ABSTRACT
Context. Henry Purcell (b. 1659), by general consent, both of his own contemporaries and of posterity, the greatest English composer of the seventeenth century, died on 21 November 1695. He was given a solemn burial on 26 November (to the accompaniment of the music which he had written for the funeral of Queen Mary eight months previously) in Westminster Abbey, where he had worked since 1673, first as ‘keeper, mender, maker, repairer and tuner of the regals, organs, virginals, flutes and recorders and all other kind of wind instruments whatsoever’, then (from 1679) as organist. A memorial tablet was placed near his grave (in the north aisle of the Abbey, beneath the organ), at the expense of his pupil Annabella, Lady Howard, fourth wife of Sir Robert Howard, and D.’s sister-in-law. Scott suggested that ‘judging from internal evidence’ it is ‘more than probable’ that D. contributed the inscription, which reads: ‘Here lyes / HENRY PURCELL, Esq.; / Who left this Life / And is gone to that Blessed Place, / Where only his Harmony / can be exceeded’ (Purcell Remembered, edited by Michael Burden (1995) 114-15, illustration 17).
