Work
From Melodious Lay (A Hamlet Diffraction) : solo voice(s) with orchestra
by Brett Dean and Matthew Jocelyn (2016)
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It is listed in our catalogue because an event featuring a performance of this work was included in our calendar of Australian music. Details of this performance are listed below.
Work Overview
Delving into the material that makes up Shakespeare's
Hamlet(s) offers a never-ending array of discoveries and
possibilities, both as narrative and as the basis for new musical
vocabulary.
Our starting point, in writing and composing an opera based on
Hamlet (a project commissioned by the Glyndebourne
Festival to be premiered in June 2017), using only words written
by or ascribed to Shakespeare, was the impossibility, even after
generations of forensic work on early editions, of establishing
where Shakespeare's hand was or was not to be found in the first
Quarto, the second Quarto, the first Folio editions of this play,
all published in or shortly after his lifetime. "So let's use it
all", said we, and that's what we authorized ourselves to do.
Three other works have grown from this experiment: And once I
played Ophelia, a piece for soprano and string quartet,
Gertrude Fragments, a short suite of miniatures for
mezzo soprano and guitar, and now our Hamlet 'diffraction' -
From Melodious Lay, an orchestral poem with soprano and
tenor voices.
From Melodious Lay is an exploration of the relationship
between Hamlet and Ophelia, diffracted through a liberal
redistribution of texts both spoken by these characters, or
spoken about them by other characters.
And what if Gertrude's famous lament "I thought thy bride-bed to
have decked and not have strew'd thy grave" was uttered by
Hamlet, who surely once also thought to share that particular bed
with his beloved?
And what if the mysterious and faith-ridden line "But for this,
the joyful hope of this…" - taken from the First Quarto version
of a rather well-known Hamlet soliloquy - helped us understand
Ophelia's resilience, her disarming capacity to move forwards in
a world of relentless obstacles?
From Melodious Lay is not an attempt at explanation or
analysis, but rather a poetic and musical exploration of
colliding worlds, those of Hamlet and Ophelia, those of
Shakespeare and our own, those of the written word and its
musical reflection. It is indeed a diffraction of these worlds,
and we do hope a melodious one.
Brett Dean, Matthew Jocelyn, October 2016
Work Details
Year: 2016
Instrumentation: soprano, tenor and orchestra
Duration: 23 min.
Difficulty: Advanced
First performance: by BBC Symphony Orchestra, Allison Bell, Allan Clayton, Joshua Weilerstein at BBC Symphony Orchestra (Barbican Hall (London)) on 1 Nov 2016
Text by Matthew Jocelyn after William Shakespeare.
Performances of this work
9 Nov 2018: at Celebrating Brett Dean (Melbourne Recital Centre, Elisabeth Murdoch Hall). Featuring Topi Lehtipuu, Lorina Gore, Brett Dean, ANAM Orchestra of the Academy.
14 Jan 2017: at National Symphony Orchestra, Taiwan (National Taichung Theater, Taiwan). Featuring National Symphony Orchestra, Taiwan, Shao-Chia Lü.
1 Nov 2016: at BBC Symphony Orchestra (Barbican Hall (London)). Featuring Joshua Weilerstein, Allan Clayton, Allison Bell, BBC Symphony Orchestra.
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