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April 2

Music and The Tempest

Inspired by the conversation at Talk:The_Tempest#Ref_13, does anyone have any suggestions for reliable sources about music inspired by Shakespeare's The Tempest? Ideally I'd like a book-length discussion of the topic broadly, and being a bit old-school I'd prefer something I can buy from eBay and read rather than accessing online. But I'll take any thoughts anyone has got. AndyJones (talk) 12:29, 2 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Bloom, Harold, ed. (2008). The tempest. New York, NY: Bloom's Literary Criticism. ISBN 9780791095775. -- Examines the play’s cultural and artistic legacy, including musical adaptations
Long, John H. (1977). Shakespeare's use of music: a study of the music and its performance in the original production of 7 comedies (Unabr. repub., with a few minor corr. by the author, of the first publ. 1955 ed.). New York: Da Capo Press. ISBN 0306774232. -- Analyzes music in The Tempest (and 6 other plays)
Noble, Richmond. Shakespeare’s Use of Songs (1923, Oxford University Press) – with the text of the principal songs, including Ariel's Song
Muller, Julia. "Music as Meaning in The Tempest" (PDF) – Explores musical adaptations from the 17th century onward, including Samuel Pepys’ account

Pepys attended the opening night of the Dryden-Davenant rewriting of Shakespeare’s ‘The Tempest’ – in fact, he went to see it at least seven times.^[1]