Music for Macbeth

Within a few years of the Restoration 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.

Tunes for Macbeth Attributed to Matthew Locke

1a.  Let’s Have a Dance

1b.  The Witches Dance

 

John Eccles, Music for Macbeth

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

 

Richard Leveridge, Music for Macbeth

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

Mark Humphreys, Early Music, August 2005.