Love’s Goddess Sure was Blind, written in exuberant and florid style for the birthday of the much loved young Queen Mary ends, extraordinarily, with a reflection on the grief her eventual death would provoke. It was less than six years later that the prophesied mourning became a reality, when, in her early thirties, she succumbed to smallpox. Purcell’s eloquent compositions for her funeral are acknowledged as some of his most powerful masterpieces marrying a genuine of expression of grief (Purcell greatly admired the witty, musical Mary) with a characteristic sophistication of style.
