By Eithne Cullen
Our theme If music be the food of love… draws on a very well-known quotation from a Shakespeare play. It’s the famous opening line from Shakespeare’s comedy Twelfth Night and, like many Shakespeare quotations which have come into our everyday language, not everyone knows the meaning of the lines.
The play opens with the Duke, Orsino, lovesick, but his love is unrequited. The object of his affections is Countess Olivia. However, Olivia is in mourning and will not receive any advances from suitors. So he calls for more music, hoping that an excess of music might cure his broken heart; in the same way that eating too much food might dampen someone’s appetite.
Music plays an important part in Shakespeare’s plays and is often used to add to the plot. Maybe he did believe music was ‘the food of love.’ Here’s the whole speech. It has a lot of references to music in it, like the dying fall and pitch which lead to the fantastical.
DUKE ORSINO:
If music be the food of love, play on;
Give me excess of it, that, surfeiting,
The appetite may sicken, and so die.
That strain again! it had a dying fall:
O, it came o’er my ear like the sweet sound,
That breathes upon a bank of violets,
Stealing and giving odour! Enough; no more:
‘Tis not so sweet now as it was before.
O spirit of love! how quick and fresh art thou,
That, notwithstanding thy capacity
Receiveth as the sea, nought enters there,
Of what validity and pitch soe’er,
But falls into abatement and low price,
Even in a minute: so full of shapes is fancy
That it alone is high fantastical.
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There is so much to say about music and its contribution to our lives. It plays such a strong part in our culture and adds richness to all kinds of experiences, whether it’s music to calm, enlighten or excite. Some of the pieces below are from people who have a close relationship with music. Many have felt the absence of music in their lives during lockdown, while others have used lockdown to be even more creative than they usually are.
First, I’d like to look at the way music can cheer and lift our moods. This morning, I opened my Facebook page, to find someone had shared this. I’m passing it on – it made me smile and lifted my heart. It’s the Russian Red Army Choir performing Tom Jones’ Sex Bomb!
We are a large group of around 15 people (and a dog), who mostly knew each other from our old bands from the local rock scenes up to 20 years ago, right up to some of our present-day cover bands. We are based mainly around Romford, as well as Dagenham, with other friends north of London and even in Guernsey. Most of us used to arrange jam sessions going back 20 years and had started these again a few years ago, so this was our way of adapting to these strange times.
