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OXFORD SONGS

My settings of scenes from Shakespeare’s plays and the sonnets are contained in nine books so far, (each book containing as many as twelve pieces) which I title Oxford Songs because I subscribe to the unorthodox opinion that Shakespeare is the pseudonym of Edward DeVere, the 17th earl of Oxford. The doubts regarding Shakespeare’s ipseity have a long history. At one time those who doubted the Man from Stratford as the author flirted with the idea of Francis Bacon. Mark Twain wrote, “I only believed Bacon wrote Shakespeare, whereas I knew Shakespeare didn’t” in his essay “Is Shakespeare Dead?” Twain assailed the orthodox authorship view (known as the Stratfordian), writing, “since the Stratford Shakespeare couldn’t have written the Works, we infer that somebody did. Who was it then?” The view that it was Oxford wasn’t hypothesized until several years after Twain, first in 1920 by J. Thomas Looney. I share my Looney belief that the Stratfordian Shakespeare is not the author of our language’s greatest works with many predecessors.

 

Shakespeare dominates the literary landscape. Much that is written is nothing but exegesis of the bard. I come to Shakespeare in the same way as the wordsmith. My music is my commentary on the text. Like an actor, too, I impose upon you my interpretation of the words with gesture and timing, though my gestures are musical and my timing (thanks to the temporal distortion possible through music) can be quite exaggerated. You don’t have to agree with my perspective, but I hope you find it worth considering alongside the other interpretations presented in this recording by Michael Tippett, Charles Ives, and Igor Stravinsky.

 

The books of the Oxford Songs are not restricted to Shakespeare, just dominated by him. I have strewn other poets throughout when I am inspired to include them therein because of what I perceive as their connection to the seventeenth earl. An example here is my setting of George Peele’s Love (“What thing is Love?”) from The Hunting of Cupid. This poem from 1591, contemporaneous with the ever living Bard, would not have escaped his attention.

 

My principal métier as a composer is opera. I’ve written four grand comic operas based upon Boccaccio's Decameron (1: And The Dead Shall Walk The Earth, 2: Courting Disaster, 3: Their Fate in the Hands of the Friar, 4: Also Known As; and three tragic operas: Hamlet, Hippolytus and The Tenor’s Suite. My chamber opera, The Tempest, is being prepared for production in April 2015 in Somerville, Massachusetts, even as I write this text from my room at the Ziyu Hotel in Beijing, China (having just returned from Wuhan Conservatory in the Hubei province, where I conducted a seminar on my Tempest opera, excerpts of which you will find scattered herein).  In addition to the operas and Oxford Songs, I compose chamber music. Prior recordings, still available, of my music include What A Piece Of Work Is Man, an album of Shakespearean settings with an emphasis on arias from Hamlet for voice and piano; Shall I Compare Thee To A Summer’s Day, which features sonnets set to string quartet, harp, and other ensembles, as well as the string quintet Dance Of The Mechanics; So Many Journeys, containing my cello sonata, and excerpts from The Mousetrap; The Garden of Forking Paths, string quartet in C major with the Kalmia string quartet; and SHAKESPEARE'S MEMORY, THE FAIR OPHELIA, and GODDESSES, and ORPHEUS WITH HIS LUTE MADE TREES; the first four in a series of recordings released by Navona, a series which continues with the recording you now possess.

 

Just to get an idea of what my Oxford Songs books contain, I offer a glimpse at a few of the selections. The first piece in Book One is a setting of an undisputed poem by Edward De Vere, 17th earl of Oxford: If Women Could Be Fair (A Renunciation); for four vocal soloists and a sui generis ensemble consisting of an alto flute alternating to piccolo, four French horns, and a string orchestra consisting of violas, celli, and double bass. Sonnet CXXX, from Shakespeare’s nonpareil collection, is the ninth offering in Book One. I set it for tenor and harp in 2003, and presented it to its dedicatee, Mattina R. Proctor, just before attending an opera together at the Shubert Theater in Boston. It is one of several works I’ve scored for solo voice and harp. The first and second book contain twelve settings each, featuring many settings of Hamlet, which I later expanded into a full length opera. Book Three begins and ends with excerpts from The Tempest, which too became the building blocks for the subsequent opera. The first selection in Book Three is “If By Your Art” from Act 1, scene 2; for harp and soprano. For the operatic version I left much of the 1995 original unaltered. “Full Fathom Five,” heard on this CD, is the eleventh piece in Book Three. I wrote it in 2001. In 2009 I penned “Now my charms are all o’erthrown,” the last individual Tempest piece before I undertook the opera itself. This epilogue to the play is the last setting from my third book of Oxford Songs. Prospero’s immortal words are accompanied by a string quartet and piano. For the opera I changed only the opening few measures. Book Four of the Oxford Songs begins with a lengthy oratorio, Enough Is As Good As A Feast, from the first scene of the fifth act of Love’s Labour’s Lost. A full orchestra with an obbligato solo Alphorn accompanies four soloists in twenty five minutes of ribald buffoonery and what may be the only setting of Shakespeare’s longest word, “Honorificabilitudinitatibus.” The third work in book four I consider my best composition, “What A Piece Of Work Is Man,” from Hamlet. It is also scored with an obbligato Alphorn, though it has been played successfully on French horn on several occasions. “O Romeo, Romeo, Wherefore Art Thou Romeo?” the famous balcony scene from Romeo and Juliet is the fourth “chapter” in book four, scored for soprano and tenor (of course) accompanied by a woodwind quintet, solo violin, and harpsichord. I await its legitimate premiere. The fifth book is The Mousetrap, the play within the play in Hamlet. For my opera I wrote a new Mousetrap scene, which makes this book unusual even by my unorthodox standards in that it contains an entire operetta which has been superseded in my own work by a small scena. I fancy the idea of this fullblown operetta, with a seventeen minute ballet (!) living a separate existence outside my ballet-free operatic Hamlet. Tracks five through seven and twelve through thirteen of this disc are from Book Number Six, a collection of settings inspired by Stravinsky’s Three Shakespeare Songs with its strange accompanying ensemble of flute, clarinet, and viola. Act I, scene 1 of Pericles, Prince of Tyre, is the seventh Oxford Songs Book, a self-contained operetta (with ballet) for three voices, percussion, harp, and string quartet. The eighth book is still in progress, containing my Sonata for Violin and Voice (presented on the previous Navona recording: ORPHEUS WITH HIS LUTE MADE TREES.) There is one other book, Number S¹, Ten Sonnets; Not White, Nor Black, Nor Red, Nor Green. It is, in one version, a thirty five minute cantata; but there are many versions of it, as there is a presentation of the music which allows for multiple realizations depending upon decisions made by the performers: a soprano, mezzo-soprano, tenor, and bass-baritone; accompanied by flute, clarinet, French horn, trumpet, percussion, piano, harp, and string quintet. I won’t explain it adequately here, but this note from the score will provide the gist of the conceit: “These ten sonnets have no specific location, G-D forbid, though the reification depicted in this particular score is one I favor. There are many locations in the score which may serve equally well as a beginning or end, with little or no modification. I leave the option of creating a different route through the sonnets than that which I offer herein, to your discretion. The sonnets presented are numbers one, twelve, nineteen, fifty-five, sixty, sixty-four, sixty-five, sixty-six, seventy-six, and ninety-nine. The title:  Not White, Nor Black, Nor Red, Nor Green, is from the Zohar. The tree of sonnet numbers on page zero borrows its appearance from a typical representation of the ten Sefirot. When composing Not White, Nor Black, Nor Red, Nor Green, I was thinking about an unfixed, hypothetical presentation of Oxford Songs and used the Kabbalistic symbolism not as a mystical or spiritual inspiration, but rather as a reflection on the aesthetic limitations of music appreciation dictated by music's chronological realization.”

 

- Joseph Summer