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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...
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Xavier Montsalvatge - Biographical Notes & My Translations

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  Xavier Montsalvatge i Bassols 1912 The composer and critic Montsalvatge was born in Girona and studied at Barcelona Conservatory with Morera and Pahissa. His education was Castillian; to speak Catalan in public could invite a slap in the face; to write it was seen as an open defiance of Franco. He was a musician of broad culture and a talented journalist: he was a music critic for “Destino” and “La Vanguardia”. Most of his music was written in the 1940’s, during the Republic. The Catalan composer Mompou was a strong influence, but Montsalvatge explored Catalan, Spanish and Cuban/Antillean music in his compositions. Spain still had strong ties to Cuba and the popular Habanera style had been re-imported from the West Indies by émigrés from Spain’s Mediterranean coast. There are still very distinctive Catalan folk qualities in his West Indian pieces. He collected the Habaneros of Catalan fishermen from the days of their fathers and grandfathers sailing in windjammers to Cuba...
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