Four Sonnets was a pilot project for Stratford Fringe Festival, generously supported by Stratford Town Trust and Arts Council England with in kind support from Honest injun films.
The project was developed for OOTS Digital, a new initiative exploring ways in which new media, facebook, websites and other social networks can not only help market and promote the orchestra’s work, but can also offer the public an opportunity to take part in creating new and innovative work, democratising the artistic process.
Four sonnets were chosen and members of the public were invited to submit readings via iphone, computer, digital recordings etc. Instructions and advice were posted on OOTS Facebook and website. Pete Wyer, commissioned by OOTS to facilitate the composition created a ‘time-structured’ improvised score which was recorded by OOTS over which the readings were layered.
The final work included readings sent in from as far afield as Los Angeles and the complete work is now available to hear on OOTS Facebook and website, links have been posted to 100 Shakespeare related organisations world-wide.
Shakespeare’s sonnets are probably the best known love poems in the English language and this work presents them as love letters.
Sonnet 98 – Spring
When proud-pied April dress’d in all his trim
Hath put a spirit of youth in everything,
That heavy Saturn laugh’d and leap’d with him.
Yet nor the lays of birds nor the sweet smell
Of different flowers in odour and in hue
Could make me any summer’s story tell,
Or from their proud lap pluck them where they grew;
Nor did I wonder at the lily’s white,
Nor praise the deep vermilion in the rose;
They were but sweet, but figures of delight,
Drawn after you, you pattern of all those.
Yet seem’d it winter still, and, you away,
As with your shadow I with these did play.
Sonnet 73 – Autumn
That time of year thou mayst in me behold
When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang
Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,
Bare ruined choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.
In me thou see’st the twilight of such day
As after sunset fadeth in the west;
Which by and by black night doth take away,
Death’s second self, that seals up all in rest.
In me thou see’st the glowing of such fire,
That on the ashes of his youth doth lie,
As the death-bed, whereon it must expire,
Consumed with that which it was nourish’d by.
This thou perceiv’st, which makes thy love more strong,
To love that well, which thou must leave ere long.
Sonnet 18 – Summer
Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer’s lease hath all too short a date:
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimm’d;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance or nature’s changing course untrimm’d;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade
Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest;
Nor shall Death brag thou wander’st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou growest:
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this and this gives life to thee.
Sonnet 97 – Winter
How like a winter hath my absence been
From thee, the pleasure of the fleeting year!
What freezings have I felt, what dark days seen!
What old December’s bareness everywhere!
And yet this time removed was summer’s time,
The teeming autumn, big with rich increase,
Bearing the wanton burden of the prime,
Like widow’d wombs after their lords’ decease.
Yet this abundant issue seemed to me
But hope of orphans and unfathered fruit,
For summer and his pleasures wait on thee,
And, thou away, the very birds are mute,
Or, if they sing, ’tis with so dull a cheer
That leaves look pale, dreading the winter’s near.
Pete Wyer writes:
In Sonnet LXXIII,‘That season thou mayst in me behold’ we hear a male voice accompanied by a crackling fire, a funeral bell and a gentle musical theme, the same sonnet ends with a female voice: are they husband and wife, lovers? Or neighbours who unknowingly share the same emotion? This may make drama teachers faint or theatre directors rage; but here are ordinary people recording their responses and interpretations on iPhones, hard-disks and the like.
This is less about Shakespeare than how we appropriate his words and invest them with our feelings, each reading is validated by virtue of someone taking the trouble to record and send it. I cherish the different ways individuals read these sonnets: poetry allows us to share our feelings, our ‘inwardness’, in this way. We chose these sonnets around the theme of the four seasons to make a cyclical journey to encompass a wide range of emotions and imagery. The musicians participate in this dialogue with themes passed back and forth, as a conversation, the phrases reflecting Shakespeare’s themes and tones.
The music is performed in an unusual way, from atime structured map, which abandons counting and where each ‘bar’ is 30 seconds long – musicians have stopwatches and play from improvisational guidelines with subtle and textural results, a different way to make music and like any new language or dialect, it can take a little while to get used to, for musicians and audiences alike.
Lastly, I have added field recordings, making a contribution to the atmosphere I seek to evoke. The piece ends more or less where it begins – a phone is ringing, a message is waiting to be delivered or received……
Pete M Wyer June 2010
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