"Music for a While" is a da capo aria for voice (usually soprano or tenor), 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 (Z 583) 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. The description of this vocal work is not actually Da Capo in style, as Da Capo has two distinct and contrasting sections which can be marked as A and B, and, when put together, we call them ABA in form, accompanied by the words Da Capo written at the end of section B. Operatic Works written 20 or 30 years later than Purcell's era / time were then set into a fixed pattern of construction. The B section would be the composers opportunity to write something perhaps very contrasting in nature from Section A. While Mr Purcell modulates away from the home key of g minor, it is not written as a Da Capo composition. This waits for a later date in the early 18th century to be used and standardised over and over again in a recognisable format. What we have here, structurally, is an example of a Passacaglia which remains the same rhythmically throughout but moves to a related key before returning to the original key. Nowhere is the phrase Da Capo employed by the composer.
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