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Music for a While was written during the Baroque period by Henry Purcell as incidental music for the play Oedipus, written by John Dryden and Nathaniel Lee. The version of the play that included Music for a While premiered in London in 1692. It is a sorrowful song about two priests summoning and calming the ghost Alecto, a character with snakes for hair and eyes of dripping blood.

Oedipus – A Greek legend story

King Laius is told he’ll have a child who will kill him and marry his mother. The King leaves his new-born son on a mountainside to die, but a shepherd finds the baby and takes him to live with a different king. The child is named Oedipus and later visits an oracle to find out who his biological parents are. The oracle tells him that he will kill his father and sleep with his mother.

Oedipus eventually kills his biological father, King Laius, and marries his mother, not knowing she is his biological mother.

A future teller and two priests summon the ghost of King Laius to find out who killed him. Alecto - a scary goddess who torments the guilty with her dripping-blood eyes and snakes in place of hair - is calmed. The lyrics in Music for a While tells the story of how Alecto is calmed.

The truth is told many years later - Oedipus' mother kills herself and Oedipus stabs out his eyes.