EVENT:
  The Shakespeare Songbook
		
Tue, 14 Aug 2012 18:30 - Callaway Auditorium, School of Music, UWA
		
A public lecture and performance by Julianne Baird, Distinguished
Professor, Rutgers University and Internationally Acclaimed Early Music
Scholar-Performer.

What can we learn from Shakespeare’s use of music and from musical
references in his plays? In this lecture-performance, renowned soprano
Julianne Baird will discuss and perform music from Elizabethan and
Jacobean times conceived for performance in the plays of the great Bard.
William Shakespeare alludes to or includes the texts of well over 160
songs in his plays.

Music in Shakespeare’s time ran the gamut of lute songs by the famous
contrapuntalist, John Dowland, madrigals and fa la’s (ballets) by
Morely and, of course, the great polyphonies and verse anthems by
William Byrd. But extant Elizabethan and Jacobean theatre music is much
more simple and vivid, often almost ballad-like in style and the
playwright seems to have had a genuine fondness for honest English
popular and traditional songs. The poignancy of having Desdemona sing
the Willow Song in her fatal hour shows his full commitment to music’s
emotional power.

The audience of Shakespeare’s time would have expected each drama to
have included at least one song per play, (with the exception of
tragedies which usually contained only the heraldic and militaristic
sounds of trumpets and drums.)

Not only are the musical references far more numerous, but Shakespeare
defied this orthodoxy and wrote poetry for the tragedies which movingly
uses musical reference as dramatic device.

Among the Elizabethan pieces performed at the lecture-recital will be
“The Willow Song”, “Farewell Dear Heart” “O Mistriss Mine”,
and “Ah Robyn, Gentil Robyn.” A number of pieces written for the
Jacobean revivals of Shakespeare’s plays composers John Wilson and
Robert Johnson will also be discussed and performed.

Cost: free, however RSVP is essential to ias@uwa.edu.au or 6488 1340.
		
URL: http://www.ias.uwa.edu.au/lectures/julianne-baird
		
For more information:
  Institute of Advanced Studies
  ias@uwa.edu.au
  6488 1340

Starts       : Tue, 14 Aug 2012 18:30
Ends         : Tue, 14 Aug 2012 19:30
		
RSVP Required.
			
Last Updated : Wed, 04 Jul 2012 15:30