And musicals is a fair description of these late scores in that they are a not-always-serious cocktail of song, dance and spectacle where the real action is in spoken dialogue. The last years of his life were largely given over to the theatre, with a series of semi-operas - Dioclesian, King Arthur, The Fairy Queen, The Indian Queen - that dominated the London stage much as Lloyd Webber's musicals do today. But William turned out to be preoccupied with overseas wars, and as the demand for royal music declined still further - with the notable exception of state observances like Mary's funeral - Purcell became increasingly involved in the commercial marketplace. The commissions dried up and Purcell found work elsewhere: on the street, where he became London's leading songwriter, famous for ale-house catches which could be raw to the point of obscenity.Three years later, when James was replaced by the Protestant William and Mary, Purcell's future at court looked brighter.

Charles II liked music and afforded it a remarkable priority given the demands that restoring the machinery of state must have made. But he had no money to pay his musicians, often forcing them into penury.Against that background Purcell began to collect court appointments: singing, playing the organ in Westminster Abbey, maintaining the royal instruments and composing - largely choral music for Anglican worship but venturing into secular "odes" which flattered the King with allusions to political and territorial conquests.In 1685 Charles was succeeded by James II who happened to be Roman Catholic and unconcerned about the Chapel Royal. The end of Cromwell's Commonwealth, the Restoration of the Monarchy, three Kings, one Queen, a bloodless revolution, the Plague and the Fire of London all fell within those 36 years; and as a man of prominence in royal service, he would have experienced the turmoil and turnover very directly.Born into a family of court musicians in 1659, he was raised as a chorister in a Chapel Royal which had just come back into being after the Puritan purge and was surviving on air and promises. On the other, his life-story has never lent itself to the popular imagination, because so few details survive.But whatever his personal circumstances, he was close to great events and lived through more of them than most of us could cope with. On the one hand, much of his music was written for large-scale entertainments which are hard to stage. But apart from a few choice items like the Lament from Dido and Aeneas and the Rondo from Abdelazar which would pass any Classic FM test of housewife-awareness, Purcell until recently remained a musician's musician: known in church circles, revered for his English word-setting, but otherwise under-explored. The reasons are easy to understand.

For many listeners Purcell is also the most significant composer these islands have ever produced. He was celebrated in his own lifetime, nationally mourned at his death (at 36), and largely immune to the fall from grace that usually follows. In effect, it was an auditory Dark Age, and it began with the death of Henry Purcell in 1695 - which is, accordingly, a significant date in our cultural almanac. WHEN THE Germans used to write Britain off as "das Land ohne Musik" they spoke false: music follows money, and London has always been rich enough to attract performing musicians by the boat-load.

But creative musicians are another matter; and it's unfortunately true that we managed to pass through two centuries - the 1700s and 1800s - without a native- born composer of obvious greatness. It will be: and this exhibition not only introduces us to the subject but warns how much will shortly be lost.! 'Africa: the Art of a Continent': Royal Academy, W1 (0171 439 7438) to 21 Jan.. The message is so insistent, however, and so evidently mistaken, that this celebration of African culture is also like its entombment.However much we study this African art for its essence, purity and its concise representation of cultures, we know that it will soon be corrupted by the contemporary global and technological world.People who worry about the future of art usually look to western Europe and the Americas when they make their predictions Africa is not yet in the frame. Yet the whole show, following the concerns of most African religious art, is ancestral. So many sculptures insist on the wise and powerful influence of any people's forebears. The Linton panel is probably 18th- or 19th-century; it's far more elaborate.