9 minutes
Soprano and piano
Three Sonnets by William Shakespeare
Song cycle for soprano and piano
This song cycle sets three of Shakespeare’s most evocative sonnets, each exploring different facets of love—desire, memory, and constancy.
Sonnet 128 is a playful and sensual meditation on longing and jealousy, as the poet envies the keys of a virginal that are kissed by the beloved’s fingers. The music captures both the wit and erotic tension of the text.
Sonnet 43 shifts into the dreamlike realm of night, where the poet’s truest visions of love appear. The setting evokes the contrast between the obscurity of day and the vivid clarity of dreams.
Sonnet 116, one of Shakespeare’s most famous, is a bold affirmation of love’s enduring power. The music here rises to meet the sonnet’s timeless declarations, ending the cycle with emotional depth and unwavering conviction.
Together, these settings illuminate Shakespeare’s poetic insight into the complexities and triumphs of love.
Sonnet 128
How oft, when thou, my music, music play’st
Upon that blessèd wood whose motion sounds
With thy sweet fingers when thou gently sway’st
The wiry concord that mine ear confounds,
Do I envy those jacks that nimble leap
To kiss the tender inward of thy hand,
Whilst my poor lips, which should that harvest reap,
At the wood’s boldness by thee blushing stand.
To be so tickled they would change their state
And situation with those dancing chips,
O’er whom thy fingers walk with gentle gait,
Making dead wood more blest than living lips.
Since saucy jacks so happy are in this,
Give them thy fingers, me thy lips to kiss.
Sonnet 43
When most I wink, then do mine eyes best see,
For all the day they view things unrespected;
But when I sleep, in dreams they look on thee,
And darkly bright are bright in dark directed.
Then thou, whose shadow shadows doth make bright,
How would thy shadow’s form form happy show
To the clear day with thy much clearer light,
When to unseeing eyes thy fair imperfect shade shines so!
How would, I say, mine eyes be blessed madeBy looking on thee in the living day,
When in dead night thy fair imperfect shade
Through heavy sleep on sightless eyes doth stay!
All days are nights to see till I see thee,
And nights bright days when dreams do show thee me.
Sonnet 116
Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments; love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove.
O no, it is an ever-fixèd mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wand'ring bark
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love's not time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come.
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom:
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.
