This edition of “Come, all ye songster” composed by Henry Purcell from his famous opera, The Fairy Queen (1962), was edited by Michael Burden, who had his translation edited through the Ernst Eulenburg Ltd publishing company, currently located in Mainz, Germany. Michael Burden is a Fellow in Music at New College, and Professor in Opera Studies at the University. Burden completed his undergraduate and graduate work at the University of Adelaide in South Australia, and his PhD at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland. He has served on the Council of the Royal Musical Association, is a patron member of the American Society for Eighteenth-century Studies, a trustee of Répertoire International des Sources Musicales (RISM), and is currently the …show more content…
However, the publishing company moved headquarters to London during World War I, but it has since been moved backed to its original country, finally settled in Mainz, Germany. Currently, they have smaller offices that have branched out internationally. The company itself focuses on publishing mostly education and choral works to be distributed nationally and internationally. In Burden’s translation of Purcell’s “Come, all ye songsters”, he involves a string quartet and possibly a harpsichord, where one of the staffs has been marked with “instrumental bass”. This bass line, interesting enough, also includes a figured bass marked below the line, which hints that Burden may have been trying to stay as true to the original manuscript as possible. Figured bass is not something that is seen often nowadays, but a basso continuo was common during Purcell’s time period. This is one of the features that stand out against the other translations, which don’t include a figured bass, but rather a cello bass line and piano or harpsichord part as well. Furthermore, from beginning to end, there are no dynamic markings, accents, slurs and so on