Ex. 8-1: If Music Be the Food of Love

Composed by Henry Purcell (Z.379) around 1692, to a poem by Henry Heveningham. Purcell wrote three different settings of this text over several years — this is the first version.

The title is taken from the opening line of Shakespeare's Twelfth Night: "If music be the food of love, play on." The words spoken by Duke Orsino became one of Shakespeare's most quoted lines. Heveningham's poem is not from the play itself, but borrows Shakespeare's famous phrase as its starting point.