Mignarda

Mignarda – Shakespeare’s Lutebook (2024)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 56:40 minutes | 1,01 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Prima Classic

The music on this album is the result of decades of research and many lecture-recitals performed across the US, with publication of a book of scores bearing the same title. We do not pretend to know whether Shakespeare the playwright played the lute — or whether the historical figure of Shakespeare the playwright existed at all. But we know that the plays were a collaborative effort written and produced in concert with several of the best literary and musical figures of the Elizabethan/Jacobean age, and indication for music in Shakespeare plays was as ubiquitous as any other stage direction. Much of the music appearing in the plays is of a lighter character, suitable for capering and jollification in an outdoor theater. But the historical music Mignarda chooses is typically of a more complex nature, and was likely performed in an indoor theater where subtlety and nuance, an essential characteristic of music for voice and lute, might actually be heard. Our approach is to convey the texts with understanding, choosing historical musical settings when they survive, but employing informed choices of historical style and convention when the original setting is lost to history.

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