What's in a name? (Anselm Kersten)
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- Editor: Anselm Kersten (submitted 2023-08-06). Score information: A4, 9 pages, 226 kB Copyright: CPDL
- Edition notes: Practically every bar of the first edition has been changed; one entire section has been deleted, and the revisions are extensive enough to call this a new composition using the same material as the original.
- Editor: Anselm Kersten (submitted 2021-04-04). Score information: A4, 12 pages, 213 kB Copyright: CC BY SA
- Edition notes: Updated files uploaded on 2021-08-30.
General Information
Title: What's in a name?
Composer: Anselm Kersten
Lyricist: William Shakespeare
Number of voices: 4vv Voicing: SATB
Genre: Secular, Partsong
Language: English
Instruments: A cappella
First published: 2021
Description: "Vocal acting", in the manner of an opera chorus in concert, is the performance mode I envisage for this setting of Juliet's largely internal and heavily redacted monologue. I make no apologies for the pastiche nature of the piece, any more than I claim to be a proper composer. It's unashamedly Wagnerian, to the extent that it opens with the opening of Act 2 of Tristan und Isolde, leading into the Tristan chord, which is itself repeated at two other structural points in the piece, while the key scheme as a whole is organised around the twin poles adumbrated in the first two chords of the Tarnhelm motif from the Ring: two minor chords a major third apart, with the consequent ambiguity between the leading note of the first chord (G# in this case) and the minor third of the second (A flat).
External websites:
Original text and translations
English text
What's in a name?
O Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo?
'Tis but thy name that is mine enemy.
What's Montague? It is nor hand, nor foot, nor arm, nor face
Nor any other part belonging to a man.
O Romeo, Romeo.
What's in a name?
That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.
O Romeo, Romeo!
Deny thy father and refuse thy name,
And for that name that is no part of thee,
Take all myself.