Music for the Mad - Institutionen för musikvetenskap - Uppsala ...

Example 14, “I sigh’d and I pin’d” bb. 1-12.
The second “There’s nothing so fatal as woman to hurry a man to his grave” follows close on
the former. The piece is the same sort of burlesque little air as was discussed above, and it has
the same mocking misogynistic character as Cardenio’s final section. It remains however in d
minor tripe time throughout, with chromatically altered tones in the melody sometimes clash-
ing against the harmonies of the bass.
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For the third song in III.i, preceded by Lyonel’s exclamation that Celia is dead, there is
a drastic change of mood. The lament-like “Fled is my love” begins in recitative style with
long, elaborate melismas over a slowly moving bass (example 15). As Price noted, the melis-
ma is almost disproportionately long for so short a piece. 99 Stylistically it is a reminder of the
initial melismas of Not all my torments. The songs are oddly similar, but “Fled is my love”
seems a perverted version. 100 The openings are stylistically similar, albeit the disproportionate
length of the melismas in “Fled is my love”, and both songs turn halfway to a new, lighter,
opening. Not all my torments is a kind of rit du passage from utter despair to stoic acceptance,
through continuous motion in the bass the turn is made an organic development, changing
neither the style nor key of the piece. “Fled is my love” on the contrary turns drastically,
changing not key but meter to a flowing triple time, and thus changing style from recitative to
aria. The lament is abandoned altogether for the more hopeful idea that if Celia will not come
to Lyonel, Lyonel might go to Celia. However, placed in its dramatic context where the song
is preceded by Lyonel’s announcement that Celia is dead and immediately succeeded by “’Tis
death alone can give me ease”, the ending of “Fled is my love” becomes much less light than
first it seemed.
99
Price, London Stage, p. 158.
100
N.B. that there is no proof whatsoever of Purcell’s intending “Fled is my love” to be a perverted version of
Not all my torments, but the example is merely illustrative.