Royal Winter Music by Hans Werner Henze
This week I was happy to come upon some interesting music. In 1976, a German composer by the name of Hans Werner Henze wrote a piece called Royal Winter Music. The piece is made up of two ‘sonatas’ (the second added in 1979) which are musical reflections on Shakespeare’s characters. As you can see from the links below, some of these characters include Ophelia, Richard and Ariel. I was quite surprised to see Sir Andrew on the list – he is a clear outlier in the list of famous characters. His memorable and melancholy line in Act II may have served as the inspiration for this particular work. The haunting and dissonant piece provides a different view of the comedic character. I could not find any more information on Royal Winter Music - it would be interesting to see how and why the composer picked these particular characters.
The pieces themselves are worth listening to – I can’t say that all of them matched my perceptions of the characters but it was fascinating to listen to musical transcriptions of these literary persona. I particularly enjoyed the piece inspired by Touchstone and Richard. Enjoy!
First Sonata on Shakespearean Characters
-Richard of Gloucester:
-Romeo and Juliet:
-Ariel:
-Ophelia:
-Touchstone, Audrey and William:
-Oberon:
Second Sonata on Shakespearean Characters
-Sir Andrew Aguecheek:
-Bottom's Dream:
-Mad Lady Macbeth:
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