Artform / Sheet music / Purcell

Free Purcell sheet music

18 Purcell scores on Artform's shelf, ordered easiest to read first. Every score here is public domain, free to read, print and keep.

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Henry Purcell (1659-1695)

English composer of the Restoration, organist of Westminster Abbey and the finest thing to happen to English music between the Tudors and Elgar, dead at thirty-six with a body of work that includes anthems, theatre music and one short, perfect opera. Dido's Lament is built on a bass line that falls, over and over, the same five notes under everything the singer does, and it is still one of the most devastating things anybody has written with so little material. He was buried beneath the organ he had played, and the country did not produce a composer of his stature again for two hundred years.

Start with these

The easiest Purcell on the shelf, in order. Nothing here is graded and nobody is ranked: the shelf simply puts the pieces that ask less of your hands before the ones that ask more.

Purcell Here the Deities Approve Template G major · <1 min Henry Purcell - Bezeichnung standardisiert: St.Martin's Lane F major · 2 min Purcell: Air G major · <1 min O solitude - Henry Purcell C minor · 10 min Purcell: Saraband G minor · 1 min Music for a while - Henry Purcell b major B major · 4 min Purcell: March C major · <1 min Purcell: Hornpipe E minor · <1 min Fantasia 5 for the viols - Purcell B♭ major · 7 min Dido's Lament (When I Am Laid in Earth) E minor · 4 min Shepherd Leave Decoying E minor · <1 min The Fatal Hour - Henry Purcell (W/Melody) C minor · 4 min

Every Purcell score

Fantasia 8 for the viols - Purcell D minor · 8 min A Clockwork Orange; Music for the Funeral of Queen Mary A minor · 1 min N36 - Thus The Ever Gratefull Spring B minor · 2 min N37. Here is The Summer D major · <1 min Ye Gentle Spirits of the Air - Purcell F major · 3 min The Blessed Virgin's Expostulation Tell me some pitying angel Z. 196 - Henry Purcell B minor · 5 min

How the reader works

Each score opens as engraved notation you can read from the stand, and it plays: hear the piece first, then slow it down and loop the bar that is not working. There is nothing to install and no account to make. When you want paper, print it.

Every file is MusicXML, so MuseScore, Sibelius, Finale and Dorico open them too.

Where to go next

If you are learning Purcell rather than only reading, the scale pages cover fingering in every key, the chord pages spell out every chord, and the symbol dictionary explains any mark on the page you do not recognise.

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