
Contents
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
30 Shakespeare in Czechoslovakia: The Comedy of Errors, Hamlet, and Coriolanus on the Operatic Stage
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
Titus (1999) Titus (1999)
-
‘If we shadows have offended …’ ‘If we shadows have offended …’
-
Bibliography Bibliography
-
-
-
-
43 ‘Let your indulgence set me free’: Elliot Goldenthal’s Music for the Shakespeare Films of Julie Taymor
Get accessMervyn Cooke is Professor of Music at the University of Nottingham. He has published on Shakespeare and music in his edited collection The Cambridge Companion to Benjamin Britten (Cambridge University Press, 1999), which includes an investigation of the archival sources for Britten’s celebrated opera A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and in his A History of Film Music (Cambridge University Press, 2008), which examines a wide variety of scores for films based on Shakespeare’s plays. Among his other books are Jazz (World of Art) and The Chronicle of Jazz (Thames & Hudson, 1997 and 2013 [1998]), Britten and the Far East (Boydell Press, 1998), studies of Britten’s Billy Budd and War Requiem (Cambridge University Press, 1993 and 1996), The Cambridge Companion to Jazz (co-edited with David Horn, 2002), The Cambridge Companion to Twentieth-Century Opera (2005), The Hollywood Film Music Reader (Oxford University Press, 2010), The Cambridge Companion to Film Music (co-edited with Fiona Ford, 2016), and Pat Metheny: The ECM Years, 1975‒1984 (Oxford Studies in Recorded Jazz; Oxford University Press, 2017). He was also co-editor of volumes 3‒6 of Letters from a Life: The Selected Letters of Benjamin Britten (Faber and Faber/Boydell Press, 2004‒2012).
-
Published:14 February 2022
Cite
Abstract
Director Julie Taymor and her partner, composer Elliot Goldenthal, collaborated on two location-shot Shakespeare films: Titus (1999) and The Tempest (2010). The freshness of the collaborators’ cinematic approach to Shakespeare is in part a consequence of their having also worked extensively together in the theatre (including stage productions of these two plays, and a filmed theatrical performance of A Midsummer Night’s Dream released in 2015) and their refusal to eschew dramatic stylization on the silver screen in favour of a populist realism. The eclectic music for Titus ranges from choral incantations to distorted jazz idioms, dynamic minimalism, searingly expressive orchestral writing, mesmerizing electronics, and a black-comedy application of carnival music familiar from the collaborators’ stage work; almost all the music is foregrounded, yet little attempt is made to endow this powerful composite score with the specious unifying function traditionally demanded of film music. By contrast, the score to The Tempest is more subliminal in its effect, while still experimental in its exploration of soundscapes which shift from Caliban’s ‘thousand twangling instruments’ to sparse ideas expressed in novel guitar tunings and sonorities, evocative keyboard timbres, saxophone multiphonics, glass armonica, and steel cello. Above all, the film’s soundtrack is distinguished by its contemporary response to the play’s songs, which here include an additional lyric borrowed from Twelfth Night in order to enhance the romantic subplot, and the climactic isolation of the (female) Prospera’s epilogue in the end credits.
Sign in
Personal account
- Sign in with email/username & password
- Get email alerts
- Save searches
- Purchase content
- Activate your purchase/trial code
- Add your ORCID iD
Purchase
Our books are available by subscription or purchase to libraries and institutions.
Purchasing informationMonth: | Total Views: |
---|---|
October 2022 | 3 |
December 2022 | 8 |
January 2023 | 4 |
February 2023 | 4 |
March 2023 | 4 |
April 2023 | 1 |
May 2023 | 1 |
June 2023 | 5 |
July 2023 | 4 |
August 2023 | 8 |
September 2023 | 4 |
October 2023 | 2 |
November 2023 | 2 |
December 2023 | 2 |
January 2024 | 2 |
February 2024 | 3 |
March 2024 | 5 |
April 2024 | 1 |
May 2024 | 6 |
June 2024 | 7 |
July 2024 | 4 |
September 2024 | 1 |
October 2024 | 1 |
January 2025 | 2 |
February 2025 | 1 |
April 2025 | 1 |
Get help with access
Institutional access
Access to content on Oxford Academic is often provided through institutional subscriptions and purchases. If you are a member of an institution with an active account, you may be able to access content in one of the following ways:
IP based access
Typically, access is provided across an institutional network to a range of IP addresses. This authentication occurs automatically, and it is not possible to sign out of an IP authenticated account.
Sign in through your institution
Choose this option to get remote access when outside your institution. Shibboleth/Open Athens technology is used to provide single sign-on between your institution’s website and Oxford Academic.
If your institution is not listed or you cannot sign in to your institution’s website, please contact your librarian or administrator.
Sign in with a library card
Enter your library card number to sign in. If you cannot sign in, please contact your librarian.
Society Members
Society member access to a journal is achieved in one of the following ways:
Sign in through society site
Many societies offer single sign-on between the society website and Oxford Academic. If you see ‘Sign in through society site’ in the sign in pane within a journal:
If you do not have a society account or have forgotten your username or password, please contact your society.
Sign in using a personal account
Some societies use Oxford Academic personal accounts to provide access to their members. See below.
Personal account
A personal account can be used to get email alerts, save searches, purchase content, and activate subscriptions.
Some societies use Oxford Academic personal accounts to provide access to their members.
Viewing your signed in accounts
Click the account icon in the top right to:
Signed in but can't access content
Oxford Academic is home to a wide variety of products. The institutional subscription may not cover the content that you are trying to access. If you believe you should have access to that content, please contact your librarian.
Institutional account management
For librarians and administrators, your personal account also provides access to institutional account management. Here you will find options to view and activate subscriptions, manage institutional settings and access options, access usage statistics, and more.