The potential of music as a means of adding dignity and grandeur to state occasions has surely been lost on a few rulers in history. Portraits of antique kings and queens are more often admired (or the reverse) for their artistic qualities, as opposed to the enhancement in the status of their subjects they were […]

Purcell wrote so much in so many different spheres of musical activity that it is easy to forget that one of his main tasks was to be a royal composer, to provide music for the occasions of State in Westminster Abbey, just as the Gabrielis had done for the Doge at St Mark’s or Lully […]