"Dido's Lament" is the commonly-used name for the noted aria

Aria

An aria in music was originally any expressive melody, usually, but not always, performed by a singer. The term is now used almost exclusively to describe a self-contained piece for one voice usually with orchestral accompaniment...

, "When I am laid in earth", from the opera

Opera

Opera is an art form in which singers and musicians perform a dramatic work combining text and musical score, usually in a theatrical setting. Opera incorporates many of the elements of spoken theatre, such as acting, scenery, and costumes and sometimes includes dance...

, Dido and Aeneas

Dido and Aeneas

Dido and Aeneas is an opera in a prologue and three acts by the English Baroque composer Henry Purcell to a libretto by Nahum Tate. The first known performance was at Josias Priest's girls' school in London no later than the summer of 1688. The story is based on Book IV of Virgil's Aeneid...

, by Henry Purcell

Henry Purcell

Henry Purcell – 21 November 1695), was an English organist and Baroque composer of secular and sacred music. Although Purcell incorporated Italian and French stylistic elements into his compositions, his legacy was a uniquely English form of Baroque music...

 (libretto

Libretto

A libretto is the text used in an extended musical work such as an opera, operetta, masque, oratorio, cantata, or musical. The term "libretto" is also sometimes used to refer to the text of major liturgical works, such as mass, requiem, and sacred cantata, or even the story line of a...

 by Nahum Tate

Nahum Tate

Nahum Tate was an Irish poet, hymnist, and lyricist, who became England's poet laureate in 1692.-Life:Nahum Teate came from a family of Puritan clergymen...

).

It is included in many classical music

Classical music

Classical music is the art music produced in, or rooted in, the traditions of Western liturgical and secular music, encompassing a broad period from roughly the 11th century to present times...

 textbooks on account of its exemplary use of ground bass. The conductor

Conducting

Conducting is the art of directing a musical performance by way of visible gestures. The primary duties of the conductor are to unify performers, set the tempo, execute clear preparations and beats, and to listen critically and shape the sound of the ensemble...

 Leopold Stokowski

Leopold Stokowski

Leopold Anthony Stokowski was a British-born, naturalised American orchestral conductor, well known for his free-hand performing style that spurned the traditional baton and for obtaining a characteristically sumptuous sound from many of the great orchestras he conducted.In America, Stokowski...

 wrote a transcription

Transcription (music)

In music, transcription can mean notating a piece or a sound which was previously unnotated, as, for example, an improvised jazz solo. Further examples include ethnomusicological notation of oral traditions of folk music, such as Béla Bartók's and Ralph Vaughan Williams' collections of the national...

 of the piece for symphony orchestra.

"Dido's Lament" has been performed or recorded by artists far from the typical operatic school, such as Klaus Nomi

Klaus Nomi

Klaus Sperber , better known as Klaus Nomi, was a German countertenor noted for his wide vocal range and an unusual, otherworldly stage persona....

 (as "Death"), Ane Brun

Ane Brun

Ane Brun is a songwriter, guitarist and vocalist. Since 2003 she has recorded eight albums, four of which are studio albums, a live DVD and a collection of duets...

 and Jeff Buckley

Jeff Buckley

Jeffrey Scott "Jeff" Buckley , raised as Scotty Moorhead, was an American singer-songwriter and guitarist. He was the son of Tim Buckley, also a musician...

. It has also been transcribed or used in many scores, including the soundtrack to the HBO miniseries Band of Brothers (renamed "Nixon's Walk"). It is played annually (by a military band) at the Cenotaph remembrance ceremony, which takes place on the Sunday nearest to November 11 (Armistice Day

Armistice Day

Armistice Day is on 11 November and commemorates the armistice signed between the Allies of World War I and Germany at Compiègne, France, for the cessation of hostilities on the Western Front of World War I, which took effect at eleven o'clock in the morning—the "eleventh hour of the eleventh day...

) in London's Whitehall.

Analysis

The opening recitative

Recitative

Recitative , also known by its Italian name "recitativo" , is a style of delivery in which a singer is allowed to adopt the rhythms of ordinary speech...

 secco, "Thy hand, Belinda", is accompanied by continuo only. Word painting

Word painting

Word painting is the musical technique of writing music that reflects the literal meaning of a song. For example, ascending scales would accompany lyrics about going up; slow, dark music would accompany lyrics about death.Tone painting of words goes at least as far back as Gregorian chant...

 is applied on the text "darkness" and "death" which is presented with chromaticism

Chromaticism

Chromaticism is a compositional technique interspersing the primary diatonic pitches and chords with other pitches of the chromatic scale. Chromaticism is in contrast or addition to tonality or diatonicism...

, symbolic of death.

"Dido's Lament" opens with a descending chromatic line, the ground bass, which is repeated eleven times throughout the aria. The meter

Meter (music)

Meter or metre is a term that music has inherited from the rhythmic element of poetry where it means the number of lines in a verse, the number of syllables in each line and the arrangement of those syllables as long or short, accented or unaccented...

 is 3/2

Triple metre

Triple metre is a musical metre characterized by a primary division of 3 beats to the bar, usually indicated by 3 or 9 in the upper figure of the time signature, with 3/4, 3/2, and 3/8 being the most common examples...

 in the key

Key (music)

In music theory, the term key is used in many different and sometimes contradictory ways. A common use is to speak of music as being "in" a specific key, such as in the key of C major or in the key of F-sharp. Sometimes the terms "major" or "minor" are appended, as in the key of A minor or in the...

 of G minor

G minor

G minor is a minor scale based on G, consisting of the pitches G, A, B, C, D, E, and F. For the harmonic minor scale, the F is raised to F. Its relative major is B-flat major, and its parallel major is G major....

. Henry Purcell has applied word painting on the words "laid", which is also given a descending chromatic line portraying death and agony, and "Remember me", which is presented in a syllabic text setting and repeated with its last presentation leaping in register

Register (music)

In music, a register is the relative "height" or range of a note, set of pitches or pitch classes, melody, part, instrument or group of instruments...

 with a sudden crescendo

Dynamics (music)

In music, dynamics normally refers to the volume of a sound or note, but can also refer to every aspect of the execution of a given piece, either stylistic or functional . The term is also applied to the written or printed musical notation used to indicate dynamics...

displaying her desperate cry with urgency as she prepares for her fate: death.

Text

Recitative

Thy hand, Belinda, darkness shades me,

On thy bosom let me rest,

More I would, but Death invades me;

Death is now a welcome guest.

Aria

When I am laid, am laid in earth, May my wrongs create

No trouble, no trouble in thy breast;

Remember me, remember me, but ah! forget my fate.

Remember me, but ah! forget my fate.

External links

• www.cpdl.org Dido's Lament is mvmt. 37/38 in this edition of the score