"John Blow" has been added to your list of bookmarked artists
close
John Blow
February 23, 1649 - October 1, 1708
born in Newark-on-Trent, Nottinghamshire, England, composed during the Baroque period
Biography
English composer John Blow was an important influence on Henry Purcell; his organ compositions, court odes, songs, and single opera, Venus and Adonis, are his most important works.

Blow was born in February 1649 and was baptized on the 23rd of that month. He became a choirboy in the Chapel Royal at an early age and must therefore already have served in that capacity in another church, perhaps in Newark. Blow studied with the chorus master Henry Cooke, and later with Christopher Gibbons, the son of Orlando Gibbons. In December 1668, Blow was given the post of organist at Westminster Abbey, a prestigious position indicating his considerable keyboard skills. A month later he was taken into the royal court to serve as a performer on the virginal. In 1670, anthem, Blow took on the young Henry Purcell as a student and was given the post of composer-in-ordinary for voices, an indication his vocal works had already found much favor.

Blow was taken into the service of the Chapel Royal in March 1674, and in July he was named to a post there as children's chorus master. During this period Purcell began a more intense regimen of studies with Blow, and a friendship between the two arose. In 1674, Blow married Elizabeth Braddock; she would bear him five children, of whom two would die before reaching adulthood and Elizabeth herself lived a decade into their union.
report abuse