On 30 April and 1 May 2011 Four Sonnets 2011 will be premiered in the glorious and historic setting of Holy Trinity Church, Stratford-upon-Avon – better known as the church where Shakespeare was baptised and buried – as part of the Shakespeare Birthday Celebrations. The finished work will also be featured on Orchestra of the Swan’s website and Facebook page.
We need your help to make this performance happen! Just choose any, or all of the sonnets listed below, make a recording of you reading them and email it back to us at digital@orchestraoftheswan.org or on our Facebook page here> by 1 April 2011*.
Composer Pete Wyer will then work them into his composition and members of Orchestra of the Swan will improvise over the recordings.
This is your chance to be part of a unique, international project to honour the genius of Shakespeare in his home town and church! Building on the success of last year’s project we’re working with schools and Shakespeare related organisations around the world to get as many recorded readings as possible.
If you have any questions please contact the orchestra office on 01789 267567 or email selina@orchestraoftheswan.org
To find out more about last year’s Four Sonnets project click here.
*By providing Orchestra of the Swan with your recordings, full ownership will be obtained by Orchestra of the Swan and you consent to the use of this material on live and recorded performances, on the internet or in any other purpose that the orchestra see’s fit.
Sonnet 71
No longer mourn for me when I am dead
Than you shall hear the surly sullen bell
Give warning to the world that I am fled
From this vile world with vilest worms to dwell:
Nay, if you read this line, remember not
The hand that writ it, for I love you so,
That I in your sweet thoughts would be forgot,
If thinking on me then should make you woe.
O! if, I say, you look upon this verse,
When I perhaps compounded am with clay,
Do not so much as my poor name rehearse;
But let your love even with my life decay;
Lest the wise world should look into your moan,
And mock you with me after I am gone.
Sonnet 130
My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun;
Coral is far more red, than her lips red:
If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;
If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.
I have seen roses damasked, red and white,
But no such roses see I in her cheeks;
And in some perfumes is there more delight
Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.
I love to hear her speak, yet well I know
That music hath a far more pleasing sound:
I grant I never saw a goddess go,
My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground:
And yet by heaven, I think my love as rare,
As any she belied with false compare.
Sonnet 29
When, in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes,
I all alone beweep my outcast state
And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries
And look upon myself and curse my fate,
Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,
Featured like him, like him with friends possess’d,
Desiring this man’s art and that man’s scope,
With what I most enjoy contented least;
Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising,
Haply I think on thee, and then my state,
Like to the lark at break of day arising
From sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven’s gate;
For thy sweet love remember’d such wealth brings
That then I scorn to change my state with kings.
Sonnet 49
Against that time, if ever that time come,
When I shall see thee frown on my defects,
When as thy love hath cast his utmost sum,
Called to that audit by advis’d respects;
Against that time when thou shalt strangely pass,
And scarcely greet me with that sun, thine eye,
When love, converted from the thing it was,
Shall reasons find of settled gravity;
Against that time do I ensconce me here,
Within the knowledge of mine own desert,
And this my hand, against my self uprear,
To guard the lawful reasons on thy part:
To leave poor me thou hast the strength of laws,
Since why to love I can allege no cause.
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