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3 unusual facts about Henry Purcell


Independent film project

Most recently, the Professional Production Unit completed a video production of Henry Purcell’s opera Dido and Aeneas, a joint production of the Schools of Art, Music and Dance in the Weitzenhoffer Family College of Fine Arts.

My Flame Burns Blue

"Speak Darkly My Angel" was written for Anne Sofie von Otter and the Brodsky Quartet, while "Put Away Forbidden Playthings" was his contribution to a concert commemorating the death of Henry Purcell.

The Winsford E-ACT Academy

The Academy has four houses which, as a Specialist Music School, are named after English composers, Britten, Purcell,Elgar and Sullivan.


Alberto Guerrero

While he shifted his focus to piano technique and pedagogy, he expanded his performing repertory to include works from Purcell through Les Six.

Alla Ablaberdyeva

Ablaberdyeva has made several recordings including Stravinsky's Les Noces, several cantatas by Giovanni Battista Pergolesi and Antonio Vivaldi, art songs by various Russian composers, and numerous works by J.S. Bach, Henry Purcell & George Frideric Handel, mostly on the Melodiya label.

Amir Hosseinpour

His grandfather also founded the Philarmonic Orchestra of Persia, bringing the music of Bach, Handel, Haydn and Purcell to Persia.

Andrew Parrott

Parrott has published major articles on Bach, Monteverdi and Purcell, is co-editor of the New Oxford Book of Carols and author of The Essential Bach Choir, which was informed by his work with Joshua Rifkin on one-voice-per-part performance of Bach's vocal works.

Anne Sharp

At the Royal Opera House, Sharp sang in the chorus in the first post-war production, Purcell's The Fairy Queen, then in the 1947 productions of Bizet's Carmen, Massenet's Manon and Mozart's The Magic Flute.

Christopher Moulds

He did both works along with the Bavarian State Opera, and then performed Henry Purcell's Dido and Aeneas which he did along with Akamus and choreographer Sasha Waltz.

Funeral march

His track "Clockwork", sampled from Cygnus X - "Orange Theme", which itself uses the title music of the film A Clockwork Orange, which itself is an adaptation of Henry Purcell's "Funeral March for Queen Mary".

John Stafford Smith

He was elected as a member of the select Anacreontic Society which boasted amongst its membership such persons as Samuel Johnson, James Boswell, Sir Joshua Reynolds and Henry Purcell.

Millicent Silver

An important point in Millicent Silver's career came at the end of the war, when at Dartington Hall she was persuaded by the conductor Hans Oppenheim to play the continuo in a performance of Purcell's Dido and Aeneas on a harpsichord.

Music for a While

Music for a While is a musical composition by the English Baroque composer Henry Purcell, the second of four movements from his incidental music composed in 1692 (Z 583) to John Dryden's and Nathaniel Lee's play Oedipus.

Poul Ruders

Ruders has composed a Concerto in Pieces (1995), which is a set of variations on the "Witches' Chorus" from Purcell's opera Dido and Aeneas.

Susannah Waters

Her discography includes Henry Purcell's King Arthur (conducted by William Christie, 1995) and Dido and Æneas (led by Martin Pearlman, 1996), as well as Pauline Viardot's Cendrillon (2000).

Tales from Ovid

In 2009, Fiona Shaw performed one of these tales, Echo and Narcissus, in the context of a Prologue to Henry Purcell's Dido and Aeneas, directed by French conductor and harpsichordist William Christie.

The Massacre at Paris

Henry Purcell set to omen to Charles IX from act V, "Thy genius, lo", in two versions, the one for baritone (Z 604a) appearing in Orpheus Britannicus.

Watkins Shaw

His interests and publications focused on what is now termed early music, in Shaw's case roughly from Thomas Tallis to Samuel Sebastian Wesley, with major interests being John Blow, Henry Purcell and Georg Frideric Handel.


see also

The Faery Queen

The Fairy-Queen, 1692 music drama by Henry Purcell based on Shakespeare's Midsummer Night's Dream (and not on Spenser's poem)