40 Fun Facts About Henry Purcell

Which Stanley Kubrick film uses an electronic version of a Henry Purcell funeral march as its title music?

A Clockwork Orange opens with Purcell's 1695 march reworked on synthesizer by Wendy Carlos, who had made her name with Switched-On Bach.

Which English rock band's guitarist has named Henry Purcell's harmonies as an influence on its songs?

The Who guitarist Pete Townshend learned Purcell's suspended chords from the band's producer Kit Lambert. The influence is heard in the opening of Pinball Wizard and in I Can See for Miles.

Which English composer based The Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra on a tune by Henry Purcell?

Benjamin Britten took the Rondeau from Purcell's music for the play Abdelazer. He wrote the piece for a 1946 educational film that showed off each section of the orchestra in turn.

According to one story, Henry Purcell caught a fatal chill after being locked out of his home by whom?

His wife Frances is said to have bolted the door when he came home late from the theatre. Another theory is that tuberculosis killed him, at just 35 or 36.

A crater near the north pole of which world is named after the English composer Henry Purcell?

Mercury has craters named after famous writers, artists and composers. The name Purcell was adopted there in 1979.

Henry Purcell's The Fairy-Queen is a lavish musical adaptation of which Shakespeare comedy?

A Midsummer Night's Dream supplied the spoken play, yet Purcell set none of Shakespeare's words to music. His songs and dances sit in separate masques instead.

Massed Guards bands play a version of Dido's Lament by Henry Purcell each year at which British ceremony?

Remembrance Sunday brings the lament to the Cenotaph in Whitehall every November. The aria is sung by a queen who is about to die, and asks to be remembered.

Which popular wedding processional was wrongly credited to Henry Purcell for many years?

Trumpet Voluntary is really Clarke's Prince of Denmark's March, written around 1700. An organ arrangement published in the 1870s put the more famous name on it.

Lillibullero, a march tune attributed to Henry Purcell, became the signature tune of which radio broadcaster?

BBC World Service engineers chose the tune because it cut through shortwave interference. They did not know it began as a political street song of the 1680s.

In Henry Purcell's opera Dido and Aeneas, Dido is the queen of which ancient North African city?

Carthage is where the Trojan hero Aeneas stops on his voyage to Italy. He abandons Dido to sail on, and the opera ends with her death.

Henry Purcell was organist of which London church, where he is now buried beside the organ?

Westminster Abbey made Purcell its organist when he was about twenty. When he died, its officials voted unanimously to bury him there with no expense spared.

The story of Henry Purcell's Dido and Aeneas comes from an epic poem by which Roman author?

Virgil tells the tale in Book IV of the Aeneid, his epic about a Trojan warrior who leaves fallen Troy to found a new home in Italy.

Henry Purcell, who died in 1695, belongs to which era of Western classical music?

Baroque is the label for the era that runs from Monteverdi to Bach. Johann Sebastian Bach was only ten years old when Purcell died.

Which poet wrote the words for Henry Purcell's King Arthur and, later, an ode mourning the composer's death?

John Dryden probably drafted the text in 1684 for King Charles II, then set it aside. He reworked it seven years later to suit Purcell's music.

Which poet, known for giving King Lear a happy ending, wrote the libretto for Henry Purcell's Dido and Aeneas?

Nahum Tate became Poet Laureate in 1692. He also wrote the words of the Christmas carol While Shepherds Watched Their Flocks.

The first known performance of Henry Purcell's Dido and Aeneas took place at what kind of venue in Chelsea?

A girls' school run by the dancing master Josias Priest had staged the opera by the end of 1689. It never reached the public stage in Purcell's lifetime.

What name is given to Henry Purcell stage works such as King Arthur, in which the leads speak and others sing?

Semi-opera mixed a spoken play with masques of song, dance and stage machinery. Only supernatural, pastoral or drunken characters were normally given music.

Henry Purcell wrote several odes to honour which saint, whose feast day falls on 22 November?

Saint Cecilia is the patron saint of music, and London's musicians marked her day each year from 1683. Purcell died on 21 November 1695, the eve of her feast.

Henry Purcell's music runs through which Best Picture winner starring Dustin Hoffman?

Kramer vs. Kramer pairs Purcell with a Vivaldi mandolin concerto. The 1979 divorce drama won five Academy Awards.

Henry Purcell's King Arthur shows the king at war with which people, rather than the legends of Camelot?

The Saxons are led by King Oswald of Kent, who has abducted Arthur's fiancée, the blind Cornish princess Emmeline.

Which teacher of Henry Purcell made way for his pupil as an organist in 1679, then returned to the post in 1695?

John Blow outlived his pupil by thirteen years and wrote an ode on his death. His court masque Venus and Adonis was a model for Purcell's own opera.

Henry Purcell built Dido's Lament over which musical device, heard eleven times in the aria?

Ground bass means a short bass line repeated while the music above it changes. In the lament it sinks step by step through a chromatic fourth.

Which Henry Purcell stage work did he leave unfinished, with its final masque supplied by the composer Daniel Purcell?

The Indian Queen of the title is Zempoalla, queen of the Aztecs. Purcell set only the prologue and two acts before he died, and Daniel is usually described as his brother.

A song from Henry Purcell's King Arthur inspired the hymn Love Divine, All Loves Excelling by which writer?

Charles Wesley modelled his first verse on Fairest Isle, a song given to the goddess Venus. His brother John later published the hymn with Purcell's tune.

Which Wes Anderson film keeps returning to an orchestral version of a rondeau by Henry Purcell?

Moonrise Kingdom uses the theme as a recurring motif, in the arrangement from The Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra.

A dance called A Postcard to Henry Purcell features in the score of which Keira Knightley period drama?

Pride & Prejudice has the piece as dance music at the Netherfield ball. Composer Dario Marianelli based it on a theme Purcell wrote for the play Abdelazer.

Which conductor, famous for Disney's Fantasia, arranged Dido's Lament by Henry Purcell for symphony orchestra?

Leopold Stokowski was known for his orchestral transcriptions of Bach. In Fantasia he shakes hands on screen with Mickey Mouse.

The Purcell Room, a small concert hall named after Henry Purcell, belongs to which London arts complex?

Southbank Centre has three concert venues, and the Purcell Room is the smallest. It was built together with the Queen Elizabeth Hall in a Brutalist style.

Henry Purcell's Te Deum was sung every year at St Paul's until settings by which German-born composer took over?

Handel modelled his Utrecht Te Deum on Purcell's setting, and for decades the two works alternated at the cathedral.

The song collection published after Henry Purcell's death named him the British version of which mythical musician?

Orpheus Britannicus gathered Purcell's songs in two volumes. Its preface praised his gift for setting English words to music.

Henry Purcell wrote his famous Rondeau for a revival of Abdelazer, a tragedy by which pioneering woman playwright?

Aphra Behn wrote Abdelazer in 1676, and it was her only tragedy. The 1695 revival flopped, yet the tune Purcell wrote for it became one of his best known.

Which German-born star of New York's East Village art scene recorded a Henry Purcell aria as The Cold Song?

Klaus Nomi put the aria on his first album. In King Arthur it belongs to the Cold Genius, the spirit of winter, who is woken reluctantly by Cupid to the sound of shivering strings.

Which synth-pop duo credited Henry Purcell as a co-writer of the 2013 track Love Is a Bourgeois Construct?

Pet Shop Boys based the song on a prelude from Purcell's King Arthur. Their producer worked from the composer's sheet music when recording it.

Which composer built the score of Peter Greenaway's The Draughtsman's Contract on music by Henry Purcell?

Michael Nyman overlaid new melodies on Purcell's repeating bass patterns. The 1982 murder mystery is set in rural Wiltshire in 1694, during Purcell's lifetime.

Which Victorian poet wrote a sonnet titled simply Henry Purcell in praise of the composer?

Gerard Manley Hopkins argued that other musicians voiced passing moods of the mind, while Purcell's notes captured the very make of human nature.

Henry Purcell wrote the anthems I Was Glad and My Heart Is Inditing for what kind of royal occasion in 1685?

A coronation, that of King James II, called for both anthems, which rank among Purcell's finest. Three years later the same king was driven out in the Glorious Revolution.

Music that Henry Purcell wrote for which monarch's funeral was performed at his own funeral months later?

Queen Mary II died of smallpox at 32, and Purcell's music was heard at her funeral in March 1695. He died that November, and one of the same pieces was sung for him.

Schoolchildren from which English city made a million-selling 1929 record of Henry Purcell's Nymphs and Shepherds?

Manchester supplied the choir: 250 children from 52 local schools, recorded in the Free Trade Hall with the Hallé Orchestra. The famous version was the third take.

The final masque of Henry Purcell's The Fairy-Queen features singers from which distant country?

China supplies the closing scene. A Chinese man and woman sing of the joys of their world, then Hymen, the god of marriage, is summoned to sing in praise of married bliss.

The epitaph of Henry Purcell says he has gone to the one place where what of his can be exceeded?

His harmony could be exceeded only in that blessed place, the tribute runs. Purcell is buried beside the organ he once played.