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Henry Purcell - Welcome Song 'Welcome to all the pleasures' Z 339: While joys celestial
This track is taken from a forthcoming album called Purcell: Royal Welcome Songs for King Charles II Volume II, released 30 August 2019 and available to pre-order from 1 August.
More about the album:
Henry Purcell grew up in the service of the king. He owed his musical education, his social status and much of his adult livelihood to Charles II. Charles liked to project a strong, stable, divinely-legitimated image that had no basis in reality; but the scale of his deception and financial skulduggery did not emerge until 19th-century historians discovered secret treaty documents between Charles and King Louis XIV of France. Purcell had no idea of course, and so all of the music on this album celebrates the political triumphs that he and others employed at court thought they had witnessed. It includes the quite brilliant Welcome Songs 'Welcome to all the pleasures' (with its superb six-part fanfares to St Cecilia in the final chorus) and 'From hardy climes'.