William Shakespeare loved music and recognised its use as a theatrical tool. Nearly all of his thirty-seven plays contain music of some kind, which he has most skilfully used for dramatic, comic, or atmospheric purposes to great effect. Tragic heroines sing, swan-like, before death; clowns and fools are given the liberty to sing bawdy or controversial lyrics; impassioned suitors serenade in vain; lovers sigh; rogues celebrate the joys of country life; fairies sing lullabies; supernatural spirits cast spells; and villagers entertain with popular songs and ballads.
Before wider literacy poems were always sung to communicate, memorise and disseminate the poem. Today Shakespeare’s genius is recognised across the world and the dissemination of his works via music has been very important. For over 400 years composers have been inspired by Shakespeare’s texts, writing operas, ballets, overtures, symphonic poems, musicals, suites, orchestral and chamber music and setting an ‘infinite variety’ of songs for the theatre, opera houses and the concert halls, as well as for schools, churches, parks, people’s homes and POW camps.
Some of the best theatre music for Shakespeare has been composed by actors themselves; from Edmund and Charles Kean in the 18th and 19th Century to Charlie Chaplin, Laurence Olivier and Ben Kingsley in the 20th Century. This legacy has created a connecting thread through the history and development of the English Art Song. The musical qualities of the inflexions, rhythms and accents of Shakespeare’s verse have inspired many musical settings.
The number of times the songs have been set depends on the popularity of the play. As You Like It has inspired more composers than any other play, followed by Twelfth Night and A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Of the Sonnets, number 18 has been set more than any other. Some music has been inspired by characters, especially that of ‘Falstaff’, who strangely for a drinking man, is given no songs to sing in any of the three plays in which he appears.
‘Come shall we hear this music’
Musical patronage had flourished at the court of Henry VIII and the nobility, emulating the Court, began a tradition for great households keeping their own musicians and players. These troupes would be hired out to other households for special occasions, as the developing middle classes emulated the intellectual and artistic trappings of the nobility.
Elizabeth I, a spirited, glorious queen, ruled a rich and powerful nation of fearless and intrepid adventurers, in a golden age of literature, learning and music. It produced the drama of Udal, Sackville, Peel, Green, Marlowe, Ben Jonson and Shakespeare and the poetry of Spenser, Sidney and Harvey. Musicians and poets had a very close association during Elizabeth’s reign, and musical life in England flourished. The Queen herself was a talented amateur composer and musician as her father Henry VIII had been.
Advances in education were made by Francis Bacon and the establishment of grammar schools. The creation of a ‘civil service’ provided a ‘class’ of loyal retainers and superior servants. Those with musical ability would often gain themselves a higher place in the households of noble families. This provided some security, as Elizabeth’s reign was also an intense period of conflict in religion and politics, both national and international, with conspiracies, assassinations and spies everywhere.
Although music for sophisticated audiences was imported from Europe, a plethora of brilliant and outstanding English composers wrote music for dancing, singing, the theatre, court entertainment, the home and the church, often setting French and Italian texts in the style of European Court composers. English Song at this time was mainly ‘consort songs’ with instruments providing the harmony and a solo voice singing the text. William Byrd was a great master of these songs and began to explore the madrigal form, which had come to England from Italy in the 1580’s.
Thomas Morley (1557-1602) was a pupil of Byrd’s who developed this style, transforming the Italian music and texts. His use of English words immediately distinguished his songs from the Italian style and with Thomas Weelkes (1575-1623) and John Wilbye (1574–1628); he became one of the masters of the English Madrigal School. Other notable composers included Thomas Bateson, John Benet, George Kirbye, Francis Pilkington, Orlando Gibbons and John Ward. Many of these composers were also singers and lutenists, who performed their own songs. Some like John Dowland travelled extensively and were celebrated at many European courts.
After the death of Elizabeth I in 1603, the many outbreaks of plague and a ‘foreign’ king James I, who was obsessed with conspiracy, social control and witchcraft, did nothing to relieve the great political, religious, social and industrial turmoil. The Witch-hunts took the politics of the Court into every village in England, where power struggles and revenge motivated denunciations. The musical life of England took a backwards step and created many problems for musicians, composers and performers. The birth of ‘opera’ in Italy in 1600 did not have any impact on English music for quite some time but an ‘alleged’ pupil of Monteverdi, Walter Porter, wrote ‘Madrigales and Ayres’ in 1632, which used many Italian devices, however the quality of his work was generally quite poor.
By 1622 madrigals were less popular and lute songs had developed into the ‘English Ayre’, a strophic song for solo voice accompanied by a chordal instrument, usually a lute. Printed music from this time has no bar lines or dynamic indications, and leaves all the interpretation to the skills of the performer. The ‘Lute Ayre’ was of French origin, yet the English language would transform it into a native art form.
Morley and Dowland, the greatest English lutenists published part songs with lute tablature. Morley’s ‘First Book of Ayres’ includes as setting of ‘It was a lover and his lass’. Shakespeare’s ‘As you like it’ was a new play at that time, and Morley was a neighbour of Shakespeare. It is possible that his setting of the song was used in the first productions and their subsequent revivals.
There is little known about the music used in the time of Shakespeare. Morley, Johnson, Wilson, Ford and Hilton were all contempories of Shakespeare and may have contributed musical setting for productions of his plays and early revivals. Many ayres by Dowland and Alfonso Ferrabosco were set to theatre or masque texts. Thomas Campion (1567-1620) set his own texts and Robert Jones (c.1600) and Phillip Rosseter (c.1575-1623), masters of the lighter ayre, were also men of the theatre.
Many composers entered Royal service, the excellent lutenist, Robert Johnson, served James I and Charles I. However not all the composers were full-time ‘professionals’; Pilkington was also a member of the Clergy, Hume was an Army captain and Campion was a physician and poet.
‘Ayres’ were written for cultured, private audiences who appreciated technique and taste in music and poetry. They would later gain more popular appeal but the performance of them required great skill and musicianship. Singers were expected to use their technique and eloquence to express the emotions of the lyrics and adjust the dynamic range and accents accordingly. The Court and castle musicians were usually men and the songs were suited to the sentiments and voices of men. As they were also available to amateur singers it is highly likely that women performed them as well; many of the poems are appropriate for both men and women.
For the general population music was ‘folk music’. The majority of people were illiterate and society was still relatively feudal. The public theatre began as popular entertainments in the courtyard of inns and at country fairs. Notables sat on the stage, the well to do sat in the galleries and the masses were seated in the stalls. It was the only place where all levels of society came together. Many of the popular songs from these entertainments were incorporated into the plays of Shakespeare and other Elizabethan dramatists.
By the end of James I’s reign only one of over a hundred of the court’s musicians was also a composer. Perhaps the fear of execution for witchcraft or treason meant that everyone played what they were asked and suppressed any individual talent or inspiration. Innovation might have drawn the wrong kind of attention. Surprisingly however, there was the first record of a female court musician at this time. Arabella Hunt (died 1705) was a famous lutenist-singer. Both Purcell and Blow wrote songs for her and Congreve celebrated her in poetry.
During Charles I’s reign, the bias was towards foreign musicians. English composers who flourished and influenced the development of song include: Henry and William Lawes, John Wilson, Charles Colman, Nicholas Lanier and Matthew Locke. John Wilson was Professor of Music at Oxford and favoured by the King. He was also involved in the theatre, playing ‘Balthasar’ in an early revival of Shakespeare’s ‘Much Ado About Nothing’ and he was a close friend of the actor William Alleyn. Both Colman and Lanier composed music for masques, but it was Lanier (1588-1666) as Master of the King’s Music and the deviser of masques at the court of Charles I, who introduced the ‘declamatory’ style to England. Ironically their songs were not published until the establishment of the Commonwealth.
After the English Civil War the music of the Court and aristocracy was brought to the ordinary citizens. The Puritan’s however were obsessed with creating a ‘biblical’ society and musicians were of little importance in the ‘New Order’. Many became poor and destitute as most of the church musicians were dismissed, although a few managed to survive by teaching. Masques and secular entertainments were tolerated as long as the subject matter was considered ‘elevated’. These masques were the beginnings of opera in England. The recitatives and arias were relatively unpolished however, as precedence was given to the drama, set and costumes. The Commonwealth brought the masque to the people.
Paradoxically it was a staunch royalist Sir William Davenant (1606-68), who gave the first performances of masque in a private house, to a small paying audience. Sir William was rumoured to be Shakespeare’s illegitimate son. He was most definitely his godson and the founder of the Covent Garden and Drury Lane Theatres.
The Restoration of the Monarchy brought cultural renewal and hope for musicians with the end of Puritan restrictions. The Court of Charles II brought French influences to English music, as he had been exiled in France The beginning of the Industrial Revolution triggered the growth of London’s population, making it a bustling city and England began to build an empire, expanding its national boundaries in India and the New World. The middle class developed rapidly, and this brought an end to feudal society.
London developed a more sophisticated social life with professional public concerts. These attracted large but rowdy audiences. The concerts were quite disorganised but very influential in the development of English music generally. Many European composers and musicians came to perform and take advantage of this new opportunity. These visits by foreign performers inspired and challenged English singers and an English school of singing developed, best exemplified in the songs of Purcell. Yet the new audiences could also make life difficult for musicians. The pressure to please and conform to public tastes would soon cause the stagnation of musical development.
In 1672, John Banister first introduced the idea of a combined alehouse and concert room at Whitefriars. Thomas Britton promoted professional public concerts at York Buildings in Villiers Street and held weekly concerts over his shop in Aylesbury Street, Clerkenwell from 1678. The repertoire was English in the main and included part-songs like those by Thomas Cooke (c.1615-1672). Cooke was an Italian style singer of great reputation and the founder of the Restoration Chapel Royal. With the composer Matthew Locke (c.1630-77) he initiated the English Cantata.
The great English composer Henry Purcell was born into this new age. The importance of Purcell in the development of English Song is inestimable. As a singer himself, he had a thorough understanding of the voice and its abilities. He was a pupil of the ‘ode’ composer John Blow (1649-1708), yet it was Purcell, who became the master of this new song style. His ‘Hail, bright Cecilia’ and ‘Birthday Ode for Queen Mary II’ are the most outstanding of his works and of his time. He composed many pieces for masques including Shadwell’s ‘opera’ version of ‘The Tempest’, with a libretto by Dryden and Davenant. Shakespeare’s words were ‘rather corrupted’ and a masque of Neptune and Amphitrite was added. Purcell never set text from any Shakespeare play, yet his music was used in performances of Macbeth, Measure for Measure, King Richard II, The Tempest and Twelfth Night.
Playwrights bastardised Shakespeare’s texts in an attempt to bring them up to date. Davenant and Dryden inserted songs that were nothing to do with his plays. When Purcell composed ‘The Fairy Queen’ based on ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’ in 1692, and ‘Timon of Athens’ he did not use Shakespeare’s texts at all. However these reveal the composer’s admiration of the French opera of Lully and the Italian declamatory style, and his ‘Dido and Aeneas’ gave birth to the English Opera. Purcell believed that ‘Music is the exaltation of poetry. Both of them exist apart, but they are most excellent when they are joined’. He wrote cantatas, sacred solos, duets and about 300 secular solo songs setting all kinds of texts from metaphysical poems to popular bawdy catches.
The simple English song flourished with composers like Purcell’s brother Daniel Purcell (c.1663-1717), John Eccles (1668-1735), Richard Leveridge (c.1670-1758) and Henry Carey (c.1687-1743), who were all connected to the theatre and benefited from the more widely available printed song anthologies. By the end of the 17th Century, engraving had allowed the cheaper publication of sheet music.
Italian opera was still a novelty when Scarlatti’s Opera ‘Pirro e Demetrio’ (1694) came to London. It was partly sung in English, although the ‘all sung’ Italian recitative and aria opera became more fashionable in London by 1705. However opera was suffering from poor productions with bungled translations when Handel first visited London in 1710. He had been in Italy, mastering the Italian recitative and aria style and had produced his first famous opera ‘Agrippina’ in Venice in 1709. His ‘Rinaldo’ made Italian Opera fashionable and improved the quality of performances in England. The combination of beautiful scenic sets, thirty glorious arias and innovative recitative ensured its success and made it entertaining to English audiences.
This was an important time in the development of English music, but Handel’s composition was severely limited and defined by the demands and limits of the singers who performed his works. The birth of the ‘divo’, like the castrato Farinelli, created tyrannical performances, which overwhelmed both plots and drama. Jealousies, rivalry and platforming were common amongst male and female singers and composers had to accommodate the singer’s demands. The arias of this period are show-stopping ‘songs’ in their own right and bear little relevance to the plots of the operas. Handel mainly used his recitatives to move the plot along. In spite of this limitation, many truly beautiful arias were composed. The singers of this time were exceptionally gifted and well trained and these operas influenced the development of English Song. They gave birth to ‘Bel Canto’, the singing technique of a golden age.
After Handel settled permanently in England in 1720, his opera ‘Radamisto’ opened a series of his great operas at the King’s Theatre in London. All the directors of the theatre were members of the aristocracy, and were known as the ‘Royal Academy of Music’. They appointed Handel ‘Master of the Orchestra’. The Academy revived ‘serious’ opera in English by sponsoring Italian operas by composers of international reputation. This included Handel’s masterpiece ‘Giulio Cesare’ in 1724. Musical convention was overturned in this production, when Caesar’s recitative was allowed to interrupt Cleopatra’s aria ‘V’adoro pupile’ in Act II Scene I. This was not a setting of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, in fact the composer never set any Shakespeare, but an element of ‘verismo’ had entered the composition of opera. Unfortunately when the finances faltered in 1728 The Academy ceased operations and this period of innovation and musical excellence came to an end.
A sudden increase in the growth of commerce and the early foundations of the British Empire, brought prosperity and a rise in social status to the mercantile classes. New companies were formed to profit from the expanding market and The Duke of Chandos, James Brydges accumulated great wealth. He was one of Handel’s most generous patrons for his new oratorios. Opera had fallen from fashion when Handel began writing his great oratorios, introducing the setting of a religious story and reflection to music. Oratorio was more flexible for composers and native singers, who were less exigent in their demands for arias to show their skill in vocal displays.
By 1732 the public demand for these great passions with texts straight from the bible meant that only a few attempts were made at English opera seria, by composers like Thomas Arne (1710-78), Johann Friedrich Lampe (1703-51) and John Christopher Smith the younger (1712-95). Johann Christophe Schmitt of Ansbach, was friend of Handel’s, and had been his agent and finance manager in London. John Christopher Smith, his son, became Handel’s amanuensis as the great composer’s sight failed. Smith was bequeathed Handel's manuscript scores, which he presented to King George III. They are now kept in the ‘King’s Music Room’ at the British Museum.
Smith wrote two operas based on Shakespeare: ‘The Fairies’, derived from A Midsummer Night’s Dream in 1755, and ‘The Tempest’ in 1756. Neither work met with much success, but his setting of ‘Full fathom five’ and ‘The owl is abroad’ (Ben Johnson) became popular favourites. Dr William Croft and Dr William Boyce were popular composers of the time and contempories of Handel, but the most prolific and celebrated composer was Dr Thomas Augustine Arne. This difficult and bombastic character made few friends. He was notoriously cruel to his wife, the singer Cecilia Young, and his blatant womanising and public humiliation of his wife led to their separation. This was not reconciled until 1777, a year before his death.
Arne was highly accomplished and was most celebrated for his theatrical compositions. He is best known for settings of Shakespeare, which he began to compose with the revival of As You Like It at Drury Lane in 1740. Two celebrated singers Kitty Clive and Thomas Lowe took the roles of Celia and Amiens and it was for Lowe that Arne wrote ‘Under the greenwood tree’ and ‘Blow, blow thou winter wind’. His settings of ‘When daisies pied’ and ‘When icicles hang by the door’ were not used in any production of Love’s Labours Lost, but were inserted into ‘As you like it’ for Kitty Clive as Celia. Arne also wrote for her ‘Tell me where is fancy bred’, for a production of The Merchant of Venice in 1741and ‘Where the bee sucks’ for her ‘Ariel’ in The Tempest in 1746.
His first setting of ‘Come away death’ was sung by Lowe in Twelfth Night in 1741. The second setting, again for Lowe, was composed later and is more extended. His ‘Dirge’ from Cymbeline was sung by Lowe as ‘Cadwell’ at Covent Garden in 1759. Arne’s other known Shakespeare settings include: ‘Pardon Goddess of the Night’ and ‘Sigh no more ladies’ from Much Ado About Nothing, ‘On a day alack the day’ from Love’s Labours Lost, and ‘Orpheus with his lute’ from King Henry VIII. He also set Garrick’s ‘Ode’ for the famous Warwickshire Jubilee of 1769, which contained ‘Thou soft-flowing Avon’.
In 1745, Arne became ‘Director of Music’ at Ranelagh Pleasure Garden and produced the best performances and standards of music of his time. He composed hundreds of songs for this venue and 40 volumes of these were published. As a singing teacher, he had been inspired to write songs for the individual voices of his students. Although his later works would be influenced by Mozart, his best compositions are in the Italianate style, and make an interesting comparison to the style of Gilbert & Sullivan’s English ‘operettas’ in the late 19th Century. He was made Doctor by Oxford University in July 1759.
The opening of the London pleasure gardens at Lambeth, Sadler’s Wells, Marylebone, Vauxhall and Ranelagh are of great importance to the social history of English Music. Here singers and instrumentalists gave open-air entertainments and recitals. Whereas the public concert rooms mainly gave platforms to well-established and foreign artists, and the limited number of seats meant higher price, the Pleasure Gardens were more moderately priced and presented ‘Ballad Operas’ or ‘Pasticcios’, which usually contained medleys of popular melodies, with borrowings from foreign operas and original music. These musical confections were the height of fashion and flourished profusely as the provinces opened similar places and the fashion spread to Scotland, Ireland and the Americas.
Women composers of Shakespeare’s songs in this period are few. They do however include the renowned foreign eccentric Elizabeth Craven, Margravine of Anspach, who settled in Hammersmith, where she apparently gave some very ‘odd’ concerts. This kind of unconventional behaviour was not frowned upon and the pleasure garden singers often found most notoriety in the gossip columns of newspapers for their off and on stage antics. Their individuality was valued very highly and was particularly admired and enjoyed. Any imitation or ‘sound alike’ performances were vociferously derided. Composers wrote many pieces of greatly varying quality and validity for these singers. They included Dr Samuel Arnold, James Hook, Henry Cevey, William Shield, J Stafford Smith and Charles Dibden – ‘the man whose songs helped to win the Battle of Trafalgar and did not allow the nation to forget it either’ (W. Partington). These theatre songs and ballad operas were usually orchestrally accompanied and published with nothing more than a simple or figured bass.
Music underwent a dramatic change with the invention of the new pianoforte, which replaced the harpsichord. Its greater powers of expression and command of nuance opened new opportunities for the development of solo song and chamber music. In May and June 1787, Mozart composed a small collection of songs with piano accompaniment. They inaugurated a whole new direction for classical song. His masterpiece ‘Als Luise die Briefe ihres ungetreuen Liebhabers verbrannte’ is a mini-opera, which lasts barely two minutes, and by its use of the new pianoforte, brought Mozart and the public back to song. Few original ‘Keyboard songs’ appeared in England before Stephen Storace’s (1763-96) ‘Eight Canzonetts’ with an accompaniment for a pianoforte or harp (c.1782). The qualities of the pianoforte particularly appealed to the composers of the ‘Age of Sensibility’.
Italian opera went into decline, despite Salieri’s popular ‘Falstaff’ in 1799. The future was French and German opera. In England Henry Bishop (1786-1855) ‘the most fearsome despoiler of Shakespeare’, tried a handful of cobbled attempts, combining English ditties with foreign masterpieces. The songs were flashy and romantic but lacked emotional content. His ‘Lo, here the gentle lark’ from his pasticcio ‘The Comedy of Errors’ of 1819, is a showpiece for a coloratura soprano, but by today’s standards seems completely lacking in taste and would most likely give rise to ridicule. Thomas Linley produced a two-volume anthology of ‘Shakespeare’s Dramatic Songs’, with music of this style, for mainly amateur singers. The pleasure gardens were infested with Phoebes, Hebes and Chloés, rhyming swain with plain and singing songs of blatant patriotism with simple melodies and accompaniments. Sentimental comedies, farce and ballads were fashionable and the classical standards from Gluck to Mozart were butchered mercilessly by amateurs and professionals.
When Haydn made his second visit to England, solo song recitals mainly consisted of popular medleys of theatre music. Like many foreign composers who came to England, he found inspiration from Shakespeare and set music for Twelfth Night, King Lear and Hamlet. However it was his setting of twelve English texts, with the vocal line distinctly separate from the accompaniment, which considerably enriched the solo song repertoire. Solo song was flourishing in Germany and Beethoven’s ‘lieder’ brought a revival in song composition that would spread across Europe. The golden age of German Song had begun with the birth of Beethoven’s song cycles. The song cycle form was later developed and mastered by the great ‘lied’ composer Schubert.
Towards the middle of the 19th Century ‘grand opera’ was born. High drama and grand tragedy like ‘Othello’ touched a rare height of tragic power in Rossini’s opera, but he is now best known for his ‘opera comique’ and ‘opera buffa’. This was followed by the rise of German romantic opera, which included Weber’s Shakespeare inspired ‘Oberon’. French, Italian and German opera dominated European and American stages from Rossini to Mayerbeer, Berlioz to Donizetti and Wagner. Ambroise Thomas wrote a grand opera ‘Hamlet’ in 1868, but it was the ‘verismo’ of Verdi, with its real living characters that would bring Shakespeare back to the public. His best operas included settings of Shakespeare: ‘Otello’, ‘Falstaff’ and ‘Macbeth’.
In England, cultured Victorian society had a predilection for the music of Beethoven. When the ‘Promenade Concerts’ began, the ‘New Industrialists’ dictated public taste, with the focus of admiration still very much on the singers rather than the music. The most popular singers would perform songs of all styles from Grand Opera to ditty in the same recital. Performances of this kind flourished, and even more so when ‘parlour’ entertainments became popular. The development of the pianoforte had encouraged the creation of many concert seasons but the strong emphasis on ‘audience pleasing’ led to mediocrity in the composition of English song. In musical stage productions, entrepreneurs insisted on courting the public’s favour but still regularly lost their investment or went bankrupt. Musical patronage was completely based on the crude principal of ‘bums on seats’ and not on musical innovation.
Occasionally some very good songs were written in this crowd-pleasing style, but fortunately the texts of Shakespeare were rarely used, as his plays and poems were considered to be elevated literature. This dual standard was also applied to Oratorio, where songs not meeting the standards of ‘Victorian Piety’ were cut, and no one was ever allowed to sing or portray Christ. The renewed interest in performing oratorio, spread across the country. Choral societies, choirs and choral festivals were founded. Victorian piety was sentimentally self-indulgent and the cloying sentimentality of Spohr’s ‘Last Judgement’ was more popular with audiences than the sensitive, incisive emotions of Bach. Victorian composers set almost every word of the bible and blatantly mangled other composers’ settings, but the growth of University and Cathedral performances kept a modicum of taste and gravitas to these occasions. Solo singers were abundant and included the first ‘divas’ like Nellie Melba and Clara Butt. Interestingly there was a famous tenor of the period called William Shakespeare!
The Irish composer Michael Balfe (1808-70) was one of the few British talents to gain an international reputation. His ‘Bohemian Girl’ of 1843 was loved by audiences from Vienna to New York. John Barnett (1802-90) wrote the first true English opera since the 1750’s with his ‘The Mountain Sylph’ in 1834. Other noteworthy composers include Edward Loder (1813-65) and another Irish composer William Vincent Wallace (1812-65), who wrote ‘Maritana' in 1845. The first publicly performed American opera was ‘Leonora’ in 1845 by American composer William Henry Fry (1813-64).
The development of solo song was dominated by the pianoforte. The vocal part was often partnered or duetted with the piano part. This new style was essentially German and although Chopin and Liszt influenced the development of its style and technique, it was Schumann who established its position as an art form in its own right with his compositions of 1840. Schumann’s influence on piano composition was far reaching and was developed by Mendelssohn and César Franck, at the end of the 19th Century. With the development of the pianoforte instrument by French piano makers, Paris quickly became the musical centre of Europe. The great French composer Berlioz however, could not play the piano. His orchestral songs sparked the renaissance of French mélodie that would continue to expand and develop with the piano-accompanied songs of Debussy and Ravel.
In England the songs of Schubert, Haydn and Schumann began to be performed and enjoyed in the same recital programmes as Victorian Ballads. The best of the ballad style composers included John Oxenford, W.H. Weiss, F.E. Weatherly and Mrs G. Hubi-Newcombe. The most prolific songwriter of the period was Stephen Adams (né Michael Maybrick). He gained international success with songs like ‘The Holy City’. Although his songs are sickly sweet in sentiment by today’s standards, they are generally kind to the voice and accomplished singers can bring dignity to their performance.
As musical variety began to flourish again, Goetz’ setting of Shakespeare’s ‘Taming of the Shrew’ was brought to England in the 1870s by the celebrated singer Charles Santley. Composers Mackenzie, Stanford, Cowen, Corder, German, Coleridge-Taylor and MacCunn received new commissions, including theatre compositions for Shakespeare, and opera companies like the Carl Rosa were founded. The great D’Oyly Carte commissioned Gilbert & Sullivan to write operas, which would create a definitive English style.
The English solo art song was also revived, inspired by German lied. Hugh Pierson (1815-1873) was the first English composer to set piano songs, which ranged from tender lyrical pieces to big dramatic ballads. Towards the end of his life, he moved to Germany and set songs to German poets. Sir Hubert Parry (1841-1924) spent a long vacation with Pierson at Stuttgart studying the German ‘lied’ structure and in 1873-92 he began composing his 74 ‘English Lyrics’, which he grouped into 12 sets. Many were settings of Shakespeare, Herrick and other English poets and they were all skilfully composed with the natural inflexion of the English language. The piano accompaniments incorporated elements of Schumann and Brahms and represent the most refined compositions of this period. These songs heralded a renaissance in British music and a re-evaluation of tastes. The amateur composer Richard Simpson set all of Shakespeare’s sonnets to music and by the turn of the century a variety of catalogues and anthologies of music ‘for Shakespeare’ had been collated and published. ’12 Songs from Shakespeare’ by Liverpool composer William Faulkes can still be seen in Liverpool Public Library
The Edwardian parlour milieu produced a new and diverse body of musical composition, which included the ‘drawing room ballad’. Among its most accomplished composers were Eric Coates and Amy Woodford-Finden. Sir Arthur Sullivan was the most gifted composer of ‘Shakespeare music’ in Victorian times, setting songs, poems and texts, in addition to incidental music for theatrical productions. His many solo songs were performed and enjoyed in the parlour song environment. The best of his songs include effective settings of Shakespeare; particularly ‘Orpheus with his lute’ and ‘Where the bee sucks’. They are considered rather ‘too clever’ for modern tastes but are still revealing examples of the cross fertilisation of parlour and classical song.
The Irish composer Sir Charles Villiers Stanford (1852-1924) wrote an abundance of choral, instrumental, church and chamber music, in addition to operas and solo songs. At the opening of the Royal College of Music he was appointed Professor of Composition and Orchestral Playing and his teaching of Composition influenced English song composition for many decades. With Parry, Stanford inaugurated a Golden Age of English Song composition; his songs were the equal to Parry’s in terms of musical structure but Stanford had a unique talent for the musical evocation of atmosphere. He particularly enjoyed the Schubertian effect of a sudden switch from minor to major, which is best exemplified in his setting of Keats’ ‘La belle dame sans merci’. This extended English narrative poem was perfectly suited to his technique. The innate lyrical quality of the musical phrasing in Stanford’s songs, creates the scenes and moods in the accompaniments, and is complemented by wonderful imagery in the word setting. His songs remain a firm favourite with many professional and amateur singers and are still enjoyed by 21st Century audiences.
Maude Valerie White (1855-1937) was the first woman composer to become established in England. She mainly composed songs, including settings of Shakespeare. However Dame Ethel Smyth (1858-1944), Britain’s most distinguished woman composer wrote few English solo songs. German song writing was considered the best style and technique but the German development of song cycles seems to have had little influence in English song until Liza Lehmann wrote ‘In a Persian Garden’ for four voices and piano. She composed many pieces for solo voice and piano, and her song cycles grew in popularity. Sir Arthur Somervell (1863-1937) was mostly known for his song cycles ‘Maud’ and ‘A Shropshire lad’. This was the first true English Song cycle in the style of ‘lied’, with simple strophic settings and recapitulated melodies in the final song. A.E. Housman’s verse would inspire many composers, including George Butterworth and Ralph Vaughan Williams.
Sir Edward Elgar (1857-1934) and Gustav Holst (1874-1934) were the leading composers of English music’s belated ‘Wagnerian’ romanticism. Elgar was not a great solo voice and piano song composer, although he produced some wonderful orchestral songs and song cycles including his five ‘Sea pictures’. His ‘Introduction and Allegro for Strings’ of 1905, is inscribed with a Shakespeare epigram: ‘Smiling with a sigh’ from Cymbeline (Act IV Scene II line 52). Holst however was liberated from the influences of German music by his discovery of English folk music with his life long friend and collaborator Vaughan Williams.
Vaughan Williams (1872-1958) composed many arrangements for English Folk songs, for voice and piano and for chorus, but none of his own songs directly resemble folk music. His outstanding solo and choral songs include settings of Shakespeare, and are of the highest standard ever reached in English song composition. They are wonderfully evocative of the English countryside and a bygone era, with a natural connection to the origins of English song in Elizabethan and Jacobean times. His cantata ‘A Serenade to Music’ from The Merchant of Venice, for 16 soloists and orchestra, remains a great favourite.
With Holst, he travelled the English countryside searching for and collecting folk songs, which had been handed down orally for generations. They discovered that many songs still used old modes and often used an ‘irregular’ 5/4 time. This ‘iambic pentameter’, which was often used by Shakespeare, has overt musical qualities and was a liberating influence on classical song composition. Vaughan Williams explored the rhythmed declamation, changing bar lengths, modal melody and consecutive triads of folk music in his song compositions. This influence is most evident in his settings of ‘The New Ghost’ and ‘The Watermill’. His famous settings of R.L. Stevenson’s ‘Songs of Travel’ and A.E. Housman’s ‘A Shropshire lad’ owe their exceptional brilliance and lasting popularity to this earlier exploration of folk music. Songs were an important part of his output until the 1930’s, when he began to concentrate more on choral works and opera. ‘Sir John in Love’ based on The Merry Wives of Windsor, remains his greatest and most popular opera. Its rhapsodic style is influenced by folk melody yet it is unmistakably classical music.
Holst on the other hand never cultivated folk music as such but was equally liberated by their folk song discoveries. He had a more radical intellect and developed an interest in Indian religion. He studied Sanskrit and composed an opera called ‘Savitri’ and nine ‘Vedic Hymns’ for voice and piano, using 5/4 and 7/4 metre, whole tone scales and declamatory vocal lines.
Frederick Delius (1862-1934) was English by birth, being born in Bradford, German by ancestry, Scandinavian by musical sympathy and French by domicile. This eclecticism of influences is revealed in his orchestral rhapsody ‘Brigg Fair’, based on an English folk tune and his opera ‘A Village Romeo and Juliet’ of 1901. Delius had a radical impact on song and harmony in English music. His solo songs were mostly Scandinavian influenced and predominantly inspired by his friendship with the Norwegian composer Grieg. Delius dedicated his ‘12 Early Songs’ to Grieg’s wife. In these songs the piano part echoes the vocal line, which has many similarities to Grieg’s but Delius’ use of modal cadences and falling chromatic harmonies was very new to English music, and opened a new direction for ‘modern harmony’ in English song.
Delius left a deep impression on the next generation of composers, particularly on Peter Warlock. The Delian ‘hybridization’ of influences inspired new combinations of music forms: Schoenberg put solo song into chamber music, Falla’s ballet ‘El Tricorno’ included vocal parts, and chorus and solo parts were included in symphonies by Mahler and Vaughan Williams. The influence of the Dutch composer Bernard van Dieren (1884-1936) on English song is often under estimated. His songs were met with more indifference than hostility and were considered unvocal with over complicated word settings. Yet his use of detailed dynamic instructions brought a new approach to the composition and performance of song.
Van Dieren had a tremendous influence on Peter Warlock (1984-1930), as did the songs of Delius and Roger Quilter. Warlock, whose real name was Phillip Heseltine, is a great figure in the development of the English Art Song. His use of drooping chromatic harmonies and modal scales, contrapuntal chromaticism, free declamation, irregular barring, a felicitous treatment of words and folk song is totally unique. His songs are challenging yet always rewarding for both singer and accompanist. They are often male in sentiment and recall the expertise of the lutenist-singers of the Tudor court. He had a deep love of all things he termed ‘Jacobethan’.
The poetry of Walt Whitman brought a wider interest in song, as his poems were conceived rhapsodically rather than in regular stanzas. This ‘new style’ of ‘perpetual motion’ was most effectively set in the songs of Frank Bridge (1879-1941). His individuality in setting ‘Go not happy day’ created a masterpiece, when many songs of this period merely used the accompaniment to pad the harmonies and provide a routine overture to the song.
Sir Granville Bantock (1868-1948) was a prolific composer of art song, exploring the cultural heritage of many ethnicities. His six volume ‘Songs of the East’ introduced innovative oriental touches, which were very demanding on the pianist. Liza Lehmann's husband, Herbert Bedford (1867-1945), wrote songs in which the voice must carry the whole song and the singer is instructed to announce the full title and authorship of the song, in the place of the instrumental introduction. These songs are mercifully short and not easy to sing.
The last of the ‘romantics’ were represented by Arnold Bax (1883-1953) and Arthur Bliss (1891-1975). Bax had a particular interest in Celtic themes and his piano parts are often more important than the vocal line. Bliss had a greater influence on larger scale orchestral song, as did Sir William Walton. Walton, however, was part of a new generation, which included Hamilton Harty, Ernest J. Moeran, John Ireland, Herbert Howell, C. Armstrong Gibbs, Martin Shaw, Constant Lambert, Alan Rawsthorne and the now neglected C.W. Orr, who was a close friend of Delius.
The composer Gerald Finzi (1901-56) had a unique sensitivity to words, which is most remarkable in his Shakespeare song cycle ‘Let us garlands bring’ of 1942. He also wrote incidental music and songs for the BBC production of ‘Love’s Labours Lost’. Many of this generation of composers set Shakespeare songs, or were inspired to compose instrumental and orchestral music on Shakespeare themes. They understood the importance of Shakespeare in English heritage and explored the great treasury of English poetry, at the dawn of a new Elizabethan Age.
Roger Quilter (1877-1953) set over 20 songs to Shakespeare’s texts and was a master of the 20th Century solo song with piano. His acute sensitivity to words, high standard of choice of verse and excellent taste in musical setting and melodic style, recalled the romanticism of Shakespeare’s time. His compositions are regarded as the apogée of the English song tradition. Some of the songs may now seem rather sentimental, but his musical ideas were very modern for his time. Quilter’s works are always very accessible and ‘singer friendly’ but their apparent simplicity belies great musical invention. Most of his songs can be performed at different levels of skill by amateur or professional singers. There is a wealth of his songs waiting to be rediscovered in the archives of the publisher Boosey & Hawkes, and an anthology of his Shakespeare settings is long overdue.
John Ireland’s songs also require great musical skill yet they are consistently accessible, with atmospheric piano parts that are perfectly balanced with the voice. The Australian composer Percy Aldridge Grainger was more experimental in his use of bold harmonization to balance the setting of folk song melodies, which range from the simple to the complex. Ivor Gurney (1890-1937) had a special gift for the delicate matching of voice and piano accompaniment. His use of romantic diatonic harmony, rich transitions and an exquisite sensitivity to words are particularly notable in his setting of Elizabethan poet John Fletcher. His setting of ‘Sleep’ is a masterpiece.
Sir William Walton wrote few songs but created a new relevance by looking away from English folk song and making a colossal impact with ‘Façade’. Alan Rawsthorne continued this investigation of wider influences. He also wrote few songs but his ‘Carol’ particularly shows his gift for classical song writing. English art song needed a new language, new challenges and new responses, as modern English poetry was more satirical and anti-romantic in style.
Benjamin Britten in his work with Peter Pears and Kathleen Ferrier, developed the expressive and declamatory style of word setting and brought further melodic invention. His approach to the influences of folk song was unique and his deep understanding of these two famous voices and brilliant use of harmonic resources had a great influence on the next generation. This search for originality in word setting was also expressed in the works of Michael Tippett and Lennox Berkeley, who set music for a production of Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale.
In the post World War Two period, British composers continued to find inspiration from Shakespeare. Geoffrey Bush was particularly inspired by the Elizabethan lyrics of Jonson and Herrick and Bruce Montgomery composed two whole sets of Shakespeare songs Madeleine Dring, Benjamin Frankel, Howard Ferguson, Thea Musgrave, John Gardner, Phyllis Tate, Edmund Rubbra, Arnold Cooke, Ivor Walsworth, Anthony Hopkins, Arthur Oldham, Richard Arnell and Michael Head all set ‘an infinite variety’ of Shakespeare texts and poems.
Howard Ferguson wrote many short song cycles, which were epigrammatic and very influenced by the anti-romantic style of the French composers of ‘Les Six’. Thea Musgrave set ‘The Phoenix and the Turtle’ for chorus and orchestra. Frankel and Searle experimented with different instruments to accompany the voice. Searle used the voice as a ‘speaker’ with approximate pitch as a guideline. This was also used by Walton in his Shakespearean scenes and by Tippett in his operas, but its use can be traced back to Mozart.
Other unusual instruments, which have been used for music inspired by Shakespeare, include bagpipes, the ‘lur’, a Scandinavian herdsman trumpet, and a ‘Quaker Oatmeal’ box filled with lead shot. The use of exotic instruments was not a 20th Century innovation however, as at a benefit concert for the ‘Shakespeare Memorial Theatre’ in London, 1878:
‘Shakespearian airs were played several miles away on telephone loop [and] conveyed electrically to the theatre’.
The influence of Jazz is stronger in some of the songs of this period, particularly in Madeleine Dring’s ‘Five Betjeman Songs’ and the vocally challenging ‘Seven Shakespeare Songs’. The famous jazz musician and composer John Dankworth, has composed a multi-volume collection of jazz settings of all Shakespeare’s songs called ‘Shakespeare and all that Jazz’.
One of the most prolific writers in the 1960s of Shakespeare music for the theatre, including music for the RSC was Leslie Bridgewater. The inspiration of Shakespeare continues today in the theatre, with Guy Wolfenden, former Head of Music at the Royal Shakespeare Company, and the songs of actor Ben Kingsley. On the concert platform a new generation are rediscovering the English art song in the 21st Century. Shakespeare ‘The Man of the Millennium’ offers an abundant source of inspiration from classical, jazz and blues to rock, pop, soul and country and western. His works have been translated into most of the World’s languages and his legacy is one of our greatest national assets. The richness of his vocabulary and the poetic genius of his writing will continue to inspire generations of artists, writers and composers.
The setting of a poem to music, or music to a poem, is ‘Song’ and not ‘Opera’. As an art form and a musical tradition, it is now suffering from neglect, as the great Cornish baritone Benjamin Luxon said on BBC Radio 3 ‘Voices’ programme on the 13th of March 2001:
“Now we are sort of hell-bent…Opera’s become the darling of the vocal art, and the old recital platform has…gone...except for the big names. And very often you’re not hearing real lieder or song recitals, you’re hearing…semi-operatic recitals…this repertoire…leads to young singers putting a lot of pressure on their voices… is inclined to drive the voices.”
Conservatoires and music colleges have little interest in training voices for the recital platform, except as a ‘step up’ into the more glamorous and lucrative world of opera. Retiring opera singers, who rarely have the subtlety and dynamic range of a true song recitalist, mainly performs art song recitals. In Art Song the musical quality, subject matter and expression is of a ‘higher form’. The style of performing can down grade or elevate the calibre of any song, but art song should never be a mere ‘vehicle’ for the vocal exhibitionism of the singer. It should always reflect and enhance the poem it sets.
Specialisation in this field requires years of private training and study with little financial remuneration. Opera is not everyone’s taste however, and it would be a great shame to lose a whole art form in a relentless and futile pursuit to find the true successor to the great Maria Callas. Small audiences across the country are beginning to rediscover the enjoyment of the art song and a handful of singers are taking the risk of being scorned for their decision to abandon Conservatoire training in Opera, to revive our magnificent musical heritage.
For over 400 years English song has suffered from ‘a lack of confidence’. Vaughan Williams was not the first to recognise that the suppression of the English musical identity was occurring culturally from within. In the time of Elizabeth I, Thomas Morley had deplored Englishmen’s tendency to prefer foreign composer’s work to an equally good English product, and in 1789, music was considered to be:
‘a manufacture in Italy... that feeds and enriches a large portion of the people, and it is no more disgraceful to a mercantile country to import it than wine, tea or any other production of remote parts of the world’.
In the 19th Century both the British and the Americans used the word ‘Lied’ for any song (not only German) designed to fulfil a high artistic aim and to be suited to a recital. Britain does not have the body of classical solo song that was produced in Germany and Austria. Apart from church music for 200 years before 1840, song was either vulgar, popular ditties or linked to the theatre. In the Victorian ballad, English song was liberated from the theatrical stage to be imprisoned in the syrupy sentimentality of drawing room entertainments.
By the early 20th century, English art song had gained in importance and gravitas, but although there were many talented composers of song, very little was exported abroad. After World War Two American jazz songs were the fashion and recordings of film scores and concert overtures were more remunerative. Songs were not as financially viable and the medium of voice and piano was not the most immediate way for a composer to reach a large audience and recognition.
In this new century, our native composers are more widely known but the performance and composition of the art song is regrettably in decline. Perhaps we have also turned away from poetic forms of expression and our composers feel less inspired to set the words of the past generations. Shakespeare may yet prove the exception to this trend. His words and emotions are as significant and meaningful today as they were in his own time. This is why he was voted ‘The Man of the Millennium’.
© H Kean
ed. by W H Auden, C Kallmann & N Greenberg Faber & Faber Ltd
ed. by D Stevens
ed. by P Hartnoll
Volume 1 1955 - Volume 2 1961 - Volume 3 1971
ed. by J A Sadie & R Samuel
‘The New Grove Dictionary Grove 2001 of Music & Musicians’ 2nd Edition
Letters and Conversations with: OUP, Boosey & Hawkes, Valerie Langfield, The Shakespeare Birthplace Trust & Library, The Folger Shakespeare Library, Ariel Music and Opera North.
All text book resources were obtained by Burnley Music Library and the British Library Service.
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