During the last portion of his life (1690-5) Purcell composed a large amount of music, and that is nearly all we know.  Of course, he went on playing the organ—­that is indubitable.  Of course, also, he gave lessons; but it is a remarkable fact that few musicians after his death claimed to have been his favourite pupils or his pupils at all.  That he became, as we should say nowadays, conductor at Drury Lane or any other theatre cannot be asserted with certitude, though it is probable.  He wrote incidental music for about forty-two dramas, some of the sets of pieces being gorgeously planned on a large scale.  He had composed complimentary odes for three Kings; in the last year of his life he was to write the funeral music for a Queen, and the music was to serve at his own funeral.  During this last period he wrote his greatest ode, “Hail, Bright Cecilia”; his greatest pieces of Church music, the Te Deum and Jubilate; and in all likelihood his greatest sonatas, those in four parts.  He also rewrote a part of Playford’s Brief Introduction to the Skill of Music.

It is not my intention to analyse the dramas.  No more can be done in the narrow space than give the reader a notion of Purcell’s general procedure of filling his space, and the salient characteristics of the filling.  Although Dido differs from the other plays in containing no spoken dialogue, and may not strictly fall into this period, I shall for convenience’ sake treat it with them.  After dealing with the dramatic work there will remain the odes, the anthems and services, and the instrumental music.

THE THEATRE MUSIC.

We can scarcely hope to hear the bulk of the music for the theatre, as has been remarked, because of the worthlessness of the plays to which it is attached.  Even King Arthur, The Tempest, The Fairy Queen and Dioclesian pieces are too fragmentary, disconnected, to be performed with any effect without scenery, costume, and some explanation in the way of dialogue.  In King Arthur there are instrumental numbers to accompany action on the stage:  without that action these numbers are meaningless. King Arthur was given at Birmingham some years ago, but it proved to be even more incoherent than the festival cantatas which our composers write to order:  if the masque from Timon or Dioclesian had been inserted, few would have noticed the interpolation.

Dido and Aeneas is a different matter.  It was very well performed by students some years since, and there is no reason why such an opera company as the Moody-Manners should not devote half an evening to it now and then.  It is not long; excepting the solo parts, it is not difficult; it is entrancingly beautiful; properly staged, the dances of witches, etc., are fantastic and full of interest.  For two hundred years every musician has admired Dido’s lament, “When I am laid in Earth”; and