MUCH
A FESTIVE-CONFERENCE:
FRI. JULY 31 – SUN.
Venue:
CONCORD LIBRARY &
MASONIC HALL,
"The man
that has no music in himself,
Nor is not moved
with concord of sweet sounds,
Is fit for
treason, stratagems, and spoils,
The motions of
his spirit are dull as night,
And his
affections dark as Erebus:
Let no such man
be trusted: mark the music.”
--Lorenzo, The Merchant of
FRIDAY EVENING:
“…
water cools not love.”
--Sonnet 154
I. Celebrating
400 years of ‘SHAKES-SPEARES SONNETS’ (1609) & Songs in Royal English
Style!
* ‘Hark, hark the
lark’, from Cymbeline
* Sonnet 65: ‘Since brass,
nor stone, nor earth, nor boundless sea’
* ‘Full fathom five’:
Ariel’s song from The Tempest
* Sonnet 116: ‘Let me not
to the marriage of true minds’
* Lancelot Gobbo’s
monologue, from The Merchant of Venice
* ‘Puck’s dance’, from Preludes Book 1 by Debussy
Patrick Dixon, Actor, Graduate of London’s Royal
Academy of Dramatic Art
Maren Stott, Eurythmist & Co-Director of the
Eurythmy Training,
Alan Stott, Pianist & Co-Director of the Eurythmy
Training,
Eurythmy is
a performing art, which reveals the language of movement: “visible speech” and
“visible singing.”
SATURDAY MORNING
"Absent thee from felicity awhile,
And in this harsh world draw thy breath in pain
To tell my story . . . ."
--Hamlet - 5.2: 350
Note: Saturday & Sunday’s events are held at the
on
Oxord's Seventeenth Earl
talks with Lady Mary (
Joseph Lippincott Eldredge, Architect, Author, Editor,
Critic, Poet, Student of Shake-speare Authorship.
Over
the years the traditional identification of “William Shakespeare” with a
gentleman from
Richard Desper, retired scientist and
independent scholar on the Shakespeare Authorship Question
SATURDAY AFTERNOON
“Sweets to the Sweet.”
--Hamlet Act V, Scene 1
In
Hamlet, King Lear and Othello we witness the moving, tragic deaths of Ophelia,
Cordelia, and Desdemona. Why do these young women have to die and the heroes
outlive them in each play? Is there an inspirational archetype, which can
increase our understanding of these events?
Robert Horner (Yale B.A.) has taught
high school English and theatre for many years. He resides in the City of
Six characters, each trying to take the lead role in the Dramatic
Play and Comic Work of Human Life, perform the roles destiny has given them,
questioning and arguing with the Author and acting out the inner temptations,
conflicts, and resolutions that reveal themselves in the Theatre of the World.
Followed by a discussion about the future of theatre.
Patrick Dixon, Actor, Graduate of
SATURDAY EVENING
“All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely
players.”
Jaques
As You Like It
Friends and lovers of Shakespeare are invited step up and
present their favorite sonnets, speeches, melodies, scenes from the plays, and
related gems in celebration of the 400th anniversary of blessed
bard’s Genius.
SUNDAY MORNING
The purest treasure mortal
times afford, is spotless reputation:
That away, Men are but
gilded loam and painted clay.
--Thomas Mowbray, Richard II
Richard II gives
us an opportunity to experience Shakespeare's awareness of what is at work in
political intrigue in a form that can only compel awe at the play's combination
of insight into
humanity and
dramatic and poetic mastery. Characters
act upon suspicions or impulses aroused by what has been said and done by other
characters in ways that, with no clear or intentional villain in sight, bear
massive historical consequences for the destiny of the English people.
Charles Boyle, Author, Actor, and Director
John
The virtually unrecognized thread
of monetary history and the economic ferment of the Elizabethan era provide a
backdrop against which the life and works of the celebrated English bard
(Edward DeVere?) were played out. The
dramas sound with a moral timbre that is not merely behavioral, legal, or
economically self-interested, but allegorical; a temporal tale of the
Gods. Is this the elixir they hold for
this “post-modern” era, soon to metamorphose (dare I “prophesy”) into a
post-commercial age?
Richard Kotlarz, Inquirer of
the Economic/Social Order,
SUNDAY AFTERNOON
We are such stuff
as dreams
are made on;
And our little life
is rounded
with a sleep.
--Prospero,
The Tempest
I. Three Shakespeare Songs by Ralph Vaughan
Williams.
David
Conte asserts that Ralph Vaughan Williams's "Three Shakespeare Songs"
represent a supreme achievement in the repertoire of twentieth-century choral
composition. Moreover, the songs brilliantly fulfill the original pedagogical
purpose: to provide a challenging and grateful work for choral singers, using
texts of the highest literary and spiritual quality. David Conte will
illuminate how the unique character, color and structure of Shakespeare's
language inform one composer's musical choices regarding melody, harmony,
rhythm and meter, and form as expressed in these songs.
David Conte, Professor of Composition,
San Francisco Conservatory of Music, & Award-Winning Composer. David’s
recent performances and commissions include: a piece composed from President
Obama’s victory speech and performed at
the inauguration; “Homecoming” in honor of the 40th Anniversary of
the death of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., performed by Chanticleer at the Metropolitan
Museum in New York City; and “Lincoln” commissioned for Concord’s Bicentennial
Celebration of Lincoln’s birth.
II. Shakespeare in a Tarnhelm
The “tarnhelm”
was the golden helmet in Wagner’s Ring Cycle that allowed its wearer to assume
any form or even become invisible; so it has been for several centuries with
composers doning an interpretive tarnhelm to twist some of the great works of
Shakespeare to assume a new form – along the way, some were so changed as to
become nearly invisible. Brian Luedloff explores the evolution of Shakespeare’s
work through the operatic form, including masterworks and rarely-performed and
unknown works. Is the Shakespearean text illuminated or obscured by the element
of song? How do character arcs differ in the transition to the operatic form?
Discussion will include amusing anecdotes of hits and misses throughout the
centuries as composers try their hand at adapting the work of the Bard of Avon.
Brian Luedloff is Assistant
Professor of Music and Director of Opera Theatre for the
*
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A WARM WELCOME TO ONE AND ALL!
Contributions, as your
fortunes allow, are invited to cover our costs, as we look ahead to the “Third
Annual
For further information
visit: www.concordshakespeare.com