Purcell: Hail! Bright Cecilia “Ode to St Cecilia”

Saint Cecilia, as patron of music, has often been celebrated by composers, and particularly in Great Britain where she has always been a very popular figure among musicians. Writing odes in honor of Cecilia became in 17th-century an obligatory step, and many composers from Boyce and Handel to Britten submitted to the exercise, but Henry Purcell’s Hail! Bright Cecilia is probably the earliest and most famous example. This passionate performance by John Eliot Gardiner with his usual partners from the Monteverdi Choir and English Baroque Soloists is a standard of Purcell discography.