Music for a while -- Purcell's "Edipo" (libretto: Dryden)

Speranza 1678. Enrico Purcell, “Edipo”. Libretto: Dryden. Arias: Two songs: "Hear, ye sullen powers below", "Come away, do not stay" -- and two terzetti: "Laius, hear, hear" and "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. A full statement of the ground bass precedes the entrance of the first priest. The arpeggiated chords of the bass part intertwine with the tenor voice line as both slowly rise with powerful chromatic alterations, depicting the rising of the dead King Laius. The tonally ambiguous, non-diatonic bass line allows for greater harmonic exploration through modulation in the middle of the piece. During the fourth repetition of the ground, the pattern goes astray, although maintaining the basic arpeggio figure of the bass line. At this point, the text describes one of the Furies, Alecto, who is capable of “free[ing] the dead from their eternal bands.” When the narrator describes snakes dropping from Alecto’s head, Purcell places a rest between each of the numerous statements of “drop,” which occur on the second half of the beat. A gentle descending line closes the middle section on the dominant as preparation for the return to the tonic. Purcell’s return to the home key (C minor) brings with it a return of the opening melody and text; a regular occurrence in Purcell’s late ground-bass arias.