Book contents
- Frontmatter
- CONTENTS
- ILLUSTRATIONS
- The Commercial Bard: Business Models for the Twenty-First Century
- International Innovation? Shakespeare as Intercultural Catalyst
- Brand Shakespeare?
- Global Shakespeare 2.0 and the Task of the Performance Archive
- An International Database of Shakespeare on Film, Television and Radio
- ‘Sounds and Sweet Airs’: Music in Shakespearian Performance History
- Using Shakespeare with Memes, Remixes and Fanfic
- ‘Pretty Much how the Internet Works’; or, Aiding and Abetting the Deprofessionalization of Shakespeare Studies
- Catalysing What? Historical Remediation, the Musical, and What of Love's Labour's Lasts
- Kabuki Twelfth Night and Kyogen Richard III: Shakespeare as a Cultural Catalyst
- The Sonnets as an Open-Source Initiative
- ‘A Stage of the Mind’: Hamlet on Post-War British Radio
- Post-Textual Shakespeare
- I am What I am Not: Identifying with the Other in Othello
- Desdemona's Book, Lost and Found
- Non-Catalyst and Marginal Shakespeares in the Nineteenth-Century Revival of Catalan-Speaking Cultures
- Shakespeare, Mácha and Czech Romantic Historicism
- An Irish Catalysis: W. B. Yeats and the Uses of Shakespeare
- François-Victor Hugo and the Limits of Cultural Catalysis
- ‘You Taught me Language’: Shakespeare in India
- There is Some Soul of Good: An Action-Centred Approach to Teaching Shakespeare in Schools
- The Royal Shakespeare Company as ‘Cultural Chemist’
- Shakespeare at the White Greyhound
- Dark Matter: Shakespeare’s Foul Dens and Forests
- What We Hear; What we see: Theatre for a New Audience's 2009 Hamlet
- Narrative of Negativity: Whig Historiography and the Spectre of King James in Measure for Measure
- Québécois Shakespeare goes Global: Robert Lepage's Coriolan
- Endless Mornings on Endless Faces: Shakespeare and Philip Larkin
- Shakespeare Performances in England 2010
- Professional Shakespeare Productions in the British Isles, January–December 2009
- The Year’s Contribution to Shakespeare Studies
- INDEX
- References
‘Sounds and Sweet Airs’: Music in Shakespearian Performance History
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 November 2011
- Frontmatter
- CONTENTS
- ILLUSTRATIONS
- The Commercial Bard: Business Models for the Twenty-First Century
- International Innovation? Shakespeare as Intercultural Catalyst
- Brand Shakespeare?
- Global Shakespeare 2.0 and the Task of the Performance Archive
- An International Database of Shakespeare on Film, Television and Radio
- ‘Sounds and Sweet Airs’: Music in Shakespearian Performance History
- Using Shakespeare with Memes, Remixes and Fanfic
- ‘Pretty Much how the Internet Works’; or, Aiding and Abetting the Deprofessionalization of Shakespeare Studies
- Catalysing What? Historical Remediation, the Musical, and What of Love's Labour's Lasts
- Kabuki Twelfth Night and Kyogen Richard III: Shakespeare as a Cultural Catalyst
- The Sonnets as an Open-Source Initiative
- ‘A Stage of the Mind’: Hamlet on Post-War British Radio
- Post-Textual Shakespeare
- I am What I am Not: Identifying with the Other in Othello
- Desdemona's Book, Lost and Found
- Non-Catalyst and Marginal Shakespeares in the Nineteenth-Century Revival of Catalan-Speaking Cultures
- Shakespeare, Mácha and Czech Romantic Historicism
- An Irish Catalysis: W. B. Yeats and the Uses of Shakespeare
- François-Victor Hugo and the Limits of Cultural Catalysis
- ‘You Taught me Language’: Shakespeare in India
- There is Some Soul of Good: An Action-Centred Approach to Teaching Shakespeare in Schools
- The Royal Shakespeare Company as ‘Cultural Chemist’
- Shakespeare at the White Greyhound
- Dark Matter: Shakespeare’s Foul Dens and Forests
- What We Hear; What we see: Theatre for a New Audience's 2009 Hamlet
- Narrative of Negativity: Whig Historiography and the Spectre of King James in Measure for Measure
- Québécois Shakespeare goes Global: Robert Lepage's Coriolan
- Endless Mornings on Endless Faces: Shakespeare and Philip Larkin
- Shakespeare Performances in England 2010
- Professional Shakespeare Productions in the British Isles, January–December 2009
- The Year’s Contribution to Shakespeare Studies
- INDEX
- References
Summary
In 1887 an anonymous editorial in The Stage observed that:
The more leisurely we reflect upon the diverse effects music has upon the human mind the more certain does it seem that the addition of music to a drama which is intended to touch our stronger sentiments is the very wisest way of enhancing the powers of the drama itself.
The terminology might be distinctly Victorian, but the majority of modern Shakespearian directors also take advantage of the ‘enhancing’ power of music. In so doing they create a network of reactions and interactions between the familiar text of the play, the values and emphases of their production and the feelings of their audiences. Understanding the nature of those interactions requires attention both to the particular theatrical culture within which the music is generated, and to the wider musical understanding a diverse audience might possess, since music's indeterminate meanings are always constructed in relation to a repertoire of already familiar musical ‘languages’. Anahid Kassabian's comments on film music are equally pertinent for the theatre:
any story of identifications with films must take account of engagements between filmgoers and film scores…those engagements are conditioned by filmgoers’ relationships to a wide range of musics both within and outside of their filmgoing practices.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Shakespeare Survey , pp. 59 - 73Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2011