ABSTRACT
The decade after the death of Purcell in 1695 was a relatively fallow one for music in London. Native composers such as John Blow, William Croft and Jeremiah Clarke were amongst the most active, and masques and semi-operas, in the mould of Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas, dominated musical theatre. As the first decade of the eighteenth century wore on, the fashion for Italian music began to take hold. According to the historian Roger North, the publication of Corelli’s sonatas ‘cleared the ground of all other sorts of musick whatsoever’.1 In 1714, when the sheet music for Corelli’s twelve Concerti Grossi Op. 6 arrived in London soon after publication, the amateur violinist Henry Needler and his fellow musicians were so taken by them that they played all twelve at a single sitting.2
