Henry Purcell’s Funeral Music for Queen Mary

Engraved portrait of Henry Purcell by R. White, from "Orpheus Britannicus." Public Domain

Henry Purcell is widely considered to be the greatest composer England ever produced. Though he died young, he was extraordinarily prolific, writing more than 600 works in his brief life. From operas to songs to chamber music and incidental music for plays, his legacy looms large. Among the very best of these pieces is the music he wrote upon the death of his beloved patron and queen, Mary II.

A Composer Through Three Reigns

Purcell lived through hectic times. He was born in 1659, the year Oliver Cromwell’s son, Richard, abdicated and England’s government became unstable. The nation’s musical life had suffered during republican rule. Puritans restricted public secular music and forbade instrumental music in church. Choirs were disbanded and congregations only sang Psalms and biblical cantatas.

With the return of Charles II in 1660, the son of the monarch whom Oliver Cromwell had beheaded, these bans were lifted. Purcell’s talent was discovered early when he was chosen to be in the Chapel Royal choir at the age of 8. After his voice changed, he continued at Westminster Abbey as an organist in a music career that spanned three reigns. After Charles II died, he served James II. In the Glorious Revolution of 1688, James’s fortunes fell when he was deposed. Purcell’s star rose higher, however. After William and Mary ascended the throne, he was appointed court composer.

Queen Mary II in 1685, by Jan Verkolje. National Portrait Gallery, London. Public Domain

Mary II was universally beloved throughout the realm, though she co-reigned with her husband for a mere five years. She was a great lover of music and commissioned many works from Purcell to be played at royal events. Every year he wrote odes to be performed on her birthday.

Tragedy Strikes

In early December 1694, Mary awoke with a rash on her arm. Realizing it was smallpox, she began putting her affairs in order. She made an inventory of her jewels, listed her debts, and left detailed instructions for her own funeral. Political circumstances seem to have contributed to the severity of her illness, as she was despondent that William was leaving for a battlefield in Flanders. When she died on Dec. 28, public mourning was widespread.

Mary wanted her burial to be a quiet, private affair. The event was delayed due to a combination of smallpox, politics, and a cold winter. The theaters had been closed since her illness, which contributed to public restlessness.

When the funeral finally took place over two months after her death, on March 5, 1695, it was anything but quiet. All of London’s notables, plus many foreign dignitaries, turned out. Three hundred poor women, given elegant clothes for the occasion, led Mary’s coffin on a carriage pulled by eight horses. Balconies throughout the city were draped in black, as was Westminster Abbey.

The Funeral Music

Since Purcell had been the Queen’s favorite composer, he was commissioned to write the music for her funeral. He composed an entire suite: a march, a more intricate instrumental piece called a “canzona,” vocal pieces called “funeral sentences” set to the text of the “Book of Common Prayer,” and an anthem.

Autograph manuscript of the second of Purcell's Funeral Sentences, "In the midst of life we are in death," British Library, Public Domain

Purcell’s original instrumental music itself does not survive. For that, we may thank another contemporary musician, Thomas Tudway, who either copied Purcell’s manuscript or transcribed what he heard on that day.

According to Tudway, the Funeral March was “sounded before her Chariot.” Contrary to what one might think, it would not have been performed while the coffin was moving through the streets, but after the procession reached Westminster Abbey.

The reason for this was the type of instrument needed to play it: a now-obscure design called a “flat” trumpet. A cross between a trumpet and a trombone, it featured a double slide that, unlike a trombone’s, moves behind the player’s shoulder. This made it too unwieldy to play while in motion. It allowed playing in minor (“flat”) keys, more suitable for a solemn occasion than a natural trumpet.

Purcell employed four flat trumpets in his funeral music. Unfortunately, since none have survived, we only know of these instruments from their use in a few pieces of music and a handful of images. Amazingly, four of them were painstakingly reconstructed for a 1994 recording of the funeral music under the Hyperion music label, performed by Robert King conducting The King’s Consort orchestra.

Mary’s Funeral Service

The simple rhythm and harmonic progression of the funeral march would have accompanied the coffin either as it moved up the aisle or once placed at the front. After the march was played twice through, the service began. Mary’s body was placed under a canopy fringed with silver and black velvet. From this hung “a bason supported by cupids or cherubims shoulders, in which was one great lamp burning the whole tyme.”

Near the end of the service, the melancholy funeral sentences were performed, and the simple but beautiful anthem, “Thou Knowest, Lord, the Secrets of our Hearts.” Tudway wrote that the anthem was “a plain, Naturall Composition,” that nevertheless “drew tears from all”:

“I appeal to all that were present, as well such as understood Music … whither they ever heard anything so rapturously fine & solemn and so Heavenly in the Operation.”

As Mary’s body was taken to the vault of Henry VII’s chapel, Purcell’s canzona was performed, a reflective piece that shows the composer’s ability to convey deep emotions through a mastery of counterpoint. Church bells played for three hours, and guns were fired in one-minute intervals from the Tower of London. King William III and the citizens of London were inconsolable.

Along with Purcell’s music, Mary II’s legacy lives on through the College of William and Mary in Virginia that bears her name.

Purcell himself died less than a year after Mary. Her funeral music was his grandest public display, and one of his last. Appropriately, the anthem originally performed for her was also played at his own funeral. At his passing, Tudway called him “the Greatest Genius we ever had.” History has vindicated this opinion.

Henry Purcell, 1695, by John Closterman. Public Domain

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