The Trumpets of Summer (1964)
For the quatercentenary of the birth of William Shakespeare, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) commission Beckwith to write a piece to represent this event. Instead of doing the obvious and using text from Shakespeare's works as a libretto, he composed this work with the intention of conveying the experiences one may have with Shakespeare in Canada and his effect on Canadian culture. Some of these aspects include “rather seedy touring company performances”, “a Stratford opening night,” and exploring the use of Shakespeare more recently in television and even comic books.
He collaborated on the text with a young Margaret Atwood, who was only a doctoral student at the time. The prologue proceeds to ask the audience why they came ("Was it to see / An unreal man, saying / words / words words words / that we can't understand / Or was it to see / A real man dying / slowly behind this mask of speech?"), followed by trumpets meant to imitate the traditional call to the audience indicating the start of a play.
Read more about this topic: John Beckwith (composer), Selected Works
Famous quotes containing the words trumpets and/or summer:
“Patriotism is proud of a country’s virtues and eager to correct its deficiencies; it also acknowledges the legitimate patriotism of other countries, with their own specific virtues. The pride of nationalism, however, trumpets its country’s virtues and denies its deficiencies, while it is contemptuous toward the virtues of other countries. It wants to be, and proclaims itself to be, “the greatest,” but greatness is not required of a country; only goodness is.”
—Sydney J. Harris (1917–1986)
“The lover never sees personal resemblances in his mistress to her kindred or to others. His friends find in her a likeness to her mother, or her sisters, or to persons not of her blood. The lover sees no resemblance except to summer evenings and diamond mornings, to rainbows and the song of birds.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)