If Music be the food of love (Henry Purcell) – viola and piano

Description

Words by Colonel Henry Heveningham (1651-1700), using the first few words from Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night as a starting point. Henry Purcell made several settings of these words.
This is my instrumental arrangement of one of them.
Versions are available for various other instruments with piano or guitar accompaniment

If Music be the food of love
sing on,sing on till
I am fill’d with joy:
For then my list’ning soul you move
to pleasures that can never cloy.
your eyes,your mien, your tongue declare
that you are music ev’ry where

Pleasures invade both eye and ear
so fierce the transports are they wound,
and all my senses feasted are,
tho’ yet the treat is only sound.
Sing on, fair nymph, enchant me still;
such charms may wound, they can not kill.