Music for the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death.
If music be the food of love, play on;
Give me excess of it, that, surfeiting,
The appetite may sicken and so die.
That strain again! It had a dying fall;
O, it came o’er my ear like the sweet sound
That breathes upon a bank of violets,
Stealing and giving odour! Enough; no more;
‘T is not so sweet now as it was before.
[William Shakespeare, Twelfth Night, Act I]
William Shakespeare, the English poet, playwright, and actor, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world’s pre-eminent dramatist. His plays remain highly popular today and are constantly studied, performed, and reinterpreted in diverse cultural and political contexts throughout the world.
Capella de Ministrers presents an invocation to music that opens the Shakespeare’s comedy Twelfth Night, one of the works of the English dramatist more directly related to music. Treatise of Melancholy is a tribute to the music and Shakespeare, the music scene of the early 17th century London, and the musical works inspired by this writer. Works by Playford, Hume, Dowland, Holborne, Morley, Gibbons, Byrd…