Emma Kirkby on Henry Purcell

Great Lives

BBC

Documentary, History, Society & Culture

4.2 • 1.3K Ratings

🗓️ 6 May 2014

⏱️ 25 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Soprano Emma Kirkby discusses the life of English composer Henry Purcell with Matthew Parris.

Despite dying at the age of 36, Purcell was arguably the first composer to become a national figure, as shown by his funeral at Westminster Abbey. Living through turbulent times, and through the reign of three monarchs, Purcell had to cope with shifting Catholic and Protestant regimes while producing a steady output of religious music. But he also did some of his most memorable and enduring work for the commercial theatre. Few composers have set the English language to music so felicitously.

After his death, Britain produced few world class composers for 200 years. To discuss his legacy, Emma and Matthew are joined by Purcell scholar Michael Burden

Producer: Jolyon Jenkins

First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in 2014.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	You're about to listen to a BBC podcast and I'd like to tell you a bit about the
0:03.8	podcast I work on. I'm Dan Clark and I commissioned factual podcasts at the BBC.
0:08.6	It's a massive area but I'd sum it up as stories to help us make sense of the forces shaping the world.
0:15.0	What podcasting does is give us the space and the time to take brilliant BBC journalism
0:20.0	and tell amazing compelling stories that really get behind the headlines.
0:23.7	And what I get really excited about is when we find a way of drawing you into a subject
0:28.3	you might not even have thought you were interested in.
0:30.2	Whether it's investigations, science, tech, politics, culture, true crime, the environment,
0:36.2	you can always discover more with a podcast on BBC Sounds.
0:40.3	Great Lives is a download from Radio 4. We hope you enjoy what you're about to hear.
0:45.0	On this week's Great Lives, we're listening to a man whose music,
0:49.0	spare, simple, acid-sharp, often passionate but never lush, calls across three centuries to our own age.
0:58.2	This, for instance, is now played at the Senetath on Remembrance Day. Dido's Lament, Remember Me. Oh, It's over 300 years old, a completely English sound, a crystal clear call direct from the age of the restoration and no one has given it more life today than my guest the singer Dame Emma Kirkby
1:39.4	Emma introduce Henry Purcell to us.
1:45.0	They called him Harry, and they also called him Orpheus Britannicus.
1:48.2	They thought he was such a splendid mediator between Earth and Heaven with his music, which is what Orpheus did, that they gave him that title.
1:57.0	And do you mind our first clip of his music being a military band of what was really written for the voice?
2:04.0	Well I just rather pleased because I heard it when I watched the Celitaph
2:09.0	service at some point or heard it on the radio and was stunned to realize that I knew that
2:13.4	piece and I was just delighted that it had been borrowed for such important
2:18.2	occasions and most people hear it and are moved by it without knowing who wrote it and so that's a kind of
2:24.1	secret that we musicians rather like to enjoy. You've very emphatically not
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from BBC, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of BBC and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.