The Composition
Purcell's Funeral Sentences are a set of short anthems composed for the burial service of Queen Mary II, who died of smallpox on 28 December 1694 at the age of thirty-two. The funeral was held at Westminster Abbey on 5 March 1695, and the service was attended by the entire English court and Parliament - one of the most elaborate state funerals of the period. Purcell composed several pieces for the occasion, including a processional march for brass and drums and the three Funeral Sentences: 'Man that is born of a woman,' 'In the midst of life we are in death,' and 'Thou knowest, Lord, the secrets of our hearts.'
The Funeral Sentences are settings of texts from the Anglican Order for the Burial of the Dead in the Book of Common Prayer (1662), which are themselves drawn directly from Scripture. The third anthem, 'Thou knowest, Lord,' begins with the same bass ostinato figure as the first, creating a structural connection between the three settings and suggesting they were conceived as a unified cycle.
Purcell himself died eight months after Queen Mary's funeral, on 21 November 1695, aged approximately thirty-six - the cause is uncertain, possibly tuberculosis or chocolate poisoning, or both. His own funeral at Westminster Abbey on 26 November 1695 used his own Funeral Sentences, making this perhaps the most poignant self-citation in music history: the composer hearing his own funeral music performed at his own burial, the music that had been intended for a queen now serving the composer who had written it.
Biblical Text
The primary text of the first anthem - 'Man that is born of a woman hath but a short time to live, and is full of misery; he cometh up and is cut down like a flower; he fleeth as it were a shadow, and never continueth in one stay' - is Job 14:1-2 in the language of the Book of Common Prayer. Job's meditation on human mortality and frailty, spoken from within his own extreme suffering, provides the Anglican burial rite with its opening statement of theological realism: before comfort or hope can be offered, the fact of death and the brevity of life must be fully acknowledged.
The second text - 'In the midst of life we are in death; of whom may we seek for succour, but of thee, O Lord, who for our sins art justly displeased? Yet, O Lord God most holy, O Lord most mighty, O holy and most merciful Saviour, deliver us not into the bitter pains of eternal death' - is a medieval antiphon (Media vita in morte sumus) attributed to Notker of St. Gall (c. 840-912), incorporated into the Anglican burial rite as a reflection on the unexpected encounter with death in the midst of life. Its theological move from acknowledgment of death to petition for mercy draws on Psalms 18 and 22, on the Miserere (Psalm 51), and on the eschatological sections of Paul's letters.
The third text - 'Thou knowest, Lord, the secrets of our hearts; shut not thy merciful ears to our prayer; but spare us, Lord most holy, O God most mighty, O holy and merciful Saviour, thou most worthy Judge eternal, suffer us not, at our last hour, for any pains of death, to fall from thee' - draws on Psalm 44:21 ('Would not God have discovered it, since he knows the secrets of the heart?') and on 1 Timothy 6:7 ('For we brought nothing into the world, and we can take nothing out of it'), which also appears in the burial service.
The Composer
Henry Purcell (c. 1659-1695) is the greatest English composer of the Baroque period and one of the supreme sacred music composers in the English language. Born into a musical family - his father and uncle were both court musicians - he was a chorister at the Chapel Royal under Henry Cooke and Pelham Humfrey and later a pupil of John Blow. He became organist of Westminster Abbey at twenty-one and organist of the Chapel Royal at twenty-two, holding both posts simultaneously for most of his career.
Purcell's sacred output encompasses over a hundred anthems, services, and devotional works. His anthems for the Chapel Royal deployed the full resources of the Baroque concertato style - soloists, chorus, strings, and organ in dramatic alternation - while his smaller-scale works for parish use employed a simpler, more devotional idiom. The Funeral Sentences belong to the latter tradition: they are simple, direct settings of short texts, without elaborate counterpoint or dramatic contrast, designed to be understood and felt rather than analyzed.
Musical Analysis
The opening of 'Man that is born of a woman' is one of the most striking moments in English Baroque music: after the ceremonial processional march for brass and drums (the 'Marche' and 'Canzona' that open the funeral sequence), the strings enter alone with a brief, dignified prelude before the voices begin. The setting is largely chordal - the voices moving together in approximate homophony - with careful attention to the natural speech rhythm of the English text. The harmony moves through a series of minor-inflected cadences that give each phrase a quality of gentle resignation rather than dramatic grief.
The bass line of 'Thou knowest, Lord' is a repeating descending figure that grounds the harmonic progressions above it in a way reminiscent of the ostinato bass of the Baroque lament tradition - the same technique that Purcell used in the famous Dido's lament from his opera Dido and Aeneas. The effect is of grief that continues beneath and beyond any individual expression, a sorrow that is not resolved by the music but honored within it.
The archaic quality of the Funeral Sentences - their simplicity and harmonic restraint compared to Purcell's more elaborate works - may be deliberate: the context of the state funeral required music of universal accessibility, music that could be heard and understood by everyone present regardless of musical sophistication, music that served the liturgical moment rather than displaying the composer's art.
Theological Content
The Anglican burial rite enacts a theology of honest grief combined with Christian hope. Its opening statements of mortality (Job 14:1-2) are not immediately countered with resurrection proclamations but are held for a considerable time before the service's affirmations of resurrection faith are reached. This theological structure - acknowledgment before consolation - reflects the biblical wisdom tradition's refusal to offer cheap comfort: Job's realism about death is honored before Job's hope in the redeemer is proclaimed (Job 19:25).
Purcell's settings honor this structure by eschewing triumphalism: there is no jubilant major-key consolation in the Funeral Sentences, only the simple, dignified acknowledgment of grief and the quiet petition for divine mercy. The music stays in the emotional register of the opening texts rather than rushing to the comfort that comes later in the service.
Performance History
The Funeral Sentences were performed at Queen Mary's funeral in 1695 and at Purcell's own funeral later the same year. They remained in the Anglican funeral tradition and were revived in the twentieth century as part of the broader recovery of English Baroque sacred music. They were performed at several notable state funerals in the twentieth century, including that of Sir Winston Churchill in 1965.
Legacy
Purcell's Funeral Sentences stand as the definitive Anglican musical meditation on death and mortality - works that honor the reality of grief without offering false consolation, that set the great biblical texts of human finitude with the simplicity they require, and that have served the Anglican burial rite for over three centuries. Their power derives precisely from their restraint: Purcell, at the height of his compositional powers, chose simplicity and directness over elaboration and display, because the moment demanded it. In this choice, the Funeral Sentences represent the highest function of sacred music - not the display of art but the service of life and death.