Music for a While: Purcell's entrancing appeasement of Alecto

Music for a While is one of the best-known tunes written by the English Baroque composer Henry Purcell. First published after his death in 1702, the song appears in the second movement of his incidental music to the heroic drama Oedipus adapted from Sophocles' famous tragedy by poet John Dryden and dramatist Nathaniel Lee.

Composed in the form of da capo aria, Music for a While is performed at the beginning of the third act and is intended to distract and calm Alecto—the unforgiving, ruthless, implacable, and never-resting goddess of revenge.

The da capo aria was usually composed in a ternary musical form where the first section is followed by a contrasting middle section, after which the closing section repeats the first section in its entirety. The latter move is not written out in the score itself but is simply specified with the direction "da capo" (Italian for "from the head"). The form is perfectly exemplified by the first stanza from Music for a While:

Music, music for a while

Shall all your cares beguile

Shall all, all, etc ...

Shall all your cares beguile

Here, the first section accompanies the lyrics "music, music for a while, shall all your cares beguile," and in the middle section, the vocalist improvises and varies the phrase "shall all" together with a harmonic sequence. The form ends with the reprise "shall all your cares beguile" sung with the harmonic progression borrowed from the opening section.

Listen to Purcell's Music for a While performed by Andreas Scholl and Stefano Montanari with Accademia Bizantina:

YouTube

John Dryden's Music for a While complete lyrics:

Music, music for a while

Shall all your cares beguile

Shall all, all, etc...

Shall all your cares beguile

Wond'ring, wond'ring

how your pains were eased, eased, eased

And disdaining to be pleased

'Til Alecto free the dead

'Til Alecto free the dead

From their eternal bands

'Til the snakes drop, drop, drop

Drop, drop, drop, drop, drop from her head

And the whip,

And the whip from out her hand

Music, music for a while

Shall all your cares beguile

Shall all, all, etc...

Shall all your cares beguile

Shall all your cares beguile