Pelham Humfrey
Pelham Humfrey was perhaps the most significant English composer during the fifteen years between the Restoration of Charles II in 1660 and the outset of Purcell's career. A precociously gifted composer, Humfrey was sent by Charles II to France and Italy to study the latest techniques of composition. His synthesis of these occasioned a style more wholly committed to the newer baroque idioms than those of his major English contemporaries. Although his output of verse anthems with strings, court odes, songs, and theatre music spanned little more than a decade, it contributed handsomely to Charles II's vision of an English court comparable to the most opulent in Europe. Now that the bulk of Humfrey's music, and that of his older contemporary Matthew Locke, has been published, the time is ripe for a thorough study of the composer, and the English musical environment that he so decisively shaped. This chapter in English music makes an indispensable contribution to any account of the rise of Purcell, Humfrey's greatest pupil
Print Book, English, 1986
Oxford University Press, Oxford [Oxfordshire], 1986