• Flute, Oboe, Bb Clarinet, Bassoon
• Bb Trumpet
• 2 Percussion
  • Percussion 1: Vibraphone (shared), Drum set
  • Percussion 2: Marimba, Vibraphone (shared)
• Electric Guitar
• Piano
• Violin 1, Violin 2, Viola, Cello, Double Bass

Henry Purcell’s songs have long carried a mysterious ability to both elevate and suspend time. Here the Deities Approve (from his 1684 ode Welcome to All the Pleasures) praises music as a divine art that softens hearts and unites listeners, while Music for a While (from Oedipus, 1692) famously soothes “all your cares” and “till Alecto free the dead from their eternal bands.” In both, Purcell conjures the uncanny power of music to linger, to enchant, to briefly ease the weight of existence.

In Music of the While, I set fragments of these songs in a reverberant atmosphere where melodies and bass lines echo, refract, and swirl through the ensemble. The ground bass lines—so central to Purcell’s originals—surface and sink like steady undercurrents, both anchoring and renewing the music as it circles back upon itself. The familiar lines dissolve and reassemble, as though heard in a great chamber where sound continues long after the source has ceased. These echoes may suggest the spaces we inhabit now—places where voices repeat, distort, and return to us changed—yet they also evoke something timeless: music’s ability to suspend the moment, to stretch a single “while” into eternity. As Purcell once offered music to soften cares and suspend time, I offer this piece for ours—an echo of that same hope, if only for a while.