Purcell: Fantazias and In Nomines. (Fretwork)

There has been a tendency among musicologists to categorize Purcell's extraordinarily profound fantazias as `student exercises', although by 1680 (the date borne by the four-part fantazias) Purcell had succeeded Locke as composer-in-ordinary for the violins and Blow as organist of Westminster Abbey--hardly student positions. Perhaps this label became attached because, as North tells us, Charles II `had an utter detestation of Fancys' and thus the viol consort was completely out of favour at court. The notion of student exercises is an inadequate explanation for Purcell taking such pains in a genre seemingly so unfashionable.

North also observes that for much of Charles's reign `the old music' remained staple fare in country houses, where domestic music was much cultivated as well as in `many meetings and societies in London'. While it is true that before Purcell the final flowering of creative writing for viol consort came in the 1650s--headed by Locke's `magnifik' Consort of Fower Parts--there is abundant evidence of lively pockets of consort playing up to an beyond the date of Purcell's …