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Showing posts with the label Quilter

The Songs & The Plays - Kean on Shakespeare

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The Songs & The Plays Listen on Youtube Love’s Labours Lost (1593-94) A revised and polished version of this play was presented for Queen Elizabeth I and her court at Christmas 1598. However the elevated language and subject matter of the drama suggests it was always intended for a sophisticated and highly literate audience. There are two parallel plots – one ‘high’ comedy and one ‘low’ comedy. In the high comedy the King of Navarre and his friends make a pact to ‘fast and study’ and to have no contact with women for three years. No sooner have they agreed than the Princess of Aquitaine and her ladies in waiting arrive to discuss ‘state matters’. Inevitably the King falls in love with the Princess and his friends with the French ladies in waiting. The Gentlemen find loophole in their vows and woo and win women with a dance. The Ladies become aware of their broken vows and treat the noblemen with scorn. In the low comedy the page Moth and the clown Costard ridicule the exaggerated m...

Roger Quilter - English Composer - Biography

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Roger Quilter Roger Cuthbert Quilter was born at No 4 Brunswick Square in Hove, Brighton, on 1st of November 1877. He was the fifth child and third son of Sir William Cuthbert Quilter, 1st Baronet and Lady Mary Ann Quilter, née Bevington. Queen Victoria had bestowed the baronetcy to William, in her Diamond Jubilee year 1897. Roger’s father was a wealthy stockbroker, a businessman, the founder and director of the National Telephone Company, a politician elected as Liberal MP and afterwards Unionist MP for Sudbury, and the landowner of the Bawdsey Manor estate in Suffolk. With his brother Harry, he had invested in an extensive art collection, which became quite famous. William’s appreciation of the arts lay only in the financial gains to be made and the sale of his collection increased the family’s wealth considerably. The family returned to Suffolk in 1882. Despite his enthusiasm for collecting art, Sir William had little interest in the artistic talents of his son. Music as a diversion...