What's in a name? (Anselm Kersten)

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  • (Posted 2023-08-06)  CPDL #74767:         
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.
  • (Posted 2021-04-04)  CPDL #63901:           
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: SecularPartsong

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.png 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.