She Loves and She Confesses Too
O Solitude
Mad Bess 

Benjamin Britten was a great admirer of his fellow British composer Henry Purcell and created ‘realizations’ of Purcell’s songs for voice and piano. These are not just accompaniments, but rather a re-imagining of the baroque continuo part, adding modern harmonic sensibilities while respecting the original vocal line. 

Britten’s setting of She Loves and She Confesses Too is a notable example of his efforts to realize and revive the music of the 17th-century composer. The song sets a poem by Abraham Cowley (1618–1667), and describes the direct, almost military, triumph of love after a lady finally confesses her affection. 

O solitude is set using a ‘ground bass’, a short theme in the bass line that constantly repeats – in this case 28 times. The Purcell original is thought to date from the mid-1680s, and sets a translation of Antoine Girard de Saint’s La solitude. Britten paints its words through plaintive falling intervals, meandering passages and a wonderful use of the lowest register of the voice for ‘as only death can cure’. 

One of Purcell’s ‘mad-songs’, Mad Bess was published in 1683. In Britten’s hands, it becomes a complex piece that has a deliberate craziness with many different sections and constant twists and turns in a short space of time. The singer and piano parts are often independent of each other, and Britten uses the opportunity to bring the words, such as ‘flaming eyes’, to life.