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Purcell’s setting of Lord, not to us, but to thy name is incomplete, for after twenty-four bars of the autograph score (in the British Museum) he simply writes in a thick stroke through the staves, leaving plenty of unused space in which he would have continued the work. Completed anthems usually receive a flourish to signify their end. Additionally, thirty-two lines of John Patrick’s paraphrase of Psalm 115 are left unset. The section that does survive makes a neat, if short, anthem.

from notes by Robert King ©