Henry Purcell

Henry Purcell was born around 10 September 1659 and became an organist and composer in the middle Baroque, working in a musical language that was distinctly English even as it borrowed from Italian and French currents. He was extremely prolific: more than 100 songs, the tragic opera Dido and Aeneas, and incidental music to a version of Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream called The Fairy Queen. He died on 21 November 1695, generally considered one of the greatest English composers.