The New York Times: Musicians from the early-music ensemble Collectio Musicorum were practicing a 17th-century round on a recent afternoon in Manhattan. The tune was jaunty, full of the cantering rhythms and mimetic horn calls that fit a song about hunting. But sung in canon, some of the notes bumped roughly against one another in daring dissonance. The singers broke off, looking at their conductor for guidance.
4 comments:
This article reminds me of the production CMU did of As You Like It last year, in Fall of 2022. This was my first production assignment, and it was a play with music (one could argue it was a musical) that was commissioned. I thought the music was very interesting, and of course all of the lyrics were Shakespearean. However, the As You Like It music was not reminiscent of Shakespeare’s time. It was definitely modern music, which fit with the design of the play. It is always interesting to go back and sing or play music from a very different time period. I like the direction the conductor gave reminding the singers, “...you’re drunk at this point.” I think when performing century-old songs with the intent of staying historically accurate, it’s incredibly important to research when and how a song would have been performed - this will add to the authenticity of the performance.
I thought that the article “‘Make Noise Enough’: Excavating Shakespeare’s Songs” was so interesting to read! In high school, my acting teacher was quite enamored with Shakespeare's work so I often times found myself doing scenes from his plays, finding monologues from his plays, as well as performing in them or shows inspired by them. I knew that Shakespeare’s plays could contain music, but I had never thought of them having a libretto of sorts. This would make sense though for the songs to be replicated and performed in various productions in different places. In my choir class, we looked at how sheet music has evolved over time. I think it is so cool to see its development and very interesting to see how people have been able to translate it into notation that is familiar to audiences today. I also wonder how these songs would have sounded because of the different instruments that were used at the time. Even if these instruments are available today, would they have the same tonal value?
Reading this article was very similar to how historians of all natures end up at this sort of standstill where they're trying to figure out if something is historically accurate because they said it is or if it actually is historically accurate one of the best examples of this and also one of the most commonly known is dinosaurs and how experts had envisioned them as these reptilian creatures and then over time started debating whether or not they were and overtime came up with the theory that they had feathers and were practically just birds. As mentioned here Shakespeare had music in his place yes however figuring out what the music is is only possible with an actual score written out. We will never actually know what the music sounded like we can guess and write whatever you want to try and pretend but likely it's going to be far from what it was.
This was a really interesting article to read. Personally, I had not idea that Shakespeare had songs incorporated into his plays and some verses were to be written. I’ve always thought of all of Shakespeare's plays to be, very strictly, plays. It was fascinating to read and learn about the music that was incorporated into Shakespeare’s plays, and how that music was connected to the pop culture of Shakespeare’s time. The work the historians are doing in order to discover the truths about the music of Shakespeare’s plays, who wrote it, and why it was written is really interesting. It’s particularly curious how there is a running them of essentially “this song sounds bad,” and that historians and performers are trying to figure out why the Shakespeare songs sound the way they do. I really wish I could watch this concert of Shakespeare music, because I think it would be an incredibly fun and cool way to essentially see and experience Shakespeare plays in a new way.
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