Orpheus Britannicus [antikvár]

This edition of PurcelPs music which will eventually, it is hoped, include most of the songs from the Orpheus Britannicus and the Harmónia Sacra, as well as much of the chamber music, choral and orchestral music, is not intended to be a definitive edition or a work of reference. It is a performing edition for contemporary conditions. Many of the pieces to be published have not been printed for 100 years, others are only available today in the admirable but expensive folios of the Purcell Society. Many more are published in all sorts of arrangements which do not seem to us to contain much of the Purccllian spirit. This edition is not the work of musicologists and therefore the solution of problems such as ornamentation has not been attempted. Most singers today are either unwilling or unable to perform the "Graces" —which Purcell may have expected and we have therefore only printed the notes which Purcell himself printed. Those singers who wish to "grace" the songs will do so at their own pleasure. It is clear thai the figured basses in Purceli's day were realised in a manner personal to the player. In this edition the basses have also, inevitably, been realised in a personal way. But it has been the constant endeavour of the arranger to apply to these realisations something of that mixture of clarity, brilliance, tenderness and strangeness which shines out in all Purceli's music. Peter Pears Benjamin Britten.