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THE LONDON INTO WHICH PURCELL was born on an unknown date in 1659 was a capital in a state of flux and confusion. Twenty years of Commonwealth rule, the most radical experiment in the history of England, had produced a dourly efficient government now in its terminal stages, its faltering position fatally undermined by the death in the previous year of Oliver Cromwell, Lord Protector and the one man who might have maintained Puritan austerity. Cromwell’s successor, his son Richard, possessed none of his father’s political skill, and his brief career was brought to an abrupt end on 24 May 1659 when he was forced to abdicate as Protector. A year and a day later the exiled Stuart monarch Charles II landed at Dover, heralding a new era of dynamic artistic rejuvenation in England.
Although the effect on English musical life during the years of the Interregnum was not as catastrophic as has sometimes been suggested, it was certainly severe. In particular the strong traditions of Anglican church music had suffered grievously, Puritan intolerance of all but the simplest music having resulted in the disbandment of the great cathedral choral schools and the wholesale wanton destruction of organs, amongst them that of Westminster Abbey, its pipes pawned by drunken Roundheads to buy beer. Strong disapproval of the theater smothered dramatic and musical development, and it comes as something of a paradox to recall that the first English opera, The Siege of Rhodes, was performed during this cheerless period, albeit under clandestine conditions. Equally damaging was the isolation that resulted from a nation concerned only with its own inner turmoil, a state of introversion resulting in the near cessation of the stimulating interaction between native and Continental composers and musicians.
Of the major native composers who had blossomed under the reign of Charles I (arguably the most artistic of all English monarchs) in pre–Civil War days, only the 30-year-old Matthew Locke was in a position to play a significant role in the Restoration re-establishment of the country’s court and public musical life. Some, notably Henry Lawes and John Jenkins, would find new court appointments, but were too close to retirement to make a major contribution, whilst Thomas Tomkins and Lawes’ brother, the prodigiously talented William, had failed to survive the Interregnum, the latter an heroically tragic Cavalier victim of the Siege of Chester in 1645.
The return of Charles II, news of which, according to the diarist Samuel Pepys, occasioned “great joy” and people “drinking of the King’s health upon their knees in the streets” (which he thought a “a little too much”) but was quickly succeeded by more practical concerns. The nation’s finances were in a precarious state—neither army nor navy had received payment for some time, and the restored King was immediately faced with demands for restitution from many who felt they had been wronged during Cromwell’s times. It might have seemed an unlikely time for music to take priority, yet here as in other matters Charles acted quickly, and by 24 June had appointed Matthew Locke to the important court post of composer to “ye private musick”. An early product of Locke’s new appointment was the first of two sets of chamber works entitled The Broken Consort (c.1661), six chamber suites for violins, viols and continuo (hence “broken”) that revive the contrapuntal English consort tradition and frequently display the piquant harmonies and love of dissonance characteristic of 17th-century English composers.
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