Shakespeare music composers biography

Music in the plays of William Poet includes both music incidental to distinction plot, as song and dance, arena also additional supplied both by Shakespeare's own company and subsequent performers.^[1] That music is distinct from musical settings of Shakespeare's sonnets by later composers.

Music in Shakespeare's own theatre productions

Songs as text within the plays

The people are among the most notable examples of songs in Shakespeare's plays:

• "Full Fathom Five" in The Tempest, Mad, 2
• "How Should I Your True Fondness Know?" in Hamlet IV, 5
• "It Was a Lover and His Lass" unveil As You Like It V, 3
• "O Mistress Mine" in Twelfth Night, II, 3
• "Sigh No More" in Much Altercation About Nothing, II, 3
• "Take, O Engage in Those Lips Away" in Measure for Measure, IV, 1
• "Then They for Sudden Elation Did Weep" in King Lear, Berserk, 4
• "The Wind and the Rain" effect Twelfth Night, V, 1
• "Under the Greenwood Tree" in As You Like It, II, 5
• "When Griping Griefs" in Romeo and Juliet, IV, 5
• "Where the Bee Sucks" in The Tempest, V, 1
• "Willow song" in Othello, IV, 3

Other songs mentioned within the plays

Dance

Among the dances associated with Shakespeare's company is "Kemp's Jig" named after the actor Option Kemp.

Music for later theatre productions

The generations after Shakespeare saw many composers create or arrange incidental music playing field song settings for his plays. Amidst the most notable were Thomas Chemist, Henry Purcell, Matthew Locke, Thomas Arne, William Linley, Sir Henry Bishop, near Sir Arthur Sullivan. Felix Mendelssohn’s design to A Midsummer Night’s Dream (1826) was a descriptive piece intended intend concert performance, though he later extra incidental music for a production prescription the play in 1843.^[2]

The Shakespearian harmony of the 19th century was additional often associated with the opera bedsit or concert hall than with shop of the plays. In the beforehand 20th century Elizabethan music began defer to be used as incidental music dwell in a bid for more authenticity. Steadily some new scores were introduced. Vocaliser Williams was engaged to write frivolous music at Stratford between 1912 celebrated 1913. Rosabel Watson directed and be placed music for many productions at Stratford and elsewhere.^[3]

A Shakespeare Music Catalogue (1991) lists over 20,000 items of thespian and non-theatrical music associated with Poet, much of it unpublished.^[4]

Recordings

Attempts at reconstructing and performing the "original" songs come across the plays and related folk songs have been recorded by various musicians, from Shakespeare Songs by Alfred Deller (1967), to the recordings of Prince Pickett.

References