Shakespeare settings for solo voice and piano

List of Shakespeare settings by date. See below for descriptions.

Blow, Blow Thy Winter Wind (2017)
Ophelia’s Lament (2014)
Titania’s Song (2008)
Confess and Love (2003)
Queen Margaret (2002)
The Death of Cleopatra (2002)
Where Should Othello Go (1998)
Farewell Already (1993)
The Witches Song (1990)
Cry, Cock-a-Doodle-Doo (1989)
Banquo’s Buried (1982)

2017 - Blow, Blow Thy Winter Wind, (from As You Like It, Act II, Scene 7), for male or female voice and piano accompaniment, duration c. three minutes.

The poem is sung simply by Amiens, a noble friend of Rosalind’s father, now banished from his rightful dukedom by his brother, Frederick. Amiens speaks of human cruelty, a crime that like the jealousy between brothers is more biting than the winter wind, (pronounced to rhyme with blind). It can be sung by tenor, counter tenor or soprano with its final notes suggesting Amiens is drifting in his thoughts as he exits singing, the tonality disintegrating to emphasise introspection.

2014 – Ophelia’s Lament, (Hamlet, Act IV, Scene 4), soprano/mezzo soprano and piano, duration c. nine minutes. 

‘Goodnight ladies; goodnight, sweet ladies,’ presents a very different portent of suicide from Lady Macbeth’s feverish washing of her hands or Cleopatra’s dramatic seizure of the asps. Shakespeare creates a tender portrait of unrequited, unhinged love that ends in Ophelia’s death by drowning.  As well as portraying Ophelia, the singer briefly represents the distinctive voices of the King and Queen as they observe her tragedy. Australian soprano Rachael Joyce won first prize in The Talent competition broadcast by 3MBS music, Melbourne in 2019 in a sensitively imagined, radio portrayal of Ophelia.

2008 – Titania’s Song, (A Midsummer-Night’s Dream, Act III, Scene 1), soprano/mezzo soprano and piano, duration c. three minutes.

Titania, capricious, eloquent queen of the fairies, wakes under the influence of Oberon’s love potion and finds herself enchanted by Bottom, disguised as an ass. Declaring her instant love and begging the fairies to fan the moonbeams from his sleeping eyes, she is not so smitten that she forgets to have them ‘tie up her love’s tongue,’ to muffle his brays - to bring him silently. Her fairy lyricism and legato melody should be in contrast to any hint of her shrewishness in Sprechstimme. This was performed with elan and lyricism by Elizabeth Atherton - see the NMC CD ‘NMC Song Book’ D150.

2003 – Confess and Love: Portia’s Song, (Merchant of Venice, Act III Scene 2), soprano/mezzo soprano and piano, duration c. four/five minutes.

In this scena, Portia is by now, strongly attracted to Bassanio and begs him to delay and consider before he chooses which casket to gain her hand in marriage. She has sworn not to interfere, although she wishes she could guide him. This is the speech of someone arguing with both her rational sense of duty and her heart. Sprechstimme is vital to meaning and proportional notation has built in flexibility. To maintain tension in performance, it is important that Portia remains uncertain of the outcome to the end.

2003 – Queen Margaret: She-Wolf of France, (Henry VI Part III, Act I, Scene 4 ), soprano/mezzo soprano and piano, duration c. seven/eight minutes.

The practised, loopy viciousness of Queen Margaret is existential. The pauses and interruptions by voice or piano are to serve as theatrical moments in which her obsessions bake. Tempo markings are suggestions only. Like the French chanson, emotions and melodic shape take precedence over literality.  

This is a scena about the pursuit of revenge and power to be performed with bravura declamation and coloratura attack. Queen Margaret, the
She-Wolf of France reveals herself as arguably more psychopathic than Lady Macbeth, more prone to tantrums than the Duchess in Alice in Wonderland. She expresses neither remorse nor guilt but unbridled revenge as she taunts and plans the death of York, (‘Off with the crown and with the crown, his head’). This is because York has been made heir to the throne by her husband, Henry VI, at the expense of their own son. By the end of the play, York’s son, Edward will seize the throne and imprison Henry, who is in turn, killed by Edward’s brother, Richard. (This scena was commissioned by the soprano, Helen Noonan, with funding from the Mietta Foundation with assistance from Peter Kolliner in memory of Mietta O’Donnell). 

2002 - The Death of Cleopatra (Antony and Cleopatra, Act V Scene 2), high mezzo soprano and piano, duration, c. ten minutes.

In this speech, Cleopatra, Queen of Egypt, is distraught as she laments her loss of power, (hers and Antony’s defeat by Octavius Caesar at the Battle of Actium) and finally, the news of her beloved Antony’s death. With sensuous, exquisite words, she bids farewell to her maidservants, Iras and Charmian before clasping the asp to her breast. Her final utterance, ‘’What should I stay – (dies), can perhaps be interpreted as a last-minute regret, a change of mind that comes too late. (The scena was commissioned by Carol Bishop who gave its first performance at The Women’s Festival, Southampton, 2003). 

1998 – Where Should Othello Go? (Othello, Act V Scene 2), tenor/baritone and piano, duration five/six minutes.

Othello has murdered Desdemona and wracked by remorse, is about to kill himself – ‘where should Othello go’? The physical sound of the spoken words determines the shape of the voice’s melodic line, the piano reinforcing an operatic intensity of tempo and extreme of dynamics. There should be a deliberately theatrical and abandoned spirit about the performance, which intensifies the tragedy. The composition was written as a tribute to that style exemplified by my uncle, the late tenor, Kenneth Neate.

1993 – Farewell Already (Richard III, Act I, Scene 2), for soprano/mezzo soprano and string quartet, duration c. nine minutes.

Lady Anne is publicly mourning the death of Henry VI as she enters with his coffin, her heart seeking revenge for his death and that of her husband, Edward, Henry’s son. Her speech is as full of bile as her mother-in-law’s, (Queen Margaret), her grief becoming a howl of excoriating rage against Henry’s murderer, Richard, Duke of Gloucester, soon to be Richard III and the man she will perversely agree to marry by the end of this scene. NMC CD recording of Jane Manning Sings.

 1990 – The Witches Song (Macbeth Act IV, Scene 1), for unaccompanied solo soprano/ mezzo/ counter tenor, duration
c. four minutes.

This scena requires the singer to play four distinct characters: the three witches plus Hecate, their Queen and a ghostly premonition of Lady Macbeth. The incantations, even when played straight, become a type of black comedy in counterpoint to the menace of Lady Macbeth’s final utterance: ‘there’s knocking at the gate.’  Heightened articulation is a prerequisite for the witches’ Sprechstimme, forming a delicate balance between this display of comedy and menace.

Notes on performance discussed in Jane Manning’s New Vocal Repertory 2.

1989 - Cry Cock a Doodle Do (The Tempest, Act I, Scene 2), soprano/mezzo soprano/counter tenor and piano, duration c. three minutes. 

Ariel is guiding Ferdinand to safety on the island where he is secretly observed by Prospero and Miranda. Ferdinand is enchanted by Ariel’s unearthly singing and his own voice should be sung with a contrasting, darker tone to suggest the difference between mortal and spirit.

1982 – Banquo’s Buried (Macbeth Act V, Scene 1), soprano/mezzo soprano and piano, duration c. nine minutes.

Commissioned by Roger Covell, (1931 – 2019), for the University of NSW Music Department, and first performed there by the Seymour Group in 1982. Performance by Elizabeth Campbell and Anthony Fogg in Anthology of Australian Music 1988, CSM:15.

The text of Banquo’s Buried is Lady Macbeth’s sleepwalking scene from Shakespeare’s Macbeth. The treatment of it owes a little to the composer’s memory of a powerful and idiosyncratic recording by Dame Sybil Thorndyke. The manner was operatic and perhaps, even then, unfashionable, but there was a ‘go-for-broke’ spirit which made sense of the tragedy. The piece was conceived for all sopranos who enjoy a sense of theatre and may be interested in an interpretation that hints at guilt, paranoia and the dementia of memory loss as Lady Macbeth keeps repeating the phrase: ‘Come give me your hand.’ Each time she sings it, it is as if for the first time. (This repetition is not in Shakespeare). Jane Manning’s book on New Vocal Repertory 2 gives a thoughtful analysis of the balance required between Sprechstimme and a cantabile, vocal line in this piece.