If Music Be the Food of Love... |
© Don Hunstein
Folger Consort recording
In Twelfth Night, Shakespeare’s lovesick duke remarks, “If music be the food of love, play on.” As that line suggests, music and Shakespeare have never been far apart. In addition to the songs and instrumental pieces found throughout the original plays, Shakespeare’s works have inspired numerous American musicals (one of them actually called Play On!, from that Twelfth Night quotation) as well as other works written for the concert stage. This site showcases two such compositions—Duke Ellington’s Such Sweet Thunder, a Shakespearean jazz suite from 1957, and Songs and Dances from the Tempest, a 1998 composition by James Primosch commissioned by Folger Shakespeare Library.