Dido's Lament

Dido's Lament ("When I am laid in earth") is the closing aria from the opera Dido and Aeneas by Henry Purcell to a libretto by Nahum Tate.



It is included in many classical music textbooks to illustrate the descending chromatic fourth (passus duriusculus) in the ground bass. The conductor Leopold Stokowski wrote a transcription of the piece for symphony orchestra. This is played annually in London by the massed bands of the Guards Division at the Cenotaph remembrance parade in Whitehall on Remembrance Sunday, the Sunday nearest to November 11 (Armistice Day).

The Aeneid
The text, and Purcell's opera, is based to the Aeneid, the Roman legend of the Trojan warrior Aeneas, travelling to Italy from the fallen Troy in order to settle there and secure his son Ascanius's lineage. Their ship is blown off course from Sicily, and they land on the shore of North Africa, in Carthage, a town newly settled by refugees from Tyre. Aeneas falls in love with their queen, Dido, but dutifully departs for Italy, leaving her. Distraught at his betrayal, she orders a pyre to be built and set ablaze so that Aeneas will see from his ship that she has killed herself. She sings the lament before stabbing herself as Aeneas sails on.

Analysis
The opening secco recitative, "Thy hand, Belinda", is accompanied by continuo only. Word painting is applied on the text "darkness" and "death" which is presented with chromaticism, symbolising death and descent into the grave.

The ground bass opening "Dido's Lament" forms a chromatic stepwise descent over the interval of a perfect fourth, the chromatic fourth, which is repeated eleven times throughout the aria, thus structuring the piece in the form of a passacaglia. The meter is Triple metre in the key of G minor.

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 with a sudden crescendo displaying her desperate cry with urgency as she prepares for her fate: death. In one interpretation, Dido's relationship with Aeneas is portrayed in this moment as an "apocalyptic romance".

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.