William Shakespeare

Life

Shakespeare was born in Croydon, England, on 16 June 1849. In 1866 he won a King's Scholarship to study at the Royal Academy of Music, London, with William Sterndale Bennett. Awarded the Mendelssohn Scholarship in 1871, he traveled to Leipzig to study with composer, pianist, conductor, and pedagogue Carl Reinecke, but soon left Leipzig for Milan to study under the guidance of the singing teacher Francesco Lamperti. He appeared in England once again as a tenor in 1875, where he sang at the Monday Popular Concerts at the Crystal Palace and the 1877 Leeds Festival. He was appointed as a Professor of Singing at the Royal Academy of Music in 1878 and Conductor of the Concerts in 1880, resigning the latter post in 1886. From 1902 to 1905 Shakespeare was the conductor of the Strolling Players' Amateur Orchestral Society (which had been founded in 1882). He died in London in 1931.

Shakespeare composed few works, but his Piano Concerto was heard at the 1879 Brighton Festival, where The Musical Times outlined his singing career and judged that

In addition to singing, teaching, and composing, Shakespeare wrote and published several books. These included The Art of Singing, a three-part series issued between 1898 and 1899; Singing for Schools and Colleges, published in 1907; Plain Words on Singing in 1924; and The Speaker's Art in 1931. Shakespeare's approach to vocal pedagogy closely followed that of his Italian mentor Lamperti, as reflected in his direct reference to la lotte vocale, a concept drawn from the nineteenth-century Italianate school of vocal training.

One of his pupils was tenor William Lavin.

Works

Orchestral

1871 – Symphony in C minor (Gewandhaus, Leipzig) 1872 – Overture in D (Crystal Palace, London, 25 January 1873) 1874 – Hamlet, dramatic overture (Crystal Palace, London)

Solo instrumentalist and orchestra

1879 – Piano Concerto in C (Brighton Festival, 12 February 1879)