Beauteous Softness is countertenor Tim Mead's recital of English song from the second half of the seventeenth century, recorded with La Nuova Musica and David Bates. It sits as LNM's third release for Pentatone, arriving between Handel's Unsung Heroes (2021) and Purcell: Dido and Aeneas (autumn 2023). The programme centres on Henry Purcell — freestanding songs, theatre music, and arias drawn from his odes — alongside the composers who shaped the world he emerged from: John Blow, Pelham Humfrey and William Webb.

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While live performance was suspended during the pandemic, Bates and La Nuova Musica invited Mead to collaborate on a Purcell video series; in Mead's own words, it was music that helped everyone "collectively emerge from the silence." The sessions led the three collaborators to commit to a fuller exploration of Purcell and his circle, and the resulting programme mixes long-loved repertoire with less familiar material — including, by Mead's account, a piece he had long wanted to record in tribute to countertenor Alfred Deller: the Plaint from Purcell's The Fairy Queen.

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The album's title comes from a solo verse in Purcell's ode "Now does the glorious day appear," and was chosen because it captures the restraint and interior quality running through the whole collection.

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The programme draws together freestanding songs, theatre songs and ode arias, including Purcell's "If music be the food of love" and "An Evening Hymn," the aria "By beauteous softness" and "The pale and purple rose" from the Yorkshire Feast Song, alongside Blow's Ode on the Death of Mr Henry Purcell, Humfrey's Anthem for the Evening and A Hymn to God the Father, and William Webb's Powerful Morpheus. Reviewers have noted that Mead moves fluently between the intimate, freestanding songs and the more theatrical writing drawn from the odes, where his stage experience comes through most clearly.

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Beauteous Softness was widely and warmly reviewed on release, drawing five-star notices and multiple "Recording of the Month" citations. Limelight (Australia), naming it Recording of the Month, praised it as an unusually complete and finely sung collection of Purcell and his contemporaries, singling out Mead's control of phrasing and the richness of his lower register, with La Nuova Musica under Bates judging the accompaniment "just right." BBC Music Magazine's review noted Mead's assured handling of both the freestanding songs and the more theatrical ode excerpts, highlighting his rendition of "The Pale and Purple Rose" for its assertive projection and sustained momentum. German outlet Rondo praised the album's sense of calm and interiority, and AllMusic described it as a particularly successful pairing of artist and repertoire within the Baroque countertenor catalogue.

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The album marked Mead's return to Pentatone after starring in the label's complete recording of Handel's Messiah (2020) with the Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin, and followed his earlier, independent exploration of Purcell song and dance on Alpha Classics in 2018. For La Nuova Musica, it extended a run of acclaim either side of it on the Pentatone label, the ensemble's Gluck Orfeo ed Euridice (2019) had been a joint BBC Music Magazine and Gramophone Editor's Choice, and Handel's Unsung Heroes (2021) went on to be named a BBC Music Magazine Recording of the Month.