“But in spite of all temptations to belong to other nations, He remains an Englishman.”
Yet if it had been Henry Purcell rather than Able Seaman Ralph Rackstraw on the deck of Gilbert and Sullivan’s HMS Pinafore then the crew might not have raised their voices quite so loudly in praise of those impeccable English credentials. Purcell may have been English born and bred, but his musical nationality was much more wide-ranging.
Purcell was caught in the crosswinds of fashionable change: sometimes he felt the prevailing wind from Italy, sometimes he was buffeted by the latest ideas blown across the Channel from France. But he was also proud of his English heritage, cultivating some homegrown styles which dated right back to the...
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