If music be the food of love, Z 379 (Henry Purcell)
Music files
ICON | SOURCE |
---|---|
MusicXML | |
Sibelius | |
Web Page | |
File details | |
Help |
Soprano solo
- Editor: William Long (submitted 2009-07-23). Score information: Letter, 6 pages, 108 kB Copyright: CPDL
- Edition notes:
SATB
- Editor: John Kilpatrick (submitted 2009-05-01). Score information: A4, 2 pages, 31 kB Copyright: Public Domain
- Edition notes:
- Editor: Philip Legge (submitted 2004-01-30). Score information: A4, 3 pages, 36 kB Copyright: Personal
- Edition notes: The same edition is also included in the TUMS Busking Book under the preceding entry, Il est bel et bon by Passereau.
General Information
Title: If music be the food of love
Composer: Henry Purcell
Lyricist: Henry Heveningham
Number of voices: 1v Voicing: Soprano solo
. Also as a SATB arrangement
Genre: Secular, Aria, Partsong
Language: English
Instruments: Basso continuo; or partly Piano, partly a cappella
First published: 1698 in Orpheus Britannicus, p. 6
Description: The solo setting (with continuo) is from Orpheus Britannicus. The SATB arrangement is of the solo version, but is not by Purcell. The second verse comes from the alternate setting (Z 379a) published in the Gentleman's Journal of June 1692.
Original text and translations
English text If music be the food of love, |
German translation Wenn die Musik der Liebe Nahrung ist, |
The first line of Heveningham's poem quotes the opening seven words of Twelfth Night by Shakespeare, giving rise to the belief that Purcell's song is a setting of a Shakespearean text, when it is not. The play begins:
- If music be the food of love, play on,
- Give me excess of it, that surfeiting,
- The appetite may sicken, and so die.