Purcell, Daniel (c. 1663–1717)

English organist and composer. He finished the opera The Indian Queen, which his brother Henry Purcell had left unfinished at his death. After a busy career writing music for plays, he became organist of St Andrew's Church, Holborn, London, in 1713.

He was a choirboy in the Chapel Royal and was organist at Magdalen College, Oxford, 1688–95. He then went to London and added music to The Indian Queen.

Works Stage music for Brutus of Alba (1696), Cibber's Love's Last Shift and Love makes a Man (1700), Durfey's Cynthia and Endymion (1696), Lacy's Sawny the Scot (based on Shakespeare's Taming of the Shrew, 1698), Steele's Funeral and Tender Husband (1705), Farquhar's The Beaux' Stratagem (1707), The Inconstant and (with Leveridge) The Constant Couple (1699), Vanbrugh's The Relapse and (with Finger) The Pilgrim (1701), music for Congreve's Judgment of Paris (third prize in competition with Eccles, Finger, and Weldon, 1700), an adaptation of Shakespeare's Macbeth (1704), and many others.

Chamber sonatas for violin and bass, and for flute and bass; sonatas for trumpet and strings; cantatas for one voice.

Other odes, including odes for St Cecilia's Day; church music.