The Oxford Handbook of Shakespeare and Music

The Oxford Handbook of Shakespeare and Music showcases the latest international research into the captivating and vast subject of the many uses of music in relation to Shakespeare’s plays and poems, extending from the Bard’s own time to the present day. The coverage is truly global in its scope, with ground-breaking studies of Shakespeare-related music in countries as diverse as China, the Czech Republic, France, Germany, India, Italy, Japan, Russia, South Africa, Sweden, and the Soviet Union, as well as the Anglophone musical and theatrical traditions of the UK and USA. The range of genres surveyed is equally extensive, embracing music for theatre, opera, ballet, musicals, the concert hall, and film, in addition to Shakespeare’s ongoing afterlives in folk music, jazz, and popular music. The authors take a range of diverse approaches in tackling their remits: some chapters investigate the evidence for performative practices in the Early Modern and later eras, while others offer detailed accounts of representative case studies, situating these firmly in their cultural contexts, or reflecting on the fascinating political and sociological ramifications of the music. As a whole, the Handbook provides a unique and impressively wide-ranging compendium of cutting-edge scholarship engaging with an extraordinarily rich body of music.

Christopher R. Wilson is Professor Emeritus of Music at the University of Hull. He was the UK Research Associate for the Shakespeare Music Catalogue and wrote the Shakespeare entries for Grove Opera and Grove Music. His dictionary (with Michela Calore) Music in Shakespeare, first published in 2005,
has been reissued in its third impression as one of the Arden Shakespeare Dictionaries (2014). His book Shakespeare’s Musical Imagery (2011) investigates categories and thematics in musical metaphor and contextual reference throughout the plays and poems. His database of music in Shakespeare is
available at www.shakespearemusic.bham.ac.uk under the auspices of the Shakespeare Institute.

Mervyn Cooke is Professor of Music at the University of Nottingham. For six years, he was Research Fellow and Director of Studies in Music at Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge. His books include Britten and the Far East (1998), four co-edited volumes of Britten’s correspondence (2004?12), handbooks on
the same composer’s Billy Budd and War Requiem (1993 and 1996), and two illustrated histories of jazz (1998 and 2013). He has edited and co-edited four titles in the Cambridge Companions series, devoted to Britten, twentieth-century opera, jazz, and film music. He is the author of A History of Film
Music (2008) and editor of The Hollywood Film Music Reader (2010), and his most recent monograph is Pat Metheny: The ECM Years, 1975-1984 (2017). He is also Series Editor for the online publishing platform Cambridge Elements in Music Since 1945.