All the pieces on this CD were created for actors. One of my musical jobs is that of improvising incidental music for theatre performances on the cello. It’s a job that involves a lot of sifting and selecting. Every time I hear one of my melodies being sung during a break in rehearsals, or actors complaining about musical themes that they can’t get out of their heads, I put them aside as precious musical material for the future. For years I have kept these good ideas for Shakespeare.
Within Shakespeare’s plays we can find texts of songs that were intended to be performed by the actors or musicians on stage. Reading them, one would think that Shakespeare’s expertise in the art and craft of writing led him to put aside the refinement of the sonnets and the pentameters of the theatrical verses to write simplistic lines for music, which, nowadays, we would dismiss as being commercial. The language of his songs is “pop”: based on monosyllables, rhythm and repetition. It’s classical in the precipices of its profundity; light music of extreme weight. (...) (Nicola Segatta)