You’ve got less than six weeks to make music-theatrical history. Seriously: the Royal Shakespeare Company have just launched their Shakespeare’s Birthday Song Competition. Open to any amateur or professional composer over 18, the competition will choose a handful of finalists whose new songs will be exposed to a public poll. The winning work will then be performed at the RSC’s Shakespeare’s Birthday Bash on 26 April. Quite honestly, despite the apparently miniature scale of the piece that you will compose - it has to be for solo voice and accompaniment, and last no more than four minutes - this is one of the most demanding tests of compositional acumen and ambition you can imagine.
Just look at the texts the RSC have chosen from the plenitude of the music-catalysing cornucopia that is Shakespeare’s dramatic and poetic corpus (here it is) and you’ll discover some of the most belov’d texts for music ever written in English. Take one of the most famous of all the song lyrics from the plays, “It was a Lover and his Lass”, from As You Like It.
Listen to these settings by Finzi, Quilter, and Vaughan Williams in quick succession in these fabulous performances - and then weep at the precedents from early 20th century history that your efforts will have to live up to.
Want to have a go at “Sigh no more, Ladies” from Much Ado about Nothing? Good luck: you’ll have to do it with this indelible ear-worm from Patrick Doyle in your head, from Kenneth Branagh’s film. And that’s before we get to the truly terrifying prospect of competing retrospectively with Henry Purcell in The Tempest, let alone Thomas Adès, and the rest.
But thankfully, all these compositions (and most of their composers) from times past and present are rendered ineligible for competition, so it will only be you against your unknown contemporaries. But even so: to enter the competition is to try and find a music for some of the richest lyrics in the language, and to add your contribution to the weight of music-historical poesy that goes before you. If you’re a real composer, you’ll feel inspired rather than intimidated by the prospect - and you’re made of stronger stuff than me. Good luck!
