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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 Virtuous Wife of 1694 ranks high in quality among this output.

It contains nine items altogether beginning with a French overture. The eight pieces which follow are indicative of the partita, all being set in binary form.

Insofar as the manner in which these items were utilized in actual practice, one has to view each of the four-voice binary forms 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.

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 section 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 work, like the Gordian Knot Untied, is truly wonderful music with the most unexpected harmonies, a first-rate addition to any chamber music recital.