Italy was the undisputed leader in music throughout the seventeenth century. However, music in Baroque styles also flourished in France, Germany (or what is now Germany), and other countries, always under Italian influence. The greatest English composer of the Baroque era, Henry Purcell, was the organist at Westminster Abbey and a member of the Chapel Royal, like several other members of his family. In his short lifetime he wrote sacred, instrumental, and theater music, as well as twenty-nine “Welcome Songs” for his royal masters. Purcell combined a respect for native traditions, represented by the music of William Byrd, Thomas Weelkes, and others, with a lively interest in the more adventurous French and Italian music of his own time. He wrote the first English examples of a new Italian instrumental genre, the sonata.