William Shakespeare (tenor)
William Shakespeare (16 June 1849 – 1 November 1931) was an English tenor, pedagogue, and composer.
William Shakespeare was born in Croydon England on 16 June 1849. He studied in London, at the Royal Academy of Music with William Sterndale Bennett. Winning the Mendelssohn Scholarship in 1871, he travelled 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. In 1878, he was appointed as a professor of singing at the Royal Academy of Music. He died in London in 1931.
In addition to singing and composition, William Shakespeare wrote and published several books. These include The Art of Singing, a three-part series published from 1898 to 1899, Singing for Schools and Colleges, published in 1907, Plain Words on Singing in 1924, and The Speaker's Art in 1931. William Shakespeare's style of vocal pedagogy mirrored closely that of his Italian mentor Lamperti, as evidenced from his direct reference to la lotte vocal, a concept taken directly from the nineteenth-century Italianate school of vocal development.
Further reading
- Slominsky, N, Kuhn, L. (2001). Shakespeare, William. In Baker's Biographical Dictionary of Musicians, p 8292. New York: Schirmer Books.
- Sell, K. (2005) The Disciples of vocal Pedagogy: Towards an Holistic Approach, pp 33, 113-114. Williston, VT: Ashgate Publishing Co.
- Stark, J. A. (1999) Bel Canto: A History of Vocal Pedagogy, p 43-44. Toronto: University of
External links
- World-cat link to Plain Words on Singing
- World-cat link to The Speaker's Art
- The Art of Singing, in full text
- Free scores by William Shakespeare at the International Music Score Library Project
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