Music for a While

VOCAL

• Range of just over an octave
• Largely syllabic with some melismatic phrases
• Rising and falling sequences
• Suspension and passing notes

• Word painting:Key words or syllables on main beats to highlight them
  • "Pain" - dissonance - bar 11
  • "Eas'd" - suspensuon and discord is resolved - bar 13
  • "Eternal" - melismatic - bars 20-21
  • "Drop" - quaver off-beats - bars 23 - 25
• Use of ornaments to add variation
  • Upper Mordent - bar 11
  • Lower Mordent - bar 11
  • Appoggiaturas - bar 5

ACCOMPANIMENT

• Ground bass
  
• The ascending shape creates contrary motion with the descending shape of the vocal part
  • Three bars long
  • Heard 12 times in succession
  • Ascending shape
  • Frequently chromatic
• It changes in bar 14 but resumes in bar 29
• Typical feature of Baroque music

• Counterpoint created between the harpsichrord and vocal part
• Short imitative points where the parts anticipate one another

• Simple quadruple metre
• Ground bass entirely in quavers
• Slow tempo feel
• Quaver pulse
• Vocal part mainly in quavers and semi-quavers, with syncopation

• Homophonic texture of melody and accompaniment
• Counterpoint sometimes created between the harpsichord and the vocal melody
  • Some short imitative points with the harpsichprd and vocal part
    • Bar 11 - singer seems to be imitating the accompaniment as the right hand of the harpsichord anticipates the descending scale in the vocal part 

• Written for a singer with continuo
• For a solo voice - voice type was not specified by Purcell
• Harpsichord and bass viol. accompaniment 

Incidental music - written for a play

Solo song with accompaniment

Mid-Baroque 

• Chord progression - consists of alternate root position and first inversion triads
• False relation - when the original and accidental note in a piece (such as G and G#) occur either at the same time or close together - bar 1 
• Tierce de Picardie - major tonic chord ending a cadence in a minor key
  • Bar 23

• A minor
• Modulations to related keys in the middle section
• Upper notes of the ground bass can make the tonality ambigious
• Modulations are always confirmed by perfect cadences

• Constructed over the ground bass
  • Three bars long
  • Heard 12 times in succession
  • Ascending shape
  • Frequently chromatic
• Overall ternary form (ABA1)
  • A - in A minor (ends with modulation to E minor) - bars 1-15
  • B - modulations through related keys. Different length versions of the ground bass - bars 16-29
  • A1 - A minor. Use of ornaments. Ending extended to finish on the tonic chord - bars 29 - 38