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Replies | Post Reply | Shakespeare Queries From Genuinely Interested Students 4.2.97: Top | Help
Prokofiev wrote an R&J ballet score (excellent); Berlioz also wrote a quasi oratorio on R&J (the instrumental music from which is first-class Berlioz, whatever that is); he also wrote a King Lear overture; Mendelssohn's overture (and, later, incidental music) to Midsummer Night's Dream is among his masterpieces; Richard Strauss did a little-known MacBeth tone poem; Otto Nicolai did a comic operetta "Merry Wives of Windsor" loosely based on the various Falstaff episodes; Weber wrote an unstageable opera "Oberon" on part of MND. there are probably dozens of Shakespeare operas that didn't make it (Samuel Barber did an Anthony & Cleopatra that opened the new Met back in the early 1960s; Frank Martin did an opera of The Tempest; Gordon Getty has a Falstaff piece called "Plump Jack")). William Walton wrote music for Olivier's Shakespeare films. Vaughan Willimas wrote a wonderful "Serenade to Music" to Shakespearian texts. Many composers from Elizabethan times on (including the likes of Beethoven, Schubert, Haydn etc.) composed settings of one or more of the "songs" in the plays ("Who Is Sylvia," "Full Fathom Five," etc. etc.). I'm sure there's more I'm not thinking of, but others will help and these should keep you occupied for a while.
Note: Beethoven's "Coriolan" overture was NOT based on Shakespeare's Coriolanus; his "Tempest" piano sonata, despite his clever remark to the contrary, has nothing to do with the play.Posted by JTJ on April 11, 1997 at 13:05:39
In Reply to "Music inspired by Shakespeare need to know." posted by Slinger on April 10, 1997 at 15:28:03
Replies | Post Reply | Shakespeare Queries From Genuinely Interested Students 4.2.97: Top | Help