Westminster Abbey: Musicians' Corner: Henry Purcell

King of the Zombies, Joan Woodbury, Dick Purcell, Henry Victor, 1941 Premium Poster 12" x 16" $19.99 Unframed

Arthur H. Beavan continues his look at Westminster Abbey, in Imperial London, first published in 1901, with this mention of Musicians' Corner and the tomb of the composer of Dido and Aeneas, Henry Purcell:

Do you love music and musicians?

In the north aisle of the Westminster Abbey choir, appropriately near the organ, is Musicians' Corner, where rest the great Henry Purcell - composer of the immortal "Dido and Aeneas", Samuel Arnold - famous for the English opera "The Maid of the Hill", John Blow - organist and choirmaster at Westminster Abbey and the Chapel Royal and Purcell's teacher, William Croft - English organist and composer of church music in the Baroque style, William Sterndale Bennett - English composer who wrote most of his works while studying in Leipzig where he became a close friend of Robert Schumann and Mendelssohn - and many other organists and composers besides.

If the thought of those who, as evangelists and philanthropists, counted their lives of little worth, move you, pause in the middle of the nave at a black marble slab, beneath which rests Livingstone, the apostle of Darkest Africa, and read these lines:

"Other sheep I have which are not of this fold; them also I
must bring, and they shall hear my voice;"

If science attract, you will find against the choir-screen the resting-place of Sir Isaac Newton, near to Sir John Herschel and Charles Darwin - who are both in the north aisle of the nave - and in the same aisle, but nearer the west door, Sir Charles Lyell.

Then next to Ben Jonson is John Hunter, the famous surgeon and anatomist. Should your inclination be towards architecture and engineering, there are buried in the Westminster Abbey nave, Sir Charles Barry, George Edmund Street, Sir Gilbert Scott, John Pearson, R.A., and, close to Telford, Sir Robert Stephenson.

Perhaps you love the period when the Tatler and the Spectator gave to literature its highest ideal of polished English composition?

In the north aisle of Westminster Abbey's Henry VII chapel, not far from Queen Elizabeth I's tomb, you will find beneath a small tablet on the floor, the grave of Joseph Addison, who, as Thackeray says, "enjoyed a life prosperous and beautiful - a calm death - an immense fame and affection afterwards, for his happy and spotless name."

Next: Westminster Abbey: Poets' Corner