can I have a first-to-mind, off-the-cuff verdict on your favourite: Purcell piece?

[arthroceph]

My - unfairly you may say - go first, Fary Queen "Hush No More". Chilling and thrilling, all in one!

[pastoralguy]

Dido's Lament. Wonderful ground bass.

[LeMartinPecheur]

'Lord, what is man?' Maybe because it was on one of my first Janet Baker records

Something of an earworm too. Damn, it's playing in my head now...

[Hitch]

Not necessarily my favourite Purcell, but one that nearly always barges in: If Music be the Food of Love, Z379b. Don't blame me if you can't get it out of your head.

[hedgehog]

The Fantasias for strings ...... oh just one? Then the Fantasia upon a ground, for 3 violins (or recorders) & continuo in D major /F major, Z. 731

Cheers me up every time!

[salymap]

A concert performance of 'King Arthur' at the RAH in [probably] the 1950/60s conducted by Boult.

Once heard, never forgotten, particularly 'Song of the cold people' ??

[Dave2002]

Tricky to be honest, as several spring to mind - slowly! But which was the first?

Dido's Lament.
Sailor's chorus from Dido and Aeneas
The "tune" from Britten's YPGTTO - from Abdelazar I think.

I don't want to hear DIdo lamenting everyday, so that gives a choice between Purcell's Rondeau and the chorus. Maybe joint first - equally cheerful.

[jean]

The Funeral Sentences.

And Come ye Sons of Art especially the counter-tenor duet Sound the Trumpet. (Recorded by Alfred Deller and John Whitworth, it was the first Purcell I ever heard, I think.)

[Mary Chambers]

First to mind was the obvious one, Dido's Lament, surely one of the great tunes of the world.

It was closely followed by songs learnt when I was very young - Fairest Isle and Nymphs and Shepherds.

Funeral Music for Queen Mary.

And for fun, The Knotting Song and There's Not a Swain on the Plain, and Man is for the Woman Made (especially fun when performed by Pears and Britten).

Oh, and then there's If Music be the Food of Love and I Attempt from Love's Sickness to Fly.

One piece, did you say? Impossible.

[verismissimo]

Peter Sellers's Trumpet Volunteer from 1958:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qXxMvu8Bl_w

[jean]

(Checking that Deller and Whitworth really did record together, I find that John died in July this year.)

.

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

And Come ye Sons of Art especially the counter-tenor duet Sound the Trumpet.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

Definitely Nymphs and Shepherds. It was this that set me on the road to a musical career, when my primary school teacher (who had been on the famous Manchester Children's Choir recording) played it to us in 1956.

Against all advice, I reintroduced it to secondary school choirs in the 80's and 90's. They sang it like angels. Even the sceptical music-advisor-cum-ofsted-inspector had to concede that they enjoyed singing it.

[MickyD]

The harpsichord suites...especially in Richard Egarr's hands.

[Flosshilde]

The Funeral Sentences was my first thought, & then I glimpsed pastoralguy's response (#2) & thought 'oh, yes, umm ..'