Purcell and his immediate predecessors and contemporaries came into what Hullah rightly called the “transition period.”  Purcell is now to be considered, and of the others it need only be said that we see in their music the old modes losing their hold and the new key sense growing stronger.  Their music compared with the old is modern, though compared with all music later than Handel it is archaic.

CHAPTER II

What we know of Purcell’s life is nothing, or next to nothing; what is written as his life is conjecture, more or less ingenious inference, or pure fiction.  In that we know so little of him he is blessed, but the blessedness has not as yet extended to his biographers.  At one time a biographer’s task was easy:  he simply took the hearsay and inventions of Hawkins, and accepted them as gospel truth whenever they could not be tested.  The fact that whenever they could by any means be tested they were found to be false—­even this did not dismay the biographer.  Hawkins’s favourite pastime was libelling the dead.  He libelled Dr. Johnson, and Boswell promptly and most vigorously dealt with him; he libelled Purcell grossly—­he deliberately devised slanderous tales of him.  The biographers, with simple, childlike credulity, went on whenever possible repeating his statements, for the obvious reason that this course was the easiest.  Hawkins knew nothing of Purcell.  He can be proved to be wrong, not merely about this or that detail, but about everything.  He is said to have known one Henry Needler, a pupil of Purcell, and also Gostling, the son of the singer of the same name for whom Purcell wrote; but neither acquaintance seems to have profited him aught.  His anecdotes are the product of inborn wickedness and an uncouth, boorish imagination.  When we have cleared away his garbage, there remains only a skeleton life, but at any rate we have the satisfaction of knowing that is pure fact.

Henry Purcell was born (probably) about the end of 1658, and (probably also) in Westminster.  Some of his family were musicians before him.  His father, Henry Purcell the elder, was a Gentleman of the Chapel Royal (that is, a singer in the choir, and in many cases organist as well), and was master of the choristers at Westminster Abbey for three years.  He held various posts in the “King’s Musick,” sharing the duties of “lute and voyce” for a time with one Angelo Notari.  The latter appears to have died in 1663; but strangely enough after his death he asked for arrears of salary for 1661 and 1664.  However, in 1663 Henry Purcell the elder seemed to have taken over the whole duties of their joint post; and he, Purcell, died in 1664.  If Henry the younger was six years old at the time of his father’s death, then he must have been born in 1658 or, at latest, the early part of 1659; if he was born in 1658 or the early part of 1659, then he must have been six years old at the time of his father’s death.  So much we know positively;