Recent Researches in the Music of the Baroque Era

Within a few years of the Resoration of the Stuart monarchy in 1660, impresario and playwright William Davenant revised William Shakespeare's Macbeth to suit the tastes of his music-hungry audience, adding lavish singing and dancing scenes for the witches. This critical edition brings together the few remaining pieces from a setting of Macbeth dating from the mid-1660s, possibly by Matthew Locke, as well as a late-seventeenth-century setting by John Eccles, and an early-eighteenth-century one by Richard Leveridge. The last proved immensely popular and audiences into the nineteenth century were enchanted by the dramatically effective music for the singing and dancing witches. This volume will appeal to modern theater companies hoping to recapture the witches' magic, as well as to historians of English music and drama.

Music Sample

Contents
Tunes for Macbeth Attributed to Matthew Locke

1a.  Let’s Have a Dance
1b.  The Witches Dance

2a. Act [2] Symphony
2b.  Speak, Sister, Speak
2c.  Let’s Have a Dance
2d.  Hecate! Oh, Come Away
2e. Act 4 Symphony
2f.  Black Spirits and White

3a. [Act 2] Symphony
3b.  Speak, Sister, Speak
3c.  Let’s Have a Dance
3d. Act [2] Tune
3e. Symphony at the Descending of the Machine in the Third Act
3f.  Hecate! Come Away
3g. [Act 4] Symphony
3h.  Black Spirits and White