Continuo Anthems II

This volume continues the reordering of the Society’s edition of Purcell’s anthems, under which all the large-scale verse anthems with strings will be found in Volumes 13 (in preparation) and 14 and 17 (already published); all the verse anthems with organ in Volumes 28 (in preparation) and 29; and the stile antico anthems and the Latin motets in Volume 32 (in preparation). All eleven pieces in the present volume were probably composed for the Chapel Royal, and all appear to belong to Purcell’s later years. Four of them are explicitly dated – the earliest 1687 – in an authoritative source which was not available to previous editors of the music: a score-book in the hand of the celebrated bass singer John Gostling, whose cavernous low register Purcell exploited for its dramatic effect in some of his finest compositions for the Chapel.