England knew what it had lost when Henry Purcell died aged 36 years on 21 November 1695. His funeral at Westminster Abbey, where he worked for 16 years as organist, was on the grandest scale, a composer colleague described him as "the greatest genius we ever had", and a collection of his songs published shortly after his death was called "Orpheus Britannicus" - the British Orpheus.
In his vocal music, Purcell set the English language with a sensitivity no one had matched before or since (only Britten, who loved Purcell's music, has come close). In his instrumental music, Purcell gave the arcane form of the Fantasia its final flourish, but as a true modern, he was among the first to exploit the possibilities of orchestral colour. He mixed influences from ancient counterpoint to the latest French dances and Italian vocal acrobatics, and yet the result is always pure Purcell.
That's why he still inspires composers today, and why musicians from Elliott Carter to Colin Matthews have turned to his music as a creative catalyst: if you can fuse flawless technique with poetic expression like Purcell did, you're doing something right. That's the challenge these five composers have taken up, and which you can hear in a face-off between the 17th century and the 21st in the London Sinfonietta's concert, broadcast tomorrow. Here's what they have to say on Purcell, the contemporary inspiration. Tom Service
Steve Martland
I've always liked Purcell's music. So much so that I've often used bits of it as a starting point for my own. For his 300th anniversary the BBC commissioned me to write Beat the Retreat for my band. I borrowed part of a bassline for a sort of Purcell dance fantasy of my own. Then for the Netherland's Wind Ensemble I wrote Fairest Isle, new accompaniments to a bunch of Purcell's songs, as well as completing and seriously tampering with the unfinished Staircase Overture, which in my hands became Step By Step - probably more of a wobbly step ladder. I've also done what a lot of English composers have done over the years - made arrangements of Purcell's music. It's easy to understand the attraction. Nationalist it ain't, but it is so very sweetly English, which I'm guessing means modest, melancholy, exuberant and joyful by turn.
Purcell is not pretentious, although he is clever. His One Note Fantasy is a good example of his cleverness. The same note is sustained throughout the duration of the music, and all the varying harmonies fit in. I made a version for Brass Quintet, but for the life of me I can't remember why or for whom I did this. For my own pleasure, I suppose. I did manage to include the same one-note sounding throughout, but I swapped it between the various instruments. And I must have made some quite non-17th-century rhythmic distortions.
Oliver Knussen
The coincidence of the 300th anniversary of Purcell's death in 1695 and a troublesome gap in a planned Aldeburgh festival programme that included Messiaen's Quatuor pour la Fin du Temps led to the idea of inviting two close colleagues - George Benjamin and Colin Matthews - to join me in making versions of three Purcell string fantasias of our choice, scored for the Messiaen Ensemble [clarinet, violin, cello and piano] and rejoicing under the collective moniker "A Purcell Garland".
I reserved for myself the Fantasia Upon One Note. Perhaps heretically in this context, while respecting Purcell very much, I do not feel a particular creative affinity with the music itself, but I have long been fascinated by pieces, or movements, in which the most varied harmonies hover around a central, fixed, immovable pitch. Wonderful examples of this technique can be found in Debussy, Ravel, Respighi and Britten (who once played Purcell's single note on the viola for a famous 78rpm recording), but the Fantasia Upon One Note remains the archetype.
My piece preserves the contours and proportions of the original exactly, but begins in a floating, dream-like place that recalls but does not sound at all like the Purcell. The progress of the piece is like a gradual waking-up from this state, with the original coming more and more into focus until it stands unadorned at the end.
George Benjamin
It is difficult to overstate the impact Purcell's Viol Fantasias made on me when I discovered them in the late 1980s. The combination of concentrated counterpoint with a harmonic, beguiling sensitivity immediately captivated me. The quick-silver volatility of feeling also impressed, where flashes of delight and good humour break through the predominant bittersweet, though intoxicating, melancholy. The discovery of these pieces quite simply changed the way I perceived - and wrote - music.
The Fantasias were written early in Purcell's career, and their intense introspection may come as a surprise to listeners accustomed to the more rhetorical, Italian-influenced idiom of his later theatre works. They are immensely varied and hugely imaginative in form; one of the most famous Fantasias has a single pitch (middle C) sounding throughout, from first bar to last. Purcell's ingenuity in coping with such a severe restriction - and creating a work of haunting beauty - is in itself a supreme lesson.
The seventh Fantasia, with its breathtaking originality and depth of feeling, has always been my favourite. Its haunting melodic curves combine with dissonances and harmonic twists whose strangeness - and poignancy - defy description. This was the piece I chose when Oliver Knussen approached me to participate in the Aldeburgh festival's 1995 tribute to Purcell. It was not, however, at all obvious how to transport the sustained and hom*ogenous sound world of the original viol consort into the mixed timbres of the four modern instruments at my disposition.
My solution was, in the main, to give the body of the music to the glistening, low resister of the five-octave celesta. Behind this, sustained fragments of material float by on the other instruments, the violin and cello playing harmonics, a sound that mixes seamlessly with the clarinet. I had one visual image as an analogy for my efforts - that this transcription was the acoustic equivalent of a faded daguerreotype of the original.
Colin Matthews
I can't claim an intimate knowledge of Purcell, but I've always been most attracted to the instrumental music, especially the wonderful invention and imagination to be found in the Fantasias, and was very pleased to be asked to arrange one for the ensemble of Messiaen's Quatuor pour le Fin du Temps. I have something of an obsessive interest in unfinished works, and, having arranged his Fantasia XI for string orchestra the year before, this time I was drawn to Purcell's four-part Fantasia XIII.
It's just as likely that Purcell failed to finish copying it as it is that he never completed it. As it is, it ends up in the air, probably towards what would have been the end of the slow opening section, which was likely to have been followed by a "quick" or "brisk" section. My completion followed this pattern, ending with a short, slow coda. Since I'm about as far from being a baroque scholar as can be imagined, there seemed no point in trying to continue in style, and although the point at which I take over is not (I hope) easily perceptible, the slow-moving harmony soon moves in unexpected directions; while the fast section quickly goes altogether off the rails and into areas that seem to show that Purcell was anticipating both Scriabin and Messiaen.
Elliott Carter
I have always greatly admired Purcell's music. When I studied with Nadia Boulanger, we sang through a number of his works, including King Arthur, which had a dramatic power unexpected from a composer of that period. One of my favourite of his pieces is The Blessed Virgin's Expostulation. I specifically liked the way he combined lyrical lines and recitative, much in the same way that Monteverdi did, but much more effectively.
I had written a number of pieces on one note and this idea had stuck in my mind, so when I decided to write my Fantasy about Purcell's Fantasia Upon One Note, which came at the same time that I was writing my Brass Quintet, I decided to write it for this same combination of players.
I saw this piece as having a bell ringing throughout, which I put in the French Horn part. This figure was pitted against the other instruments of the brass quintet ,who play both lighthearted and sombre music at the same time the bell is ringing.
