Music for a While


"Music for a While" is a da capo aria for voice, 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 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. The aria was published posthumously in Orpheus Britannicus, book 2, 1702.

Music

The voice is accompanied by an instrumental part featuring an ascending ground bass. Additional harmonies would have been supplied by the musicians playing continuo. The continuo part in this piece is only three bars long instead of the traditional 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.

Recordings

The song is identified with Alfred Deller, the first modern countertenor. He seems to have first recorded it in the 1940s. It also appeared in an extended play compilation in the 1950s.