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- Music Department
- Composer
- Writer
Purcell grew up in a musical family. As a boy he attended the Chapel Royal church choir. His talent earned him training as an organist. In 1677, the 18-year-old became "composer for the violins" at the English court. Two years later he took up the position of organist at Westminster Abbey. Purcell thus took over the post from John Blow, one of his organist teachers, which he held until his death. In 1682 he became organist of the Chapel Royal and a year later, royal instrument manager. During this time he primarily composed sacred music and works for celebratory occasions, including the celebratory compositions "I was glad" and "My heart is inditing" from 1685.
Two years later the music for the tragedy "Tyrannick Love" by John Dryden was created. In 1689, Purcell's first opera, Dido and Aeneas, was performed. The following year he created songs for Shakespeare's "The Tempest" based on an adaptation by John Dryden and for his comedy title "Amphitryon". In 1691 and the following year the baroque operas "King Arthur" and "The Fairy Queen" were written. Purcell composed the titles "Te Deum" and "Jubilate" on the occasion of St. Cecilia's Day in 1694. They are both considered masterpieces. In the same year he wrote an anthem, a choral piece with sacred text, for the memorial service on the occasion of the death of Queen Mary II of England. This piece in particular shows the lasting impact of Purcell's musical work up to modern times: it was electronically edited by Wendy Carlos for the theme music of Stanley Kubrick's film "A Clockwork Orange".
Purcell was only 36 years old, but he was very productive in his musical life. His work includes around 40 masterpieces, stage works, plays, odes, songs, cantatas, chamber music, church choir and piano works. With his three- to five-part sonatas and fantasies for string instruments, he continued the older English consort music, which gained recognition for its artistic polyphony, highly cromatic and dissonant harmony of the modern style. His other semi-operas also include the titles "The prophetess, or the history of Dioclesian" (1690) and "The Indian Queen" (1695).
Henry Purcell died in London on November 21, 1695.- Writer
- Soundtrack
Born in July 8, 1621, in Château-Thierry (Champagne, France), where his father was in charge of Water, Forests and Hunting, Jean de la Fontaine spent his whole childhood and adolescence in the countryside, where he mainly studied Latin language. In 1641, he moved to Paris to continue his study at the Oratoire, rue St Honoré. But he stayed there only for 18 months because he didn't like it. Then he studied law and became a lawyer at the Parliament of Paris in 1649. Before that his father married him to 14-years-old Marie Héricart in 1647. They later had a son, Charles, in 1653.
Then he decided to become a writer and first published l'Eunuque, in 1654, translated from Terentius's old version, then a heroic poem, Adonis, in 1658, inspired by Ovid. The latter work allowed him to have the admiration and protection of Nicolas Fouquet. But in 1661, while La Fontaine was writing Le Songe de Vaux, Fouquet was disgraced, arrested and put in jail by the king. Thus La Fontaine lost his protection and was pursued for royal disgrace because of his faithfulness with Fouquet, for who he wrote several poems including Élégie aux nymphes de Vaux. Thus he left Paris for the Limousin.
When he came back to Paris, his career restarted with the publication of his Contes (divided in 5 books) from 1664 to 1674, his 243 Fables from 1668 and his novel les amours de Psyché et Cupidon in 1669. He successively found the protection of the Duchesse de Bouillon, the Duchesse d'Orléans, Mme de La Sablière and finally Madame Hervart. Elected at the Académie française in 1683, his passion for ancient Greece and Rome brought him on the Ancients side during the century's quarrel between Ancients and Moderns. He had a quite brilliant social life and regularly saw the most famous writers of his time: Perrault, Mme de Sévigné, Boileau, Molière, Racine and La Rochefoucauld.
Nevertheless during the last two years of his life he gave up with social life, was obliged to deny some of his work and devoted himself to meditation. That's how he died in 1695. Nowadays some people still say that Jean de la Fontaine copied everything he wrote (especially the fables of Aesop and Phaedrus) but others defend him by saying that he generally improved them and he also made us know the ancient authors he liked and who would have been probably forgotten without him. .