Wednesday, February 29, 2012

Final Project -- Musica?


Okay.  So I liked Dr. Burton’s idea of having a collaborative group project where we come up with the main theme of a newly discovered Shakespeare play.  It sounded like most everyone wanted to do this, too.

Andrew had the idea of making Puck the main character of this new play, & since I have no other preference, that sounds fine to me. (Read about it on his blog:  Final Project Idea.) By the way, I agree with the play title of "Star-Crossed."

Aubrie also had a pretty good layout for the project (Final Project Idea).  I think it may work a little better to approach this as a film pitch than as a documentary, but you know, either way will be fine.  It would be cool to have someone write a few lines of Shakespeare-esqe text as an “excerpt” from the “lost play,” Aubrie create a storyboard, somebody else work on advertising, maybe have some psychologists talk about how this play is characteristic of other Shakespeare plays & shows his deep knowledge of human personalities/faults/preferences/etc. 

I would be happy to add a musical component to it, as well, and as far as I can tell, I have 3 ways of doing this:
1.      By incorporating some tunes I’ve already started. This would take probably more work/time on my part than I’ll be able to give, & anyway, I’m not really sure how to continue them—for those bits, it’s been more of a “when the muse strikes, write” situation.
2.      By adding to some mysterious/ambiguous/beautiful lines I’ve written in order to provide a background for the whole documentary/pitch/whatever, as long as the whole work isn’t too long, since there’s only so much time I can give. I would need to find performer(s) & recording technology for this, so if anyone can play an instrument or knows where to find & how to work such technology, I would be happy to hear from you.  (This option sounds like a lot of fun to me.)
3.      By finding music already written that would apply to scenes from the new play.  I could do this by listening to music that’s already finished & produced, choosing pieces that will go along well with parts of the play/documentary/film pitch.  For example, Chopin’s Prelude #3 might be a good background for a peaceful evening scene.  More fiery scenes might use music by Franz Liszt.  I could even look for Elizabethan-era music that Shakespeare himself would have used and listened to.

By the way, if people don’t feel like having music or if someone else wants to do it & we don't need another music specialist, I’d be fine with writing up some Shakespeare-esqe lines.

Well, there you have it, folks. TTFN!

FYI, here are links to a couple Chopin & Liszt songs as examples.  If you just want to listen to them for a nice classical background for studying, feel free. :)

Liszt:  Der Tanz in der Dorfschenke  (Fun fact:  this Mephisto Waltz was meant to protray the devil dancing around.  Enjoy!)

Monday, February 13, 2012

Out of the Mouth of General Authorities...


(This post is a response to Rachel Hall's Belated Sunday Post.  I thought was she had found about the references made to Shakespeare by the general authorities of our church, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, was interesting and decided to look into it a little bit myself.  I glanced through this talk by Marion G. Romney, and it just got me thinking a little bit.)
 

President Marion G. Romney (a late counselor in the First Presidency of the Church) quoted in his October 1974 General Conference address Shakespeare’s “to be or not to be” soliloquy from Hamlet, and went on to say that Shakespeare actually didn’t know everything. :)  He spoke of how the answer to Shakespeare’s question about what happens to people’s souls after they die was given centuries earlier to a prophet on the other side of the world.  It was funny reading Alma’s matter-of-fact words (which of course were really the words of the Lord) after reading Shakespeare’s eloquent speech:  it really illustrated the fact that the Lord speaks simply so that all people can understand.  There was something more substantial in what Alma said, too; for, despite being very well versed, Shakespeare’s question wasn't answered.  While there is definitely some fulfillment in reading beautiful words so expertly crafted, there's also much else to be gained by reading the words of real truth; for the answers “are in these simple words combined/ to urge, inspire the human mind” (“Come Follow Me,” #116 in the LDS hymnbook).

Taken from Marion G. Romney’s Oct. 1974 talk, “How Men Are Saved,” which can be read online at http://www.lds.org/general-conference/1974/10/how-men-are-saved?lang=eng&query=shakespeare.