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Track(s) taken from CDA66667

Chacony in G minor, Z730

composer
c1680

The Parley of Instruments, Peter Holman (conductor)
Recording details: May 1993
St Jude-on-the-Hill, Hampstead Garden Suburb, London, United Kingdom
Produced by Martin Compton
Engineered by Tony Faulkner
Release date: November 1993
Total duration: 4 minutes 12 seconds
 

Other recordings available for download

The Parley of Instruments, Peter Holman (conductor)
Hugo Ticciati (violin), Johannes Marmén (violin), Gareth Lubbe (viola), Julian Arp (cello), Jordi Carrasco Hjelm (double bass), Alberto Mesirca (guitar/theorbo)
La Serenissima, Adrian Chandler (conductor)

Reviews

‘It is fascinating to hear for the first time music by Banister and Grabu and Purcell's recently-discovered Staircase Overture’ (Gramophone)

‘A marvellous introduction to the instrumental world in which Purcell grew up’ (Early Music Review)

‘Forced to be restricted to one disc that conveys the essence of the period, this would be it. A must’ (American Record Guide)
Henry Purcell’s Chacony in G minor takes us to the London theatres that reopened after the return of Charles II to England in 1660. Restoration theatre music was ‘incidental’: auxiliary to the actual play, music was performed before the main event began and during the interval. By and large, a suite of theatre music comprised eight pieces—an overture and a sequence of dances—that were very often subsequently used as concert works. As the Purcell scholar Peter Holman explains, much Restoration theatre music only survives in concert versions, and it is therefore often problematic to decide which music was written for which play. This is certainly the case with Purcell’s Chacony in G minor, which was probably composed around 1680—that is, while Purcell was employed by Charles, and nearly a decade before he turned his attention almost exclusively to the theatre, after the accession of William III (who notoriously disliked music) and Queen Mary in 1689.

Despite being in a minor key, the Chacony was probably written as a lively dance. Charles had picked up the French habit of listening to music while standing and tapping his foot, and he emphatically preferred music that gratified his partiality. The piece is based on a descending tetrachord—four consecutive notes of a minor scale, leading from tonic to dominant—which became associated with the lament, a decisive instance being Dido’s lament from Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas (1689). As was usual in England, in the case of the Chacony, the chaconne of the title is used indeterminately, and the word might equally suggest a passacaglia or simply a ground.

from notes by Paul Williamson © 2019

Other albums featuring this work

An Englishman Abroad
Studio Master: SIGCD7512CDs Download onlyStudio Master FLAC & ALAC downloads available
From the ground up – The chaconne
Studio Master: SIGCD574Download onlyStudio Master FLAC & ALAC downloads available
Purcell: Ayres for the theatre
CDH55010
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