IN November 1692 it was once again Henry Purcell's turn to provide music for his fellow ‘Masters and Lovers of Musick’ as they honoured their ‘great Patroness’ St Cecilia with a feast that evidently ranked as ‘one of the genteelest in the world’. And the 33-year-old composer certainly excelled himself: Hail! bright Cecilia, an ode ‘admirably set to Music by Mr. Henry Purcell ‘, evidently went down so well with the musical assembly that it was performed twice ‘with universal applause’.

It is indisputably an exceptionally fine composition, a shining example of a distinctively English genre – the choral and orchestral ode. But what also draws me to it is the very particular way in which this one work seems to open a window on Purcell's musical world – the environment which shaped him as a composer, and which he in turn helped to shape. The distinctive nature of the St Cecilia's Day celebrations, combined with specific clues found in the composer's autograph score, can, I believe, take us to very the heart of Restoration London's vibrant musical life, to the closely knit musical community which Purcell inhabited and which in many ways he dominated. Moreover, this can all feed into the way we perform the music and, ultimately, bring it more vividly to life.

ST CECILIA'S DAY ODES

THE first time we hear of the St Cecilia's Day meetings in London is in 1683, when Purcell produced his Welcome to all the pleasures for ‘the Gentlemen of the Musical Society’. That was possibly the first time a new work had been specially commissioned for the occasion. Four stewards for the ensuing year are named: two gentlemen amateurs and two professional musicians, one of them the violinist and composer Dr Nicholas Staggins, Master of the King's Musick. This interesting social mix is also mentioned in the new monthly The Gentleman's Journal, which notes that of those who attend ‘many are persons of the first Rank’ but also that ‘there are no formalities nor gatherings’ as at other feasts. The occasion brought together not only professionals and amateurs but also court musicians and freelances, singers from church and theatre, virtuoso performers and musical tradesmen, Englishmen and foreigners, Protestants and Catholics – in short, a unique cross-section of musical London, gathered together solely ‘to propagate the advancement of that divine Science’.