Purcell’s style is largely a sort of fusion of all the styles in vogue in his lifetime.  The old polyphonic music he knew, and he was a master of polyphonic writing; but with him it was only a means to the carrying out of a scheme very unlike any the old writers ever thought of—­the interest of each separate part is not greater than the general harmonic interest.  Then, as he admitted, he learnt a great deal from the Italians.  From Lulli, through Humphries, he got declamatory freedom in the bonds of definite forms, not letting the poet’s or the Bible words warp his music out of all reasonable shape.  The outlines of his tunes show unmistakably the influence of English folk-song and folk-dance.  There was an immense amount of household music in those days—­catches, ballads, songs and dances.  The folk-songs, even if they were invented before the birth of the modern key-sense, were soon modified by it:  very few indications can be found of their having originated in the epoch when the modes had the domination; and the same is true of the dances.  The sum of these influences, plus Purcell’s innate tendencies, was a style “apt” (in the phraseology of the day) either for Church, Court, theatre, or tavern—­a style whose combined loftiness, directness, and simplicity passed unobserved for generations while the big “bow-wow” manner of Handel was held to be the only manner tolerable in great music.

By 1680 Purcell’s apprenticeship was at end.  Early compositions by him had been published in Playford’s “Choice Ayres” in 1676 and 1679; in 1677 he had been appointed “composer (to the King) in ordinary for the violin, in the place of Matthew Lock, deceased”; but none of the highest official posts were his.  And we must remember that official position was a very different thing in Restoration times from what it is to-day.  Nowadays the world is bigger and more thickly populated, and men of intellect and genius scorn Court appointments and official appointments generally.  These are picked up by Court toadies, business-headed persons, men belonging to well-connected families—­the Tite Barnacles of the generation.  The men of power appeal to the vast public direct.  In Purcell’s day there was no vast public to appeal to.  Concerts had scarcely been devised; no composer could live by publishing his works.  The Court, the theatre, the Church—­he had to win a position in one or other or all of these if he wished to live at all.  So in 1680 Purcell the master passed over the head of his teacher, Dr. John Blow, to the organistship of Westminster Abbey—­that is, he was recognised as the first organist living.  In the same year he composed the first theatre pieces he is known to have composed—­those for Lee’s Theodosius. (I disregard as fatuous the supposition that in his boyhood he wrote the Macbeth music attributed, perhaps wrongly, to Locke.) It was not for some time that he gained the supremacy at the theatre which he now held in the Church.  That very trustworthy weathercock John Dryden, Poet Laureate, continued to flatter others for many long days to come.  In this same year he composed the first of a long series of odes of welcome, congratulation or condolence for royal or great personages, and about this year he married.