The 250th anniversary of Purcell's death in 1945 profoundly shaped the English musical landscape, particularly influencing Benjamin Britten and his contemporaries. Britten had long admired Purcell's music, whose influence was already evident in works such as the festival cantata "Rejoice in the Lamb" [1][5]. In 1945, the year commemorating Purcell's death, interest in the composer grew considerably [2]. That year, Britten began arranging Purcell's works, transcribing his figured bass for piano accompaniment, sometimes taking considerable liberties with the original compositions [2]. The following year, he incorporated a theme from Purcell's music into "Abdelazar" in "The Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra" [5]. Britten and his contemporaries, especially Tippett, were drawn to Purcell's music for various reasons. For Michael Tippett, engaging with Purcell served as a means of "finding his musical identity" [5]. Britten had analyzed Purcell's use of English texts and applied similar methods, but intertwined with his own musical language.[5] The chaconne form used by Purcell also found its way into Britten's work—for example, he structured the final movement of his second string quartet as a massive chacony, longer than the sum of its other movements.[4] As early as 1947, Britten published his earliest arrangements of Purcell songs, including "Fairest isle," "Man is for the woman made," "If music be the food of love," and "I spy Celia."[1] These were performed in numerous concerts by Britten and Pears. From the outset, the intention was to primarily arrange songs from "Orpheus Britannicus" and "Harmonia Sacra."[1] In a letter to Ralph Hawkes in December of that year, Britten wrote enthusiastically: “The Purcell concerts have been going really well and we are developing ambitious plans for a long series of Purcell arrangements by me! It is the most wonderful music and is receiving extraordinary responses everywhere. Peter and I have been performing it all over this country and we will be presenting some of the great pieces in Amsterdam and Brussels next month.”[1] For his arrangements, Britten chose songs, arias, and duets by Purcell or works attributed to him from “Harmonia Sacra,” “Orpheus Britannicus,” “The Queen’s Epicedium,” “Dido and Aeneas,” and “The Fairy Queen.”[2] The Britten-Pears Foundation acquired a manuscript of one of these arrangements in 2019—a version of “The Blessed Virgin’s Expostulation” that Britten wrote for a concert at Wigmore Hall in 1945.[2] In total, Boosey & Hawkes published 45 of these arrangements in a volume entitled "The Purcell Collection – Realizations by Benjamin Britten"[2].
