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During the last five years of Henry Purcell's (1659-1695) short life of 36 years, he produced a prodigious amount of incidental music for the theatre. The Gordian Knot of 1691 ranks high in quality among this output.

It contains seven items altogether beginning with a French overture. The six pieces which follow are indicative of the partita, all being in binary form with the exceptions of a single rondeau and a chaconne. Of the latter, one cannot fail to note that most French Tragédies Lyric of the age concluded with such music.

Insofar as the manner in which these items were utilized in actual practice, one has to view each the four-voice binary forms and the rondeau much as one would a Gershwin song. That is to say, the orchestration is created from this source material as needed. With modular technique pervading, a single item was repeated as many times and in as many instrumental guises as possible: the full orchestra, the strings and continuo alone, a solo violin over the continuo, the oboes and bassoons alone, etc. The seventh item in D even permits the introduction of the trumpet.

For our purposes we are interested in what the two oboes, cor anglais, and bassoon played when called upon, and here we have it. Only a few changes were needed to keep the 2nd oboe within its Baroque range.

I have taken the liberty to realize the rhythm of the slow sections of the French overture. Players might consider the addition of a harpsichord in the realization of the unfigured bass, but this is not a necessity as the perfect fifths which end some phrases are typical of the age of meantone temperament when purity necessitated leaving the third out.

This is truly wonderful music with the most unexpected harmonies, a first-rate addition to any chamber music recital.