The name of Pelham Humfrey (1647-1674) was once mentioned by no less than the famous columnist Samuel Pepys: “Little Pelham Humphreys is an absolute monsieur as full of form and confidence and vanity, and disparages everybody's skill but his own. The truth is, everybody says he is very able, but to hear how he laughs at all the King's musicians here, that they cannot keep time nor tune, would make a man piss”. Not the most sympathetic of characters, no doubt. Given he died at just twenty-seven years old, this was maybe the bravado of an overly talented whippersnapper. Granted his first works date back to his seventeenth year and King Charles II − having freshly returned from exile following Cromwell’s infamous religious tyranny – recognised his talent and sent him to France and Italy in 1664 to assimilate the modern music of Lully and Carissimi. Once back in London in 1667, Humfrey quickly re-joined the Chapel Royal, where he was named gentleman of the Chapel, and soon became Master of Children. A few months earlier, he had already been appointed as violin composer for the King. He was now the head of a musical group that featured no other than Henry Purcell. All the stars were aligned for a great and long career in the Court of England, but… With his death, England and Europe lost a leading musician, whose works reflected a profound emotion. The “symphony anthem” was a genre reserved for the royal house that only flourished for about three decades, even though Humfrey’s achievements in this domain were not forgotten. The seven “symphony anthems” (typically Anglican anthems, to which ample string passages are incorporated, hence the term “symphony”) featured in this album have been selected from the nineteen that have survived to this day, with the aim to highlight the wide variety of Humfrey’s body of work in this field and the searing evolution of his art throughout his much too short career. Where on earth would he have led English musical art if fate had let him… © SM/Qobuz