And so we come to the third in our historical sequence of recordings of Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas.  We are talking about Andrew Parrott’s recording with the Taverner Players and Choir recorded at Rosslyn Hill Chapel in 1981.  It’s a record that I bought when it first came out and has been a point of reference for me ever since.

It’s a consciously academic affair in some ways.  It was produced in conjunction with an Open University course ; “Seventeenth Century England: A Changing Culture”.  It’s also musicologically rooted in scholarship.  The album booklet even lists the provenance of the instruments used; mostly modern copies of 17th century models and we are told that the work is performed at pitch A=403.  The band and chorus are realistically sized; six violins, two violas, bass violin with bass viol, archlute and harpsichord continuo.  A guitar is used in some of the dance numbers.  The chorus is six sopranos; some of whom do double duty as witches, the Sailor and the Spirit, four tenors and two basses.

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