John Blow - Advance To Court

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Blow, who by 1678 was a doctor of music, was named in 1685 one of the private musicians of James II. Between 1680 and 1687, he wrote his only stage composition of which any record survives, the Masque for the entertainment of the King, Venus and Adonis. In this Mary Davis played the part of Venus. Lady Mary Tudor, her daughter by Charles II, appeared as Cupid.

In 1687 Blow became choirmaster at St Paul's Cathedral; in 1695 he was elected organist of St Margaret's, Westminster, and is said to have resumed his post as organist of Westminster Abbey, from which in 1680 he had retired or been dismissed to make way for Purcell. In 1699 he was appointed to the newly created post of Composer to the Chapel Royal.

Fourteen services and more than a hundred anthems by Blow are known. In addition to his purely ecclesiastical music, Blow wrote Great sir, the joy of all our hearts, an ode for New Year's Day 1682, similar compositions for 1683, 1686, 1687, 1688, 1689, 1693 (?), 1694 and 1700; odes, and the like, for the celebration of St Cecilia's Day for 1684, 1691, 1695 and 1700; for the coronation of James II, two anthems, Behold, O God, our Defender and God spake sometimes in visions; some harpsichord pieces for the second part of Henry Playford's Musick's handmaid (1689); Epicedium for Queen Mary (1695) and Ode on the Death of Purcell (1696). In 1700 he published his Amphion Anglicus, a collection of pieces of music for one, two, three and four voices, with a figured bass accompaniment.

A famous page in Charles Burney's History of Music is devoted to illustrations of Blow's "crudities". These show the immature efforts in expression characteristic of English music at the time. Some of them (where Burney says "Here we are lost") have since been judged to be excellent.

Blow died on 1 October 1708 at his house in Broad Sanctuary.