Music for a While- Purcell

• Context

  • Style: lament (sad song), Italian Style
  • Incidental music: for the tragic play ‘Oedipus’
  • Ground bass: has many typical characters of Baroque (1600-1750) ground bass pieces (minor key, straightforward rhythm, slow tempo, solemn mood, some chromaticism)
  • Lament: falling phrases, minor key, slow temp
  • Historical context: restoration period in Britain
• Melody- Vocal:

  • Starts on tonic
  • Leaps to dominant
  • Range of a 9th 
  • Syllabic (mostly)- One note per syllable
  • Sometimes melismatic - Greater emotion and expression
  • Repetition- Emphasises a section in the piece
  • Ascending sequences- Builds tension 
  • Frequent ornaments- Mordents and appoggiaturas (Baroque)
  • Frequent dissonances- Caused by appoggiaturas and suspensions, adds to the anguish
• Melody- Harpsichord:

  • Descending scalic passages- Emotional contrast
  • Arpeggiation ornaments - Spread chords
  • Harpsichord plays as sound dies away quickly (Baroque feature)
• Orchestration:

  • Solo voice with basso continuo accompaniment
  • Vocal soloist- Soprano, originally for countertenor
  • Basso continuo- Accompaniment consisting of harpsichord and bass viol (similar to cello, but with frets more strings and tuned in 4ths)
• Texture:

  • Homophonic texture- melody and accompaniment, despite some short imitative points in the harpsichord realisation (b7, 11)
• Rhythm:

  • Metre 4/4- Simple quadruple
  • Slow tempo- Conveys sadness
  • Dotted rhythm- Influence of Italian style- used in vocal melody and harpsichord
• Tonality:

  • Section A- A minor (tonic key)
  • Section B- C major (relative major)
  • Modulations- D minor (subdominant), E minor (dominant), G major (relative major of dominant)
• Structure:

  • ABA structure- Fusion of ternary (Da Capo) and ground bass
  • 3 bar ground bass- a repeating bass (common composition technique in Baroque)
  • Da Capo form- Repeat decorated by the singer (popular in Baroque vocal music)
  • A1- Short repeat of Section A, with extra decoration in the vocal melody
  • Length of ground bass changes
• Dynamics:

  • no dynamic markings so the performers could decide on them