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A MEMOIR
A MEMOIR
(Reprinted, by kind permission of the Editor, from The Musical Times of April 1, 1919) When Christopher Wilson published his master-song, "Come away, Death," in 1901, The Times said of it that it was "all that such a song should be—fantastic, yet deeply pathetic, and as musicianly as a work by a Mendelssohn scholar ought to be ." The words italicised remain true of all that this gifted composer left us; and the pity of it is that for various reasons, some of which will appear in the present noti
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INTRODUCTORY
INTRODUCTORY
When I first contemplated writing these articles it seemed to me to be a very interesting, amusing, and pleasant job indeed. I had seen a great number of Shakespeare's plays, read some of them, and written or conducted music for most. All I had to do, I thought, was to jot down a few notes of what I had heard or read, and out of them make a readable couple of columns. I began to make the notes, and swiftly it dawned upon me what an enormous task I had taken on. I found that nearly every composer
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ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA
ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA
There is a long list of operas under the names Cléopâtre and Kleopatra in Clément et Larousse's Dictionnaire Lyrique , and in Riemann's Opernhandbuch , but it is doubtful if a single one of them can be said to be founded on Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra . There seems material in it for hundreds of operas, but no one seems to have been inspired to write them. Sir Henry Bishop has certainly written an "Epicedium," or funeral dirge, for the end of the play, for the production at Covent Garden;
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AS YOU LIKE IT
AS YOU LIKE IT
As You Like It has not been dealt with much by musicians, though one of them, Sir Henry Bishop, has been very hard upon it. The earliest known opera on the subject is by Francesco Maria Veracini . It was produced under the title of Rosalinda during the composer's visit to London in 1744. Mr W. Barclay Squire, in his article on Shakespearian operas, mentions three operas of this name, by Capelli, Ziani, and J. C. Smith, but adds that they have no connection with Shakespeare's comedy. Bishop's pas
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THE COMEDY OF ERRORS
THE COMEDY OF ERRORS
I must just copy the whole of the title-page of Sir Henry Bishop's operatic version of The Comedy of Errors . Nothing could give any idea of what Shakespeare has been through save an analysis of the music that follows, but I can only touch on that. "The overture, songs, two duets, and glees in Shakespeare's Comedy of Errors , performed at the Theatre Royal, Covent Garden; the words selected entirely from Shakespeare's Plays, Poems, and Sonnets. The music composed and the whole adapted and compre
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CORIOLANUS
CORIOLANUS
Despite the fact that Clément and Larousse, the French musical operatic historians, give no fewer than seven Italian operas entitled Coriolanus , and mention four more, unfortunately not one of them is founded on Shakespeare's play. One great overture that is always associated with the play was not composed directly for Shakespeare's drama but for a work on the same subject by Baron von Collin, a Viennese dramatist. M. H. Laboix fils , the celebrated French musical critic, in his essay, "Les tra
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CYMBELINE
CYMBELINE
During my researches in Shakespearian music, operatic or other, I have been often hindered by the strange titles under which works were hidden. Having a smattering of French, German, Latin, and a tiny bit of Italian, I could recognise The Merchant of Venice under the title of Il Mercante di Venezia , or Der Kaufman von Venedig , or Shylock ; but why Jessica ? Yet there is an opera founded on that play, called Jessica , by a Frenchman named Louis Deffès. Romeo and Juliet is easy to discover under
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HAMLET
HAMLET
Hamlet offers great scope for composers to show their virtues and their limitations, and a large number have done so from Graun, 1701, to the present day. This is the more curious, as there are fewer references to music in the text or the stage directions than in most of the plays. True, there are many fanfares, Ophelia's mad songs, and the gravedigger's song in the last act; but, as a whole, music is kept in a very subordinate position. I can find no trace of contemporary incidental music for t
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KING HENRY IV
KING HENRY IV
There have been several operas composed about this King when he was Prince of Wales, but only one of them, Mercadante's Gioventu di Enrico V. , Milan, 1834, has any connection with Shakespeare's play. Verdi's Falstaff opera contains some bits from the Henry IV. plays which I am dealing with under The Merry Wives of Windsor . The most important modern work on this subject is " Falstaff , symphonic study in C minor, with two interludes in A minor, composed by Sir Edward Elgar , Op. 68." The work i
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HENRY VIII
HENRY VIII
John Liptrot Hatton , born 1809 at Margate, wrote an overture and incidental music for Henry VIII. , dedicated to Mrs Charles Kean, and performed at the Princess's. The overture begins with a slow introduction of a sugary type, followed by a very obvious allegro . The themes here are not of much value, and the development does not invest them with any great interest. There is no attempt at character drawing, and the only things standing out in the overture, except its dullness, are a few scale p
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JULIUS CÆSAR
JULIUS CÆSAR
Mr Barclay Squire, in his contribution to the Book of Homage to Shakespeare , 1916, entitled "Shakespearian Operas," says concerning Julius Cæsar: "There are innumerable operas, mostly of the eighteenth century, on Julius Cæsar, as to which Riemann and Clément and Larousse may be consulted; but it is very doubtful whether any of them are founded on Shakespeare." I myself went through Handel's opera on the subject, but when I discovered that Cleopatra had an important part in the work I put it on
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KING LEAR
KING LEAR
Very few composers have had the temerity to lay hands on King Lear . With the notable exception of Berlioz, no composer of the first rank seems to have touched it. At one time Verdi thought very seriously of making it the subject of an opera, and it is much to be regretted that the project was never carried out. With Boito as librettist, what a work Verdi might have turned out in his golden old age! Berlioz began his Roi Lear overture at Nice while he was holding the Grand Prix de Rome, but was
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MACBETH
MACBETH
Of the tragedies, Macbeth , for some strange reason, is more associated with incidental music than any of the others. "The celebrated music introduced into the tragedy of Macbeth , commonly attributed to Matthew Locke ," as Novello describes it in his edition, is associated in the minds of a great number of people with Shakespeare's play. I have known the work since I was a child. It used to be very popular at village and school breaking-up concerts. I never could understand its village populari
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MEASURE FOR MEASURE
MEASURE FOR MEASURE
Wagner's one known contribution to Shakespearian music is his two-act opera, Das Liebesverbot , founded on Measure for Measure , and not, as so many people think, on Love's Labour's Lost . It is his second complete opera, and, for reasons I will explain later, was only once performed; now, seeing that the composer, according to some authorities, apparently destroyed all of it except a couple of numbers, it may never be done again. Wagner planned the libretto during the summer of 1834, while on h
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THE MERCHANT OF VENICE
THE MERCHANT OF VENICE
Very few composers seem to have been attracted by The Merchant of Venice , though in the last act occurs one of the most beautiful eulogies of music in the world—the lines are too familiar to quote. I can only trace two operas on the subject. The first is Il Mercante di Venezia , by Ciro Pinsuti , produced at Bologna, November 8, 1873. It is in four acts, and the libretto is by G. T. Cimino, who very freely adapted Shakespeare's story. The work opens with a short overture-prelude of no very grea
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THE MERRY WIVES OF WINDSOR
THE MERRY WIVES OF WINDSOR
It is a curious thing that, though critics are unanimous in saying that The Merry Wives of Windsor is the weakest comedy Shakespeare ever wrote, it has directly inspired one opera of first-class importance—Verdi's Falstaff , by some considered the finest comic opera in the world; also Nicolai's Merry Wives of Windsor , a first-rate opera in the second division, as it were, still constantly played in Germany, and here by the Carl Rosa Opera Company; and Balfe's comic opera Falstaff , produced at
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A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM
A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM
From a musical point of view one of the most important of Shakespeare's plays is A Midsummer Night's Dream . It is possible to use nothing but Mendelssohn's music for this play, but I have never heard it in England without additional numbers. Sir Frank Benson, in his poetical production, used all the original music, but also included a song by Cooke, "Over hill, over dale," for the first singing fairy, and a duet, "I know a bank," by Horn, for first and second singing fairies: the latter a very
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MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING
MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING
The most successful opera founded on Much Ado About Nothing is Berlioz's two-act work entitled Béatrice et Bénédict , produced at Baden, 1862. The composer wrote his own libretto for this, and it is an ingenious one. The first reference we get to the work is in a letter to his greatest friend, Humbert Ferrand, dated November 1858: "I am getting on with a one-act opera for Baden written round Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing . It is called Béatrice et Bénédict ; I promise there shall not be '
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OTHELLO
OTHELLO
Rossini's Otello , produced at Naples, 1816, is the earliest grand opera on the subject. For many years it enjoyed great popularity. But in 1887, in Milan, was produced Verdi's tragic masterpiece, and the earlier composer's work died a very natural death. Many serious critics have said that Verdi's is the great tragedy opera of the world, but, anyhow, it is a great tragic opera. The incidental music composed for stage productions of the play has never been of very much importance. There is suppo
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KING RICHARD III
KING RICHARD III
The play of Richard III. has not attracted musicians. I can only trace one opera founded on it—that by the French composer, Gervais Bernard Salvayre , produced 1883 at Petrograd. This work was a dead failure, its chief faults—noisiness and an amalgamation of different styles, from Meyerbeer to Verdi—being so prominent that it was only performed a few times. Concerning two other works, which I have not been able to find, a few bare data are given below. Of incidental music, specially composed, mu
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ROMEO AND JULIET
ROMEO AND JULIET
It is a curious fact that, though Romeo and Juliet contains more exquisite lyrical passages than almost any other play of Shakespeare, there is no song or lyric in it. Anyone except Romeo would have hired a quartet, or anyway, one singer, to serenade Juliet under her balcony; but she remains unserenaded. Even the four lines beginning "When griping grief" (sung by Peter in Act iv., Scene 4) are not Shakespeare's, but quoted by him from Richard Edwards's Paradise of Daintee Devices , and sung to a
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THE TAMING OF THE SHREW
THE TAMING OF THE SHREW
This play seems, on the whole, to have been very much avoided by musicians. There must be a certain amount of music in any work of Shakespeare, but producers appear to have been content to use old stuff and adapt it for this piece. Noel Johnson wrote some very pretty music for the Asche-Brayton production; but Sir Frank Benson's version had hardly any music in it: just a dance (the beautiful Rigadoon, by Rameau), a gavotte by Handel, and a song by Sir Henry Bishop, "Should he upbraid"—words not
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THE TEMPEST
THE TEMPEST
Of all the plays The Tempest has been most popular with musicians. The earliest music to The Tempest is generally believed to be by Robert Johnson , who wrote settings of "Where the bee sucks" and "Full fathom five." The Encyclopædia Britannica is quite definite on the subject; but as Johnson was born in 1604, and Shakespeare died in 1616, and had left off writing plays for several years before his death, Johnson must, as I said in the Introduction, have been something of a musical prodigy. The
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TIMON OF ATHENS
TIMON OF ATHENS
The only opera mentioned by Mr Barclay Squire that might have been founded on this play is Timone, Misantropo , by the Emperor Leopold I. , produced at Vienna in 1696. Leopold I., Emperor of the West, was born in 1640, and educated by the Jesuits for the Church, and he probably learned music from them. I have read fine biographies of him; but though I find he was not a really good ruler, there is no mention of his gifts as a musician. It would be interesting to discover a copy of an opera, libre
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TWELFTH NIGHT
TWELFTH NIGHT
In spite of its great poetical beauties, Twelfth Night has not attracted many composers. There is only one opera that I can trace, and that is Cesario , by K. G. Wilhelm Taubert , produced in Berlin at the Royal Opera House in 1874. There is no attempt to foster the delusion that anyone who is not next door to an idiot could ever mistake Sebastian for Viola, or vice versâ . Viola, in this version, is a soprano, and her brother a tenor-baritone, so it is hard to understand how even Orsino was tak
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THE TWO GENTLEMEN OF VERONA
THE TWO GENTLEMEN OF VERONA
With the exception of the perfect lyric "Who is Sylvia?" composers have left this play severely alone; but Sir Henry Bishop certainly produced a pasticcio opera on The Two Gentlemen of Verona at the Royal, Covent Garden, in 1821. The work is the usual jumble of words from the plays, poems, and sonnets, set to music for the most part by Bishop. There is an overture which is really a string of tunes, mostly in C major, not labelled by the composer, and which do not occur later in the opera. It is
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THE WINTER'S TALE
THE WINTER'S TALE
There is only one opera, Hermione , by Max Bruch , founded on The Winter's Tale , and very little other music has been inspired by it, though the story possesses great operatic possibilities. Engelbert Humperdinck's music for the Reinhardt production in Berlin, September 15, 1906, is, as usual with his incidental music, perfectly appropriate—not a superfluous note in it; and also as usual in these productions, Shakespeare's Act i., Scene 1, is Reinhardt's. Before the rise of the curtain an orche
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SHAKESPEARE'S SONGS
SHAKESPEARE'S SONGS
William Linley , born 1771, edited two volumes octavo of settings to Shakespeare's lyrics, called Dramatic Songs . Some of them are by Purcell, Arne, etc.; but unfortunately the majority are by the editor, who seems to have had no exaggerated respect for Shakespeare's text, but a very high opinion of his own powers. Mr Linley has some very naïve remarks to make in the observations printed after the preface. Writing of the lyrics sung by Feste in Twelfth Night , he says: "Though there is a whimsi
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