Hyperion Records

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