Search - Sara Stowe;Matthew Spring;Sharon Lindo :: Songs for William Shakespeare

Music played a much more important part in Shakespeare's plays than a casual look at the printed editions suggests. On closer inspection we find a wealth of musical stage directions ranging from simple trumpet fanfares to instrumental dances and fully-fledged songs. Only a handful of the earliest song settings have survived, and the finest of them are recorded here. One of the best-loved of all is the enchanting 'O Mistress Mine' sung by Feste to Sir Toby and Sir Andrew as they pass round the wassail bowl. But there are plenty of other musical references in Twelfth Night which are often overlooked. When Sir Toby and his friends plan to take revenge on Malvolio by getting him to wear yellow stockings, Sir Toby cries out 'Malvolio's a Peg-a-Ramsey'. 'Peg a Ramsey' is the name of a popular ballad one of whose verses includes the words 'Give me my yellow hose again. Give me my yellow hose, for now my wife she watches me'. Shakespeare's plays are full of these allusions. The ballads were not actually sung, but just mentioning them made a dramatic point, sparking off a whole chain of associations in the minds of the audience. This album features a broad selection of these popular tunes, including three different versions of 'Light of Love' (one of which is used for the ballad 'The Poor Peoples' Complaint'). In The Merry Wives of Windsor Falstaff refers to the tune 'Fortune my foe', and it can be heard here in versions for solo lute, pipe and tabor and to the words of the ballad 'The Arraignment of John Flodder'. All in all a musical entertainment which our Elizabethan and Jacobean ancestors would have enjoyed as much as the plays themselves. The finest songs from Shakespeare's plays, from Johnson's arrangement of 'Where the bee sucks' in 'The Tempest' to Morley's famous version of Feste's song 'O mistress mine', from 'Twelfth Night'. Carefully researched and played on instruments of the period. Sara Stowe - Soprano Matthew Spring - Lute, cittern, hurdy-gurdy Sharon Lindo - Renaissance violin, recorder, pipe and tabor Recorded in the church of St Michael and All Angels, Summertown, Oxford, by kind permission of Rev Anthony Gann and St Michael's District Church Council.