Shakespeare and Music: Between Time and Timelessness (ESRA 2025)

deadline for submissions: 
December 2, 2024
full name / name of organization: 
Michelle Assay/University of Toronto

Seminar 3 of European Shakespeare Research Asociation Conference in Porto, 9-12 July, 2025

Shakespeare and Music: Between Time and Timelessness

Supported by the RMA Shakespeare and Music Study Group

Convenors:

Michelle Assay, University of Toronto, Canada (michelle.assay@utoronto.ca)

Alina Bottez, University of Bucharest, Romania (alina.bottez@lls.unibuc.ro)

David Fanning, University of Manchester, UK (david.fanning@manchester.ac.uk)

By its very nature, perhaps more than all other artforms, music is interwoven with time and temporality – psychologically, practically and philosophically. A concept that can be expanded or reconfigured, time may refer to the ages in which musical works are composed, to the length of each opus, as well as to tempo – the pulse and character of this art.

Music exists in time, yet it also affects our perception of time. It represents its age and context, yet also aspires to timelessness. In musical responses to Shakespeare’s works, the interaction between composers, performers, Shakespeare and the audience encapsulates the essence of their time and context – the “soul of the age,” as Ben Jonson put it. Yet it is also the universality and timelessness of Shakespeare that lies at the heart of what is now called ‘Shakespearean’ music: “…not of an age but for all time!” (Jonson); and perhaps also ‘transcending time,’ as is the case in so many references to music in Shakespeare’s works and in music that responds to Shakespeare.

Such responses travel across genres and media and create a sonic expression of Shakespeare’s works in incidental music, film music, opera, ballet, musical theatre, and many other forms through remediation (Bolter and Grusin’s term) or transmediation (Charles Suhor’s term). Adaptation Studies is by definition the field that researches the process of change from the original to the ensuing works as fashioned by the time and space that engender them.

In this seminar, we invite proposals that explore, probe, and reflect on the multifaceted relationalities between music, time, and Shakespeare. We shall address the research directions tackled by the Shakespeare and Music Study Group – music in Shakespeare and Shakespeare in music – encouraging contributions from a variety of perspectives, including literary, musical, philosophical, and psychological.

Paper themes include, but are not limited to: 

– The history of Shakespearean music and history in Shakespeare-inspired musical works

– Shakespeare-inspired musical adaptations across the ages: incidental music, film music, opera, operetta, musical theatre, ballet, etc.

– Canon-formation and Shakespearean music

– The reception of Shakespeare-inspired music in different times and historical contexts

– Shakespeare and music and non-linear time

–  Fashions in the music of Shakespeare stagings

– Tempo, rhythm, metre, and agogics as means of building character and atmosphere in Shakespeare-inspired music

– The ephemerality of performance in Shakespeare-inspired music

– Nostalgia, retrospection, and future projections expressed by music in Shakespeare-inspired works

Please send an abstract of 200-300 words accompanied with a short biographical note (150 words) to all conveners, by 2 December at the latest.