Chaconne (Purcell): A Song History

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The chaconne started life as a lively, rather risqué dance that turned up in Spain around 1600, and its name later passed to a musical form built over a short bass line or chord pattern that repeats again and again.[1] Such a repeating bass is called a ground, and Baroque composers made it the backbone of continuous variation forms such as the chaconne and the passacaglia.[2] Henry Purcell’s lament “When I am laid in earth,” from Dido and Aeneas, is an example of writing over a ground,[2] and its repeating chromatic bass line has itself been called a chaconne.[3] Sources differ on the opera’s date: one gives its first performance as 1689,[2] while another dates it 1688.[3]

Painting of a woman playing a theorbo-lute beside a seated cavalier at a table

Gerard ter Borch the Younger, A Woman Playing the Theorbo-Lute and a Cavalier, oil on wood, ca. 1658. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Public domain (CC0). Music-making of Purcell’s century, shown for its subject; it has no connection to the music.

Purcell was born in London around 1659 and died there on 21 November 1695.[4] His Chacony in G minor, Z. 730, for two violins, viola and continuo, is dated to about 1680.[5] His theatre music contains several more: Dioclesian (1690)[6] has a chaconne in Act III built as “Two in One upon a Ground,”[7] and the semi-operas King Arthur (1691) and The Fairy Queen (1692)[3] each include a chaconne in Act V.[8][9] None of the sources consulted here identifies which of Purcell’s chaconnes this dulcimer arrangement is based on.[5][7][8][9]

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Sources

  1. Encyclopaedia Britannica: "Chaconne".
  2. Encyclopaedia Britannica: "Ground bass".
  3. Library of Congress, NLS Music Notes: "A King and a Fairy Queen: Music by Henry Purcell in the NLS Collection".
  4. Encyclopaedia Britannica: "Henry Purcell".
  5. IMSLP: "Chacony in G minor, Z.730 (Purcell, Henry)".
  6. Encyclopaedia Britannica: "Dioclesian".
  7. IMSLP: "Dioclesian, Z.627 (Purcell, Henry)".
  8. IMSLP: "King Arthur, Z.628 (Purcell, Henry)".
  9. IMSLP: "The Fairy Queen, Z.629 (Purcell, Henry)".