If music be the food of love, Z 379 (Henry Purcell)

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CPDL #19365: Network.png PDF, Midi & Overture
Editor: John Kilpatrick (submitted 2009-05-01).   Score information: A4, 2 pages, 31 kbytes   Copyright: Public Domain
Edition notes:
Editor: Philip Legge (submitted 2004-01-30).   Score information: A4, 3 pages, 36 kbytes   Copyright: 2004 Philip Legge
Edition notes: The same edition is also included in the TUMS Busking Book under the preceding entry, Il est bel et bon by Passereau.

General Information

Title: If music be the food of love
Composer: Henry Purcell

Number of voices: 4vv   Voicing: SATB

Genre: Secular, Partsong
Catalogue Number: Z 379b

Language: English
Instruments: part piano, part a cappella
Published:

Description:SATB arrangement (not by Purcell) of song for voice and continuo accompaniment. The second verse comes from the alternate setting (Z 379a) published in the Gentleman's Journal of June 1692.

External websites:

Original text and translations

English.png English text by Colonel Henry Heveningham

If music be the food of love,
sing on till I am fill'd with joy;
for then my list'ning soul you move
with pleasures that can never cloy,
your eyes, your mien, your tongue declare
that you are music ev'rywhere.

Pleasures invade both eye and ear,
so fierce the transports are, they wound,
and all my senses feasted are,
tho' yet the treat is only sound.
Sure I must perish by our charms,
unless you save me in your arms.


The first line of Heveningham's poem quotes the opening seven words of Twelfth Night by Shakespeare, giving rise to the belief that Purcell's song is a setting of a Shakespearean text, when it is not. The play begins:

If music be the food of love, play on,
Give me excess of it, that surfeiting,
The appetite may sicken, and so die.