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Come Away, Death (Shakespeare: Twelfth Night)
My latest original composition for one of Shakespeare’s songs! I hope you enjoy it! The lyrics to this song come from Act II, scene iv, of Twelfth Night (1602). Duke Orsino and Cesario are suffering from unrequited love and ask Feste to sing this song to ease their pain. Shakespeare’s plays include many songs and dances, but these are often excerpted in modern productions (which is something I hope to help change :)). Very few of the original melodies survive, and some of my past work has been to compose music for the lyrics Shakespeare provided, which I really enjoy doing! If you’re planning an upcoming Shakespeare production and are…
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Composing a new Shakespeare song!
For today’s #WeeklyWednesday, I decided to show you a new song I’m working on composing and recording! I hope you enjoy hearing it and a bit about the process of writing music for Shakespeare’s plays, which I really enjoy doing! I play it twice, at 1:03 and 7:12. This is my fourth or fifth version of “Come Away, Death” from Twelfth Night. You can hear bits of two others below – one of them is kind of a fugue-ish embellishment on this melody: The goal for this new version is to come up with a simple melody that would be singable for most people; the other two versions I’ve written…
