MUSIC 1A03 Lecture 21: Henry Purcell and "Dido + Aeneas"
Document Summary
Chapel royal > one of the spaces of worship for the royal family: wrote instrumental + vocal music + opera. English composer, wrote lots of sacred and secular, wrote only one opera, and it was in english. During purcell"s lifetime, the english were hostile towards opera, took until the 17th century for opera to become popular in england. George frideric handel: he wrote lots of operas, made operas popular in england, handel > german composer, spent much of his adult life in london, england, handel wrote his operas in italian. English public enjoyed spoken theatre (shakespeare: shakespeare did include music in his plays but it was very limited. English public had a hard time accepting that these characters should be singing, weren"t used to the convention. There weren"t any good composers in england at the time: mainly tallis, weelkes, byrd, then purcell.
