大象传媒

The composer Michael Nyman has set the Bard's bawdy words in the latest of his 'list' songs to mark Shakespeare's 400th anniversary.

Listen to the World Premiere of the song below as a Shakespeare Lives exclusive ahead of its first public performance at London's Barbican in November.

We spoke to Michael Nyman to find out more about the inspiration for the Shakespeare Sex-List Song:

"The story behind the text of the Shakespeare Sex-List Song is simply that I became friendly with the writer and scholar and found out she had written the book ‘Filthy Shakespeare’ - she sent me a copy to read.

I looked through it and found it out that it was a compendium of every Shakespeare word that had a connotation with sex. I’m an inveterate writer of songs made of word lists, dating back to my 1979 Bird List song for ’s film The Falls. Since then I’ve written several more, for example a Nose list song based on Laurence Sterne’s novel .

It seemed appropriate in Shakespeare’s 400th anniversary year to make Pauline’s list the subject of my next song. The list in her book is possibly 200 words long in total, so I chose the entries I wanted and arranged them alphabetically, balanced between single words and longer phrases.

When I got as far as G, ‘Groping for trout in a peculiar river’, I remembered back to when I was 12 or 13 years old. I had a copy of ‘Shakespeare’s Bawdy’ by Eric Partridge which contained that phrase, which I didn’t understand at the time. So I’ve known that particular phrase for 60 years and lo and behold it popped out again in Pauline’s book! It was a great pleasure to reacquaint myself with it and make it part of a song text.

I’ve had a strange relationship with Shakespeare. When I was a child I was taken to the and I must have seen a lot of productions when I was in my teens, with starry actors. I obviously saw Olivier’s Henry V film when I was pretty young and for A-level I studied King Lear, which I loved, and The Tempest which I hated (this was back in 1961).

In 1990 when I was working with the director Peter Greenaway he said his next project was , based on The Tempest and I thought ‘no way’ after my experience with The Tempest for A-level. However I still ended up writing the score and a score for the ballet The Princess of Milan which is also based on The Tempest. Music from the ballet was later used in my work Noises, Sounds and Sweet Airs. So one way and another I have had a lot to do with The Tempest but not much with Shakespeare’s other plays.

Although the subjects of these previous works were not chosen by me, composing the Shakespeare Sex-List Song is a definite choice of mine to link to Shakespeare’s 400th anniversary year.

The song needed a visual counterpoint rather than a visual equivalent so I turned to the huge archive of film material that I’ve shot over the years and decided to superimpose relevant imagery. The most overtly sexual image and copulation metaphor is the footage of the train, which was shot in Tunisia.

The Art of Fugue in Plaza Luis Cabrera in Mexico City (sculpture by Barry Wolfryd)

The song needed a visual counterpoint rather than a visual equivalent

The other footage includes models being photographed by amateur photographers in a square in Mexico City near my home. This came about through pure chance. I’d been listening to 大象传媒 Radio 5 Live – a match between Manchester City and QPR. As a QPR fan I knew they’d only stay in the Premiere League if they either won this match or Wolves lost a match they were playing the same day. In the end QPR did lose but so did Wolves so I was in a good mood!

I walked out of my house with a camera and walked 3 blocks down to Plaza Luis Cabrera and found it had been taken over by an amateur camera club who were photographing amateur models as if it had been arranged for me as a celebration! It was just one of those things that happen in Mexico City and I think has resulted in one of my best films. So when I needed a visual counterpoint rather than an equivalent to the Sex List song that seemed an appropriate thing to use.

In one sequence you can see one of the models leaning against a sculpture of a can of soup in the fountain (referencing Warhol but with a Mexican twist). That sculpture is by the American sculptor Barry Wolfryd (who now lives in Mexico) and is called Art of Fugue after the famous piece by JS Bach.

The black and white photos in the film I found at flea markets in Mexico City. Back in the 1940s and 50s street photographers would photograph people at random and then try and sell them back their photograph. Thousands of these images have now ended up in the flea market and over the years I’ve bought around 400 of them. I thought it would be nice to do some close-ups of ‘crotch shots’ from the photos in the film to reflect the text!

All of the photos are anonymous except by some amazing chance I found one that features an old man and younger man walking in the street arm in arm and I’m sure they are the composer Stravinsky and the conductor and Stravinsky’s close collaborator Robert Craft. Stravinsky was in Mexico City in the 40s and it’s possible that Robert Craft went back and bought two copies of their photo as I have two with different writing on the back.

So Stravinsky lives in my house through these photos and the Art of Fugue through this film!"

(Transcribed from an interview with Michael Nyman)