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Hyperion Records

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The Fountain of Love by Jean-Honoré Fragonard (1732-1806)
Reproduced by permission of The Wallace Collection, London
Track(s) taken from CDA66070
Purcell made three settings of Colonel Henry Heveningham’s ‘If music be the food of love’. The first version was published in June 1692 in The Gentleman’s Journal, and reproduced the next year, somewhat altered, in Heptinstall’s Comes Amoris. The third version, published in 1693 was completely different. This second setting, a tone lower than the first, contains less of the breathless excitement, substituting instead a more flowing version of Purcell’s ravishing melody. Nonetheless, the repeated, rising request ‘sing on’ pre-echoes the (slightly risqué) list of qualities – ‘Your eyes, your mien [bearing], your tongue’ – that declare ‘That you are music ev’rywhere’. The longest melisma is reserved for the word ‘music’.

from notes by Robert King © 2003

Recording details: October 1981
Unknown, Unknown
Produced by Mark Brown
Engineered by Tony Faulkner
Release date: September 1987
Total duration: 2 minutes 19 seconds

If music be the food of love, Z379b
composer
author of text
Other recordings available for download
Rogers Covey-Crump (tenor), The King's Consort

Other albums featuring this work
Cover of 'Purcell: Secular solo songs, Vol. 2' (CDA66720)
Cover of 'Purcell: The complete secular solo songs' (CDS44161/3)
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