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"Music for a While" is a da capo aria for voice (usually soprano or tenor), harpsichord and bass viol by the English Baroque composer Henry Purcell.

Based on a repeating ground bass pattern, it is the second of four movements from his incidental music (Z 583) to Oedipus, a version of Sophocles' play by John Dryden and Nathaniel Lee, published in 1679. It was composed for a revival of the work in 1692.^[1] The aria was published posthumously in Orpheus Britannicus, book 2, 1702. The description of this vocal work is not actually Da Capo in style, as Da Capo has two distinct and contrasting sections which can be marked as A and B, and, when put together, we call them ABA in form, accompanied by the words Da Capo written at the end of section B. Operatic Works written 20 or 30 years later than Purcell's era / time were then set into a fixed pattern of construction. The B section would be the composers opportunity to write something perhaps very contrasting in nature from Section A. While Mr Purcell modulates away from the home key of g minor, it is not written as a Da Capo composition. This waits for a later date in the early 18th century to be used and standardised over and over again in a recognisable format. What we have here, structurally, is an example of a Passacaglia which remains the same rhythmically throughout but moves to a related key before returning to the original key. Nowhere is the phrase Da Capo employed by the composer.

Music

The voice is accompanied by an instrumental part featuring an ascending ground bass. Harmonies and suitable counterpoint would have been supplied by the musician playing continuo on the harpsichord or other keyboard.^[2] Interestingly, the principal ground bass phrase, played before the entrance of the voice, is three bars long instead of the far more usual four.

Text

Music for a while
Shall all your cares beguile.

Wond'ring how your pains were eas'd
And disdaining to be pleas'd
Till Alecto free the dead
From their eternal bands,
Till the snakes drop from her head,
And the whip from out her hands.

Music for a while
Shall all your cares beguile.

The text is part of a longer musical interlude in act 3, scene 1 of Oedipus.^[3]

Recordings

The song is identified with Alfred Deller, the first modern countertenor.^[4] He seems to have first recorded it in the 1940s.^[5] It also appeared in an extended play compilation in the 1950s. During the coronavirus lockdown in 2020, The King's Singers invited Polish countertenor Jakub Józef Orliński to collaborate on a remote performance which subsequently received over a million views on Youtube ^[6]

References

^ Herissone, Rebecca, ed. (2013). The Ashgate Research Companion to Henry Purcell. Ashgate Publishing. p. ^{[page needed]}. ISBN 9781409495543.
^ North, Nigel (1987). Continuo playing on the lute, archlute, and theorbo. Indiana University Press. p. 264. ISBN 0253314151.
^ John Dryden, Nathaniel Lee: Oedipus: A Tragedy, London, 1727, pp. 50–51
^ Wigmore, Richard (27 March 2017). "Icon: Alfred Deller". Gramophone. Retrieved 13 May 2020.
^ Pierre-F. Roberge. "Alfred Deller (1912–1979) – A discography". medieval.org. Archived from the original on 3 December 2011. Retrieved 9 December 2017.
^ "Music for a while | Warner Classics". 9 October 2020.