the mythological hero’s instrument, is mentioned twice.
Richard Luckett notes an explicit reference to “England’s Orpheus” a short time before the image was applied to Purcell—in John Oldham’s 1681 Bion, a pastoral lament on the death of the poet Earl of Rochester (John Wilmot). This lament must be understood in its proper context, which sets it apart from Byrd’s or Purcell’s laments. The relevant lines in Oldham’s Bion imitate (explicitly, as its title suggests) the ancient Greek epitaph for Bion, traditionally attributed to the second-century BCE Greek poet Moschus. In Oldham’s version, the original poet’s plea to inform the Oeagrian nymphs and Thracian maidens of the death of Orpheus is replaced by a request to inform the nymphs and swains of Britain of the death of the English Orpheus—Rochester. In this case, then, the phrase “English Orpheus” appears to be no more than a by-product of imitating Moschus’s epitaph. Beyond that, conventions of pastoral elegy seem to have invited such comparisons to Orpheus—sometimes not even in reference to his musical powers. Nearly half a century earlier, John Milton had compared his friend Edward King to Orpheus in the pastoral elegy Lycidas, drawing a line between the manner of their deaths—King drowned in the Irish Sea, Orpheus’s head drifted down the river Hebrus. As with Rochester in Oldham’s lament, the Orphic image was applied to Purcell immediately after his death. But unlike Rochester, in Purcell’s case the image was not a poetic device but an attempt to glorify the supernatural power of his music.
The greatest poet in England at the time, and Purcell’s collaborator on King Arthur, John Dryden wrote an ode on Purcell’s death, which was set to music by Blow and published in score. This was likely Playford’s first commercial initiative after Purcell’s death, and the use of a full score format—as in the St. Cecilia's Day odes or The Prophetess—suggests that the publisher considered the act of publication one of memorialization (see note 18 above). The ode begins with an invitation to hear two birds, the lark and the linnet, competing in their cheerful spring songs—until night falls and they are silenced by the mesmerizing song of the nightingale (Philomel). So too, Dryden argues, were Purcell’s competitors silenced by the sound of his voice, which began too late and ended too soon. Dryden creates here a reversal of the Orpheus myth: rather than Eurydice dying prematurely and Orpheus begging to bring her back from the underworld, here Orpheus dies prematurely and the poet (speaking in the plural) declares—surprisingly—that they do not plead with Hell to restore their Orpheus (“We beg not Hell our Orpheus to restore”). The poet explains this provocative stance by claiming that if Purcell had arrived in the underworld, its ruler would have driven him away in fear. Instead, the heavenly choir lowers a ladder of music to him, and he climbs it while teaching the choir to sing. This Orphic inversion is paired with the invocation of “the consort of the vocal and the string,” the lyre being, as noted, Orpheus’s emblematic instrument.
Dryden’s ode was reprinted, separately from Blow’s music, alongside five additional elegies by other authors and an anonymous Latin epitaph, across three opening pages of Orpheus Britannicus Vol. I. This poetry collection is saturated with clichés common to composer elegies: pastoral nicknames like Damon and Strephon; a catalog of mourning sounds played by every instrument (an homage to Purcell’s own St. Cecilia odes); and frequent references to heavenly harmony and angelic choirs. Yet the Orphic image—though not previously standard in elegies—seems to be the dominant trope to which most of the authors turn in their search for imagery suitable to the mourning of the famous composer. Immediately following Dryden’s lament appears an anonymous elegy in which the speaker proclaims that he comes to mourn the death of a “second Orpheus,” and quickly adds: “second in time, but first in fame.” This, too, presents an Orphic reversal—the poet expresses skepticism toward the myths of Orpheus and Amphion, calling them “empty fables” and asserting that they were mere prophecies about the power of music—prophecies that were only truly fulfilled in Purcell. Henry Hall, Purcell’s friend and contemporary, offers his own paraphrase of the myth, claiming that Purcell is the man “who raised the British lyre above the Thracian one,” while taking a jab at the English public: whereas Orpheus tamed wild beasts, Hall claims, Purcell succeeded in taming far greater savages.
We must also consider other, more prosaic factors that contributed to the crystallization of the Orphic image specifically in Purcell’s time. We saw that the Orphic lyre was allegorically attached both to Locke and to Purcell—both primarily church organists, playing an instrument far removed from the pagan Greek legacy. In the latter half of the seventeenth century, a potential contradiction between the composer’s actual instrument and the mythological one assigned in Orphic lament was softened by the fact that the lyre had become a purely allegorical symbol. Earlier in the century, some instruments still bore names that came close to the mythic lyre. These included viol-family instruments such as the lira da gamba (also known as lirone) and the lyre viol, as well as lute-family instruments like the theorbo and chitarrone. In Elizabethan England, the lute was most closely associated with the mythological lyre and enjoyed exceptional prestige: while Italian and Dutch paintings of the period typically depicted Orpheus holding a violin or a harp, Shakespeare’s Catherine of Aragon sang of “Orpheus with his lute made trees, / And the mountain tops that freeze, / Bow themselves when he did sing” (Henry VIII, III.1). However, in Restoration England, both the lute and the viol had fallen out of fashion. Thomas Mace, in his 1676 treatise on the lute and the viol, offers perhaps the clearest expression of the instrument’s decline—precisely by denying it. He laments what he sees as the mistaken perception that the lute had fallen out of fashion, insisting instead that “the Lute from henceforth shall be more in request, and more esteem’d, than it hath been many years before.” The reality, however, was quite different: in England, the lute had by then almost entirely disappeared as a solo instrument, and only its larger counterpart, the theorbo, remained in use as a continuo instrument until the early eighteenth century. In France and Germany, the process was somewhat slower. It is possible, then, that in England the Orphic image, which in the early seventeenth century aligned naturally with lute players, faded as the instrument itself fell out of fashion by mid-century. With the decline of the lute, the symbolic association between the lyre and the lute likewise dissipated, allowing musicians who played other instruments to adopt the Orphic image more readily.
*
The contents of the OB volumes does not necessarily reflect the Orpheic image that Frances and Playford attempted to bestow on the deceased composer, but it is evident that their editing and preparation for print required the rescue of several manuscripts and works that would otherwise be lost forever. Did Frances and Playford feel that rescuing and publishing these works would save them from the darkness of Hades? Did this rescue mission have a role in the choice of title for the anthology? It seems that the editorial work on OB was extraordinarily complicated, and examining that aspect [of OB] reveals processes that have not yet been discussed in the relevant literature. First, OB reveals something of the intricate map of manuscripts that were in the circles of Frances and Playford. Purcell's work, and especially the fate of his work during the decade that is discussed in the present study, is among the first cases in the history of English music where one may see how the rarity of manuscript repertoire gives those manuscripts special value, both material and intellectual.
Despite the accepted view, that until the late 17c works' shelf lives were short (sometimes not going beyond the premiere), it is possible to identify circumstances in which manuscripts (or the works therein) were attributed unusual significance that justified their preservation for long years. One example, taken from the field of English music, is the country's oscillation from protestantism to catholicism (and vice versa) during the reign of the late Tudors (from Henry VIII to Elizabeth I), made the preservation of the 'old' Latin catholic rite, with its elaborate polyphonic style, an important task, not only in the eyes of recusant nobility that remained faithful to Rome but also in the eyes of music lovers.[36] Those nobles took the initiative of copying manuscripts that contained
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new works alongside works that were already decades old, and in some cases in it is hard to believe that the music was copied in order to fill the functions that it was designed to fill (for example, motets or mass for liturgical use), and it seems to be the case that it was copied purely for the act of collecting, and was not intended for performance at all. Private manuscripts of lute music or keyboard music were often retrospective, and contained works collected by the copyists throughout their entire lives.[37] Purcell himself copied a volume of (protestant) sacred works from the early seventeenth century alongside works by later composers and by himself, as was common at the time.[38]
The shared characteristic of all these isolated pockets of collectors tendencies in the English manuscript culture is that they record a picture of a multiple-composer musical scene along a period of time. None of these collections gives preference to a single "great composer". Even those manuscripts that are primary and principal sources for the works of a composer that, in hindsight, is considered particularly important, were not necessarily copied as a monument of that composer's works, but they preserve his works within a wider repertoire context, alongside the works of contemporaries that wrote in similar genres [39]
One manuscript, copied by John Reading of Winchester, probably in 1682-1684, situates the young Purcell for the first time in such repertoire context.[40] Reading copied the works of Purcell and court composers more prominent that him [Purcell], probably when they were staying in Winchester with the royal progress during the summer months of those years.[41] It is possible that the motivation for copying these works was [Reading's] feeling that it is a privileged repertoire belonging to a closed all-stars group of the court, and whose members are the highest ranked musicians
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of the realm. Gossip-like marginalia like 'This Piece of Musick was Christ’ned Draggon at New Markett 1679’[42] or ‘Seignor Givano Battista [???] Symphony w[hich] M[r.] Nich. Staggins produced as his owne May 29th 1679’ [43] support the thesis that that repertoire enjoyed its composers' aura of prestige, and that Reading enjoyed the temporary access that he had to the royal ensemble.
A chronological analysis of the various printing ventures, including the subscription notices that encouraged early purchase of envisaged books, creates the feeling that the order in which the works were published was almost accidental and that it did not stem from a long-range planning, but rather from the state of sources accessible to Frances and to Playford. In fact, it seems that some of the subscription calls were published before the eventual nature of a publication was decided on; the sonatas and the music for the theatre were planned as a single collection, and in 2 April 1696 Frances and Playford published an offer to print 'sonatas and other ayres' without hinting that these are two separate projects.[44] Eventually those 'other ayres' were published about two months before the sonatas, in May 1697. [45] It is easy to understand why Frances and Playford believe that theatre music - the field most identified with Purcell - would appeal to subscribers and hence also why they hurried the publication of those 'other ayres'. That is the very reason one may assume that when the notice was published in 1696 they did not yet know that they had enough manuscripts with theatre music - had they known that, they would probably indicated that already in the subscription notice.
Thus, even though it is possible to support that argument with circumstantial evidence alone, the hypothesis here is that Frances and Playford did not bother to plan the pacing of publications, and that they started collecting money for publishing Purcell's works whenever they felt they were holding a work, or a series of works, that they could sell. It seems that in the first stage the widow tried to use all the sources she had in her posession, that were accessible, and that were the easiest for printing and for publication. In fact, it seems that Purcell left behind enough material to create the impression that
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the printing ventures that the composer oversaw during his life could yield sequels, and were a safe investment.[46]
Whether Frances and Playford they tried to respond to the demand that arose in the London audience for scores of Purcell's works, or perhaps they created such a demand, the fate of the manuscript The Fairy Queen "MS 3" demonstrates how the recognition of the musical and monetary value of manuscripts was ripe.[47] The Fairy Queen MS 3 contained the full score of Purcell's opera "The Fairy Queen", which is an adaptation of Shakespeare's "A Midsummer Night's Dream". It was first performed in 1692 and again in 1693. The music was copied into the manuscript, partly by Purcell himself and partly by copyists who assisted him close to the production date. The manuscript was probably owned by the Drury Lane Theatre (for which Purcell wrote the work) and disappeared shortly after the composer's death. Several years later, in October 1701, the theatre published an advertisement in "The Flying Post" requesting public assistance in locating the lost score, and promised 20 guineas to anyone who would bring the score or a reliable copy thereof to the theatre. A similar advertisement was published a week later in "The London Gazette", adding an interesting promise: whoever brought a source or a copy of one or more of the five acts of the opera would receive a proportionate share of the 20 guineas promised to whoever found the entire opera.[48] The manuscript was not recovered, and in the end, was found only in the late nineteenth century in the Royal Academy of Music Library, and it is unclear how it got there. However, the advertisements published in 1701 teach us that the search for the manuscript was important and justified the newspaper publicity; that the theatre management was aware that the opera manuscript was missing, but did not search for it for several years; that the theater management assumed that it could retrieve the lost manuscript in exchange for payment; that the search for the manuscript was conducted between the publication of OB.I/1 and OB.II/1; and the theater was interested in the music and not in the artefact
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itself. In other words, the value of the document was not in the fact that it contained the autograph of the famous composer, but rather in its contents. The change in wording between the first notice in the "Flying Post" and the second in the "London Gazette" is particularly important because it shows that the theater people knew that the opera may exist in handwritten documents containing only separate acts and not the full opera.
The fact that lost or unknown works by Purcell were valuable assets, is also reflected in the contents of OB. collection. There, apparently for the purpose of promoting sales, the editors marked a cross next to each song that was published for the first time. In OB.I/1 there were 81 songs and 20 of them were marked with a cross. In the second edition of the first volume - OB.I/2, there were 104 songs and 34 of them were marked with a cross. Frances and Playford both knew that including previously unpublished works helped to justify the production of a new edition of an older book. It is reasonable to assume that they sought to realize the potential inherent in the composer's manuscripts, and at the same time to find manuscripts that were not in their possession. Playford, in the introduction to OB.II/1, hints that he obtained sources when he mentions 'the assistance of friends': "The late publication... is sufficiently aton'd for, by the Care that has been taken in the collection of [these songs]; and I cannot but think I have made amends enough to the Purchaser in the Choice of 'em. The great Charge I have been at; the Diligence I have made use of to obtain the Assistance of Friends, and the Dearness of Paper [...] are sufficient Excuses." In the Preface to OB.I/2 he is more explicit:
In this Edition you will find added, many Compositions, never before Published, which are oweing to several Gentlemen who had Original Copies by them, that freely Communicated the same for the Good of the Publick; but I am oblig'd, in particular, to the Author's Widow, who has supplied me with several Single Songs, and other Excellent Pieces that were made for Birth-Days, Feasts, and other Occasions, with the Instrumental Parts to each as were Originally design'd for them, which were never yet known to the World.
When we come to characterize the repertoire that will be added to each of the editions, we can use a rough division into three main genres represented in Orpheus Britannicus: songs from the courtly entertainments; songs from theatre productions and operas; and "independent" songs that are not part of a broader context (see Table 1). It should be noted that the royal odes were intended to be one-time music - their text directly dealt with the return of the royal family from the summer absence or on royal birthdays, and therefore their appearance in print more than a decade after their writing was an exceptional phenomenon, which can only be explained by the recognition of their musical quality. As such, it is surprising that in OB.I/1 the royal songs were a marginal
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component (6 out of 81 pieces), whereas in OB.II/1 and OB.I/2 the odes take up a more prominent place (15 out of 54 and 19 out of 104, respectively). This genre, from which the editors apparently had only six pieces in 1698, gained 13 more pieces in 1702 and another 13 in 1706. As for theatre music, of which the editors apparently had 44 pieces in 1698 (and only a minority of which were published for the first time), 26 pieces were added in 1702 and another 16 in 1706. Given this significant growth in the number of odes and theatre music pieces, which cannot be attributed to editorial complexity (the editorial problems of the sonatas and the suites are far more significant), it can be inferred that it reflects an increase in the number of sources available to the editors.
[table]
The plays that Purcell wrote a song or two for cannot teach us much about the sources that the editors used. For example, from the music that Purcell composed for Thomas Southerne's play 'The Fatal Marriage', only two songs survived; both appeared in print during Purcell's lifetime, and only one of them appeared in OB.I/2 with a wrong indication (or perhaps an intentional error), making it appear as if it was the first publication of the song.[50] It is difficult to say if the song is based on a 'new' manuscript that reached
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the editors, or a previous printing, and what was the reason it was not published in OB.I/1. In comparison to such plays, a group of five productions that is represented by 7-15 numbers each, allows a deeper examination of the relationship between manuscript and printed edition.
For the masque in "Timon of Athens," which is an adaptation of a play by Shakespeare, Purcell wrote nine songs, most likely at the beginning of 1695, to be produced at the end of the turbulant 1694-1695 season. One of the songs was published in July 1695 and is the only song from the play that appears in OB.I/1. The inclusion of one song in OB.I/1 proves that the editors had access to a source for this song, but does it imply that the editors did not have sources for the other eight songs in the play? The assumption made in this study is that Frances and Playford did not hold back the publication of works that were available to them. The case of "Timon of Athens" supports this assumption: seven additional songs from the play were published in OB.II/1. Had the editors a manuscript of the play's songs, the earlier publication of some of them already in OB.I/1 would have meant to strike while the iron is hot, shortly after the revival of the play during the 1696-1697 season.[51] Once again, circumstantial evidence suggests that a manuscript of the play became available to the editors sometime between the publication of OB.I/1 in 1698 and the publication of OB.II/1 in 1702.
It is important to consider the connections between the musical texts that were published in print and the surviving manuscripts that could have served as sources for these printed versions. In every genre in which Purcell worked, there were typical patterns of circulation: chamber music was copied by musicians living outside the London metropolis, such as John Reading of Winchester and Richard Goodison of Oxford, for their own collections; church music was transmitted to distant churches to be performed in worship services; theatre music (and, to a lesser extent, court music) was copied by amateur and professional musicians in quasi "complete works" manuscripts, which contained several volumes with large-scale works. An example of this is a series of four manuscripts containing music for no less than six theatre productions, the greatest of which is "King Arthur."[52] It seems that the copying enterprise was not spontaneous: most of the works that appear in this manuscript were copied by the same anonymous hand (Shay and Thompson's 'London E') in other manuscripts as well - and these create
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a sort of "family" of manuscripts that transmit a similar version of the work, with characteristic readings and characteristic errors.[53] Similarly, a group of about six manuscripts, currently called the "Chapel Royal," (because of the professional affiliation of the copyists), transmit a different version, also with characteristic readings and characteristic errors.[54]
Identifying groups of manuscripts becomes vital when comparing their text to that of OB. For example, Ian Spink, who edited the critical edition of "Timon of Athens," points to a close connection between the text found in OB and the text transmitted by the London E manuscripts.[55] In other words, it is possible to speculate that the same manuscript, which I have suggested was probably in the possession of Frances and Playford during the years 1698-1702, belongs to the London E group and was a copy of a manuscript from that group or was copied from a common ancestor of the mentioned manuscripts.
Regarding The Fairy Queen, OB summons a surprise. As mentioned above in connection with MS 3, the Drury Lane Theatre tried to trace the lost manuscript in October 1701. Interestingly, not long after that, Purcell and Playford published eleven pieces from "The Fairy Queen" in OB.II/1. Where did Frances and Playford get the scores for these pieces? We have a strange combination of circumstances - a certain manuscript, MS 3, was declared lost by the theatre, and several months later, the composer's widow published content similar to the content of the missing manuscript. If we try to see in OB a window into the inventory of manuscripts that were within the reach of the widow Purcell and the publisher Playford, then the seemingly simple history of MS 3 - disappeared at the end of the seventeenth century and found at the end of the nineteenth century - is no longer simple. There is a suspicion that the manuscript remained in the widow's possession, and she made sure not to return it to the theater library in order to profit from its publication. There is no known response from the theatre to the publication of the pieces from "The Fairy Queen" in OB.II/1 - pieces from a manuscript that the theater declared lost.
The most interesting connection between OB and manuscript sources is that relating to the music for the opera "King Arthur." In OB.I/1, six songs from the opera were published. One of the songs, which had already been published before in a corrupted [I regret using this word, A.S. 2023] version, was taken from the third Act (and it seems that the version appearing in OB.I/1 is indeed based on that earlier edition). The remaining five pieces were taken from the fourth and fifth acts. Apart from the corrupted version of the song from the
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third act, no pieces from that act or from the first and second acts appear in OB.I/1. In other words, even if circumstantially, OB.I/1 provides evidence that in 1698 the editors possessed the score for the fourth and fifth acts but not of the other acts.
In OB.II/1, not even one song from "King Arthur" appears, but in OB.I/2, suddenly the corrected version of the song from the third act is published (already published in OB.I/1) along with seven additional pieces - all from the first, second, and third acts. It can be assumed that when OB.II/1 was published, the editors did not yet have a source for the first acts, and it is possible that between the publication of OB.II/1 and OB.I/2 (i.e. between 1702 and 1706), a manuscript of the first three acts fell into their hands. It is interesting that four of the pieces from the fourth and fifth collections that appear in OB.I/1 are missing from the "Chapel Royal;" sources. This connection between OB and the group of manuscripts can teach us about a complex situation in which the common "parent" of the "Chapel Royal" sources and OB; this manuscript was eventually dismantled, and the stemma split in two: half of the manuscript was copied again and again and became the "Chapel Royal" sources, while the other half eventually became the source on which Purcell and Playford based their edition of OB.I/1. The sources of the “Royal Chapel” remain incomplete, with portions of the fourth and fifth acts missing.
From the perspective of London’s musical life, Purcell’s death must be understood in the context of the upheaval that struck the city in the mid-1690s, following the period of mourning for Queen Mary and the fragmentation of the theatre company. Remaining with the patent theatre, Purcell was, to a certain extent, the cornerstone of a troupe composed largely of inexperienced young actors and singers. It is therefore easy to understand how his death in November 1695 dealt a harsh blow to one of the two already weakened theatre companies and was perceived by the public as a genuine loss.
What distinguishes Purcell’s case is that his tragic death, even a decade later, not only remained present in England’s musical consciousness but was amplified and mythologized (and later, in the nineteenth century, even nationalized). In this respect, Purcell’s posthumous reputation differs significantly from those of William Lawes, Christopher Simpson, or Matthew Locke—English composers who, like Purcell, were well-known in their lifetimes but were quickly forgotten after their deaths (all died between 1662 and 1678). Even the initiatives of the Musical Antiquarian Society could not rescue their legacies from oblivion. Without discounting the actions Purcell took during his life in the realm of music publishing, it appears that the activities of his widow and publisher between 1696 and 1706 were instrumental in positioning his musical legacy so distinctly apart from that of his contemporaries.
In this article, I have reviewed several cases that support the hypothesis that the order in which Purcell’s works were published posthumously was almost accidental. This order did not result from long-term planning but rather from the state of the sources available to Frances Purcell and Henry Playford. The initial publications of 1696–1697 reinforced Purcell’s multifaceted image as a composer of keyboard music, chamber music, sacred music, and theatre music. In all of these genres, he had published works during his lifetime, so the publishing project undertaken by Frances and Playford was quantitative rather than qualitative in nature.
However, a distinction may be necessary between keyboard, chamber, and sacred music on the one hand, and theatre music on the other. The former genres were associated with upper-class amateurs or prestigious musical institutions but were not public in the fullest sense. Theatre music, by contrast, reflected a far more public aspect of Purcell’s oeuvre—an aspect that reached thousands of Londoners, not necessarily limited to the upper classes. Indeed, the publication of theatre music in 1697 was not a singular event: the volumes Orpheus Britannicus I/1, II/1, and I/2 (1698–1706) repeatedly emphasized Purcell’s connection to theatrical production. OB I/1 emphasized this dimension of his work by relying on pieces that had already been published. OB II/1 continued to cultivate the theatrical context, including, among other things, extended excerpts from Timon of Athens and rare selections from The Fairy Queen—pieces we know were of interest to London theatre companies, if not to the wider London audience.
The appearance of excerpts from Purcell’s court odes further reinforced the association between his memory and royal musical activity. Even though musical activity at court declined after the accession of William and Mary, the printing press solidified the association of Purcell with royal music-making and, in retrospect, may have softened perceptions of this cultural decline at court. As suggested, it may have been the random arrangement of manuscripts that the editors managed to obtain that created a sequence of volumes which gradually shifted the perceived center of Purcell’s activity from the private sphere (where keyboard and trio sonatas were performed) to the public sphere (the theatre) and to the royal palace.
The appeal to the young patrons, Cavendish and Howard, was likely less coincidental and reveals a brilliant marketing strategy: Frances branded her late husband’s legacy through these patrons no less than the patrons branded themselves—while making their first appearances in elite social circles—through the memory of their beloved teacher. The dedications were carefully crafted and enabled the widow and publisher to embark on an unprecedentedly ambitious publishing venture.
The Orphic image did not disappear after Purcell. It is illuminating to compare the shaping of Purcell’s memory with that of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart—both are now regarded as “geniuses” who died prematurely and at the same age, and both left widows who faced similar financial imperatives to publish their husbands’ manuscripts. Both share the poetically macabre biographical detail that shortly before their deaths, they composed the music that was ultimately performed at their own funerals. Like Purcell, Mozart evoked comparisons to Orpheus among his admirers: according to an anonymous epitaph published in a newspaper about four weeks after his death, the late composer was “considered in childhood a wonder of the world; then in manhood he surpassed Orpheus.”
Part of Purcell’s enduring allure lies in the mystery surrounding his departure from the stage in November 1695. Of the hundreds of works he composed, those still performed today and known beyond classical music circles are the ones that resonate with grief and mourning. His Funeral Sentences were performed at the funeral of Princess Diana (in Westminster Abbey), and even the pieces featured in the soundtracks of A Clockwork Orange and The Falling are, respectively, the funeral march for Queen Mary and Dido’s lament from his early opera Dido and Aeneas. Indeed, Dido’s final words—“Remember me, but ah! forget my fate”—are, in retrospect, interpreted as autobiographical, spoken through music by the composer who set them so convincingly.
Let us return to the “fruit tree” myth of Nick Drake, mentioned at the beginning of this article. If today’s public is cynical about the notion that artists must “die” for their music to yield material profits, then the case of Henry Purcell may be one of the earliest examples in music history where this phenomenon is both visible and measurable. While it is important to avoid simplistic comparisons between distinct historical phenomena, such as those grouped under the heading “The 27 Club,” much can be learned from comparing the myth-making processes surrounding Purcell with those surrounding prematurely deceased contemporary musicians like Nick Drake and Jeff Buckley (1966–1997). In both cases, the rights-holders of the deceased musician’s work were attuned to audience demand while also skillfully steering that demand to shape the image of the departed artist. As with Frances Purcell’s publishing enterprise, so too in the case of Drake and Buckley: the posthumous release of songs, drafts, and live performances effectively doubled the size of the creative corpus made public during their lifetimes. One key difference lies in the contrast between the Orphic image that resonated with seventeenth-century London audiences and the anti-hero persona cultivated around Drake and Buckley, which continues to appeal to early twenty-first-century audiences.
In retrospect, the handling of both singers’ estates was masterful—much like Frances and Playford’s stewardship of Henry Purcell’s legacy. Drake’s posthumous rise began in 1979, five years after his death, with the reissue of his three albums as a single box set. It remains difficult to explain the commercial logic behind releasing a box set of three failed albums, but in hindsight, it is clear that the record label’s gamble paid off—the audience’s response initiated (and later accelerated) a process that included books, documentaries, compilations, and unreleased recordings. For example, in 1994, the twentieth anniversary of Drake’s death, the compilation album Way to Blue was released and, within five years, achieved gold status in the UK (300,000 units sold)—a level of reception entirely disproportionate to the lukewarm attention his albums received during his lifetime.
As with Purcell, Drake’s posthumous national identification also intensified. According to scholar Nathan Wiseman-Trowse, a link formed between Drake’s songs—often open to interpretation and vague in temporal or spatial reference—and elusive yet recognizable features of British sensibility. Like with Purcell, Wiseman-Trowse suggests that this association was solidified only after the artist’s death, thanks to the adoption of his music in popular culture—as background music in advertisements or film soundtracks. This usage cemented a British (perhaps specifically English) interpretation of his songs and made Drake more closely identified with Britishness (or Englishness). Yet Wiseman-Trowse does not downplay the role of Drake’s unusually wide interpretive range in facilitating such an exceptional reception.
In Buckley’s case, the process was much faster, though it also began from a relatively low point: the only album he released in his lifetime appeared in August 1994, and three months later, shortly before his 28th birthday, Rolling Stone published a lukewarm review. Buckley drowned in a tributary of the Mississippi River in May 1997, aged 30. The drafts for his second album were released on the first anniversary of his death, followed by three live albums issued with equal precision. A reissue of his debut album appeared in 2004, marking ten years since its original release (by then less surprising, as the album had reached gold status in the US in 2002, with over 500,000 units sold). By early 2016, the sales of the record were doubled.
Whether Francis and Playford encountered the lost manuscripts gradually or whether they deliberately staggered their publication, the fact remains that releasing the books over time helped sustain public curiosity. It is reasonable to assume that, had the widow possessed all the sources already in 1696, she might have either sold off her entire musical estate too quickly or lost momentum by issuing domestic music after having already published music for the theatre. The cases of Drake and Buckley reinforce this principle even more clearly: nineteen years after Buckley's death, an entire album comprising previously shelved demo recordings made before his debut album was released (You and I, 2016); and twenty-three years after Drake's death, another full album was published containing unreleased demo recordings, including home recordings made with his parents and sister (Family Tree, 2007).
From the sales figures and release dates, one discerns a rapid regrouping on the part of the rights holders to Drake's and Buckley’s estates, along with an effort to align commemorative rituals with a sort of "liturgical year" followed by each artist's fans—marking the year and date of birth, year and date of death, album release dates, and significant performances—while lending “poetic” beauty to what is otherwise a conspicuous commercial endeavor. If we wish to add a further poetic coincidence, it is worth noting that one of Jeff Buckley’s most acclaimed and widely circulated (though never officially released) recordings is a live performance of Purcell’s Dido’s Lament, sung on 1 July 1995 at the Meltdown Festival, held at London’s Southbank Centre. The performance took place in the Queen Elizabeth Hall, adjacent to the Purcell Room, in the year that marked the 300th anniversary of Purcell’s death.
If we are indeed to read Dido’s words—“Remember me, but ah! forget my fate!”—as the tragic testament of Purcell, Drake, Buckley, and others like them, then the two imperatives ("remember me" and "forget my fate") have never successfully coexisted. Their tragic fate has become inseparable from the way they are remembered by listeners—or, at the very least, that fate played a central role in their initial commemoration, in the shaping of the creative corpus we now attribute to them, and in the ways we interpret that corpus.