Sonnet 147

Shakespeare's sonnets are some of the greatest love poems penned by humanity. The full series of 154 poems touch on a wide variety of subjects and are addressed to different people throughout. This poem, Sonnet 147, is speaking to The Dark Lady, which is the subject of sonnets 127-152. The Dark Lady is the speaker's fixation, his unrequired love. She is evil and cruel, but despite this he is still in love with her. In Sonnet 147, the speaker compares his love to an illness that he cannot cure, because his "physician" left him. As a result, he completely loses his sanity and starts thinking "as madmen's are". At the end, he concludes that she is truly evil, after he thought she was beautiful. The poem is heartbreaking, and the way Shakespeare conveys the speaker's dive into insanity is so detailed, as if he himself was the speaker at one point. Indeed, I'm sure we all have experiences with unrequited love that do not end well. Upon discovering this poem in 2022, I immediately related to the speaker. I knew that I needed to set this beautiful sonnet to music, and so I began. I originally wanted to submit this work into a competition geared specifically geared towards setting Shakespeare poetry to music, however the piece grew to be much more than what the competition was asking for. As I was setting the music, I came upon four different melodic phrases, which are presented in the unison choir at the start. The rest of the piece is a development of these four ideas. Sometimes the piece takes us to heavenly ethereal textures, and sometimes it completely nose-dives into chaos, following the text. I find this work to be one of my more heartbreaking and expressive pieces, that will require a lot of emotional maturity to present an effective, high-quality performance. - Program note by composer