Chacony

Purcell's Chacony in G minor for four-part strings survives in a single manuscript source and carries no date. It is built on an eight-bar ground repeated more than a dozen times, with the bass migrating between the voices and the harmony growing steadily denser above it. The piece was almost unknown until Benjamin Britten edited and recorded it in the twentieth century, and his edition, with added dynamics and phrasing, is the one most string orchestras still use.