Aphra Behn was the first Englishwoman to earn her living by writing. She had been a spy for Charles II in Antwerp, served time in a debtors’ prison, and turned out plays, novels and poems at a pace that scandalised her male rivals. In 1676 she wrote Abdelazer, or The Moor’s Revenge, a lurid tragedy of lust, poison and political murder at the Spanish court. It ran, and was forgotten.
In 1695, six years after Behn’s death, the actors at Drury Lane revived it, and they asked Henry Purcell to write the music. He supplied an overture and eight short dances and airs to be played between acts. Nobody thought much about it. It was the kind of job Purcell did by the dozen in his final years, and Abdelazer would be among the last of them.
The tune
The second number is a Rondeau. It is in D minor, in a stately three-time, and lasts under two minutes. The main theme, a grand, falling phrase that rises back on itself, is played, then a contrasting passage, then the theme again, then another contrast, then the theme a final time. That is the rondeau form, borrowed from the French court dances of Louis XIV, which every fashionable London theatre band played.
What makes it stick is the melody. It is pure, memorable and slightly melancholy, and sounds like a hit tune written in the language of a court dance.
Britten’s guide
In 1945 the British government’s education film unit asked Benjamin Britten to write music for a documentary introducing children to the instruments of the orchestra. Britten, who revered Purcell, went to Abdelazer. The Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra, subtitled Variations and Fugue on a Theme of Purcell, opened in 1946. The full orchestra plays the Rondeau theme, then each section takes it in turn, woodwind, brass, strings, percussion. Thirteen variations show off every instrument, and the work ends with a fugue in which they all come back, one by one, before the brass blast out Purcell’s tune in full over the top.
It became one of the most played pieces of twentieth-century music. Generations of schoolchildren met Purcell through it without knowing his name.
Hearing it
The original is best on period instruments, played briskly and with a dance step, by a small string band. Then listen to Britten. Hearing the two together is a quick history lesson in how much the orchestra grew in 250 years, and how little a good tune needs to change.