Dido's Lament ("When I am laid in earth") is the closing aria from the opera Dido and Aeneas by Henry Purcell to a libretto by Nahum Tate.
It is included in many classical music textbooks to illustrate the descending chromatic fourth (Latin: passus duriusculus) in the ground bass. The conductor Leopold Stokowski wrote a transcription of the piece for symphony orchestra. This is played annually in London by the massed bands of the Guards Division at the Cenotaph remembrance parade in Whitehall on Remembrance Sunday, the Sunday nearest to November 11 (Armistice Day).
The text, and Purcell's opera, is based to the Aeneid, the Roman legend of the Trojan warrior Aeneas, travelling to Italy from the fallen Troy in order to settle there and secure his son Ascanius's lineage. Their ship is blown off course from Sicily, and they land on the shore of North Africa, in Carthage, a town newly settled by refugees from Tyre. Aeneas falls in love with their queen, Dido, but dutifully departs for Italy, leaving her. Distraught at his betrayal, she orders a pyre to be built and set ablaze so that Aeneas will see from his ship that she has killed herself. She sings the lament before stabbing herself as Aeneas sails on.
The opening secco recitative, "Thy hand, Belinda", is accompanied by continuo only. Word painting is applied on the text "darkness" and "death" which is presented with chromaticism, symbolising death and descent into the grave.[1] [2]
The ground bass opening "Dido's Lament" forms a chromatic stepwise descent over the interval of a perfect fourth, the chromatic fourth,
Purcell has applied word painting on the words "laid", which is also given a descending chromatic line portraying death and agony,