Miscellany of Songs

ISBN: 9780571514748

Publication date: 1994

This volume contains five previously unpublished Purcell songs realized by Benjamin Britten. The realisation of the figured bass is highly personal in style coupled with the fact that the pieces were originally prepared with specific singers in mind, reflects Britten's afiinity Purcell's music. These pieces are all arranged for one or two voices and piano.

Britten has applied to these realisations 'something of the mixture of clarity, tenderness and strangeness which shines out in all Purcell's music.' (a remark made by Britten and Pears in the preface to their first volumes of Purcell arrangements)

Celemene

Dulcibella

O solitude

The knotting song

When Myra sings