大象传媒

On the 400 anniversary of his death, the 大象传媒 and Austrian broadcaster ORF, with the support of the European Broadcasting Union, have decided to commission a New Shakespeare Songbook, offering today’s composers and musicians across Europe, the chance to respond afresh to these timeless texts.

To celebrate the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death, France Televisions has offered two of France’s most recognized artists for an original creation based on Shakespearean poetry.

Oxmo Puccino is the leader of a French rap movement, and nicknamed the Jacques Brel of French rap. Yaron Herman is one of the brightest pianists of his generation, born in Tel-Aviv and based in Paris for 13 years.

Together, they have chosen Shakespeare's Sonnets 91 and 94, two romantic and enigmatic pieces. The result of this first encounter between Oxmo Puccino, Yaron Herman and Shakespeare was recorded at the Ferber studio in Paris, on 17 December 2015.

The two short films consist of sequences that were filmed during the recording session, of a visual game around the sonnets written in calligraphy (a projection of the poem on different media, and a projection of filmed sequences on an old edition of a Shakespeare poetry book), but also of sequences filmed in Paris and showing a few men and women, representative of the French population, “saying” the sonnets 91 and 94, as Oxmo Puccino would. These images are synchronized with Oxmo Puccino’s voice.

The two main ideas behind those two films are:

• to give one voice and a thousand faces to Shakespeare’s word, and
• to place his poetry in the 21st century

Some glory in their birth, some in their skill,
Some in their wealth, some in their body's force,
Some in their garments though new-fangled ill;
Some in their hawks and hounds, some in their horse;
And every humour hath his adjunct pleasure,
Wherein it finds a joy above the rest:
But these particulars are not my measure,
All these I better in one general best.
Thy love is better than high birth to me,
Richer than wealth, prouder than garments' cost,
Of more delight than hawks and horses be;
And having thee, of all men's pride I boast:
Wretched in this alone, that thou mayst take
All this away, and me most wretched make.

They that have power to hurt, and will do none,
That do not do the thing they most do show,
Who, moving others, are themselves as stone,
Unmoved, cold, and to temptation slow;
They rightly do inherit heaven's graces,
And husband nature's riches from expense;
They are the lords and owners of their faces,
Others, but stewards of their excellence.
The summer's flower is to the summer sweet,
Though to itself, it only live and die,
But if that flower with base infection meet,
The basest weed outbraves his dignity:
For sweetest things turn sourest by their deeds;
Lilies that fester, smell far worse than weeds.