Shakespeare in song, it was

Shakespeare has been sung for almost as long as Shakespeare has been played. While singers were not the focus of Shakespearian plays, many of his plays featured songs in some form, and many songs have since been made from some famous scenes in Shakespeare. (performance pamphlet)
I attended the march 27th 2010 Shakespeare in song event for this performance report. This event was held in the Jonsson Performance Hall. For those of you unfamiliar with Jonsson, it reportedly seats 199 people in the audience in a half amphitheater styled seating arrangement with a fairly small stage at the base. The room is decorated in green with wood paneling. The room does have a small sound system, but this was unused in this performance, with the relatively small room size, and the power behind the singer’s voice, there was no need for it. The room projector was used however to display for the audience what song was being sung, some basic information about the song and to indicate the beginning intermission and end.
The majority of the audience arrived well before the start of the performance, and no one, that I noticed, came in late. The audience was not quite large enough to fill half of the theater which, as stated earlier, seats 199 at most. Many in the audience, most of those who arrived 10 or more minutes before the start of the show appeared to be family members, families with younger children and Grandparents. Later, closer to the start of the show, students came in and doubled the size of the audience. There was quite a bit of talking before the performance but little, if any, during the performance. The group continued talking again during intermission and after the performance, including talking quite a bit with the performers themselves; which many seemed to know.
The Performers came in just a minute or two after 8:00 PM, the group appeared to be nearly 1:1 male to female, were fairly young in age, early 20‘s, with the exception of two of the students who appeared to be in their late 30‘s. The Choir director was obviously a teacher, their teacher of course, but a professor at the University and the accompanying pianist appeared to be a professor as well. The performers were wearing costumes that were similar to period costumes from Shakespeare lifetime. The entire choir and the director and even the pianist had a costume. All together there were 8 Sopranos, 6 Altos, 6 Tenors and 8 Baritones in the choir, for a total of 32 performers including the pianist and Director.
There were a total of 16 songs by these performers, 8 before intermission and 8 after. These came from many of Shakespeare’s plays, comedies and tragedies. Each individual performance taken from Shakespeare’s plays had dialogue that introduced the song as part of the play and set the stage for the song itself. There were often several from the troupe that came to the side of the stage and spoke lines from the play as if they were in the play. Sometimes these actors were the main singers or even soloists in the songs. On two occasions, singers who had been sitting on the front row, and not singing with the rest of the choir came and sang solos. This occurred during Cymbeline and a female in Twelfth night. Much of the focus in most songs was the harmony sung by the entire choir, however, many songs such as The Tempest Act1 Scene 2 and Act 2 Scene 2, along with Hamlet, Cymbeline Othello, the Twelfth night, along with many others were sung by a set of the performers who had come to the front of the stage to act and sing. The wide range of voices in the choir, along with the individual soloists gave each song a very unique texture. A song could start out very quiet, and then get much louder, warmer, and richer. The “Willow Song”, song stands out as a great example of the versatility and range of the choir. The song starts off with exclusively the women only, altos and sopranos, who sing a somewhat melancholy song, the men latter join in both tenors and bass singing different words at the same time to make the song polyphonic. This added a very warm texture to the song that complimented the earlier melancholy mood.
The music sung by the Shakespearean choir incorporated many unique elements of music to play on emotions and communicate a wide range of subjects. The choir’s range and number allowed for a different texture in each individual song. Heterophony, polyphony and monophony were all incorporated at some point in the performance. Disjunct and conjunct motion allowed for the manipulation of mood, both the characters on stage, and the audience. All in all, the entire choir had a large repertoire of tools at their disposal, and were able to create very complex and very simple textures.




References:
Performance pamphlet "Shakespeare in Song." School of Arts and Humanities March, 26-27th, 2010

"Shakespeare in Song." School of Arts and Humanities March,27th, 2010 8:00 PM