Only really of interest to folk who are interested in Shakespeare...

[johnny9fingers]

I’ve been thinking a bit about Shakespeare and the creative process.
First I want to consider some models of composition. I will use examples that, of course, I shall twist to suit that which I’m attempting to describe: I hope you will both understand and forgive me.

 

In the first example, let’s call it the Beethoven Model, the composer/artist sits alone in his garret and from the sheer fecundity of his mighty genius, brings forth the great work of art. This, of course, in Beethoven’s case is compounded by the isolation his deafness bequeathed him: at the end he really was the artist creating it all through the incredible power of his imagination.

 

The Mozart Model is different. With Wolfgang we posit an extreme facility and extraordinary natural ability. Someone who could hear, steal, improve, reframe, remodel, and orchestrate as easily as you or I might wash our hands. Instead of the lèse majesté of the Manichean and heroic act of creation from nothing, Mozart is the perfect synthesist.

 

The David Bowie model is different yet. In this David gathers together his musicians, gives them the sketches he has of his ideas, gets them to ‘jam’ along, improvising over the idea: and then Bowie cherry-picks those bits he wants to appear on the final piece of music.

 

Then you have the U2 version. Whoever writes whatever part of the song; all the royalties (and therefore the kudos) are split equally. The collective wrote it.

 

The final model to consider here* is the ‘Willie Dixon’. Willie used to buy up the copyright of blues numbers from itinerant singers as cheaply as possible (often for a meal), register the song, and the go into Chess Studios (for whom he worked) to record it with Chess artists. Whatever, he still retained title to the work.

 

Now our Will was an actor manager. For many years folk have attributed his plays to others, because they felt it impossible that an uneducated (relatively speaking), middle-class person could have written works of such genius.

As is, I would imagine that various upper-class dilettante types probably added the odd embellishment here and there for their favourite actors, or folk in their entourage: and I would also imagine that Shakespeare, like Mozart, heard, improved, adapted and reframed almost anything he came across.

In fact, I’d bet he bought, stole, created, imagined, allowed improvements from others, and did whatever it took to make the play fill the house on a regular basis: that is of course the nature of theatre.

I’m sure you’ll be able to find bits in Shakespeare that echo Marlowe, resonate with Johnson, borrow from an insignificant de Vere: even copied into one of Bacon’s as yet undiscovered day-books.

 

If you listen to early Beethoven you’ll hear both Mozart, and more obviously Papa Haydn.
Whatever is needed....

 

 

 

* though there are many other models….

 

Comments

[ericcoleman]

* though there are many other models….

Like Led Zep, who took the Willie Dixon versions and claimed they wrote them

[johnny9fingers.livejournal.com]

Have you heard 'You Need Love'?
The only thing similar really is the top line which Percy stole: that song is about the riff and the verse drum-shuffle: it could have been Lakota or Latin sung across the top and it would have done what it did. And Willie probably paid some poor bum for it too. Gotta admire good business sense in the business. Reminds me of the story of Martin Carthy's arrangement of 'Scarborough Fair/Canticle'....good old Paul Simon, hey?

[johnny9fingers.livejournal.com]

Actually, I think it was a bit closer. The riff is similar.

[ericcoleman]

It's a little more than the top line, and it is a definite steal. I see no doubt that they owed Willie money for the lyrics he stole. The music is a whole different thing. I think Memphis Minnie had a bigger complaint ...

And yeah, Paul/Artie (who supposedly did the vocal arrangements) did a fair amount of that ... I'm trying to remember some others, but I'm blanking ... which is typical of me.

[johnny9fingers.livejournal.com]

The Memphis Minnie complaint is substantial, yes, but again, when I play them side by side....Minnie sounds like a much more conventional blues. Zeppelin do Levée as a sixteen bar cycle counted as two-four, I think: and this is aside from the slide riff-thing and the drum-thing.
But she should have gotten (and later on did get) a writing credit.
Having been 'ripped-off' once or twice by the business myself I've ceased to be quite so indignant: which is why I suppose I've opened the Shakespeare closet, and quite likely all sorts of other associated questions.

Copyright is an issue, as is attribution. I'm more interested in the latter than the former: but I've never been overly bothered with either. But the lack of appropriate models for describing how Shakespeare could have achieved his work was beginning to piss me off.
It's all one person stuff. Either Bacon, or Oxford, or.... what a stupid idea people have of what makes genius.
Part of this is to do with the myth of the artist in the Beethoven mould, which seems central to the idea of the artist in Western tradition.

[ericcoleman]

LZ transformed it certainly, but they still have no right to say they wrote it. Arr: Led Zep maybe, but not Page/Plant.

Eric Clapton made sure personally that Skip James got his money.

As for Billy, it's pure snobbishness. There are the folks who say that Marlowe wrote a lot of Shakespeare. I've read some of Marlowe's work and ya'know ... he was not capable of writing on the level of a Lear or a Hamlet.

Shakespeare was a genius. He wrote amazing work. Now if some snobbish literary types would just get over themselves.

[johnny9fingers.livejournal.com]

I agree with you....however I might not were Peter Grant insisting otherwise....(the horror, the horror).

[ericcoleman]

Whatever could you mean? Peter was always the soul of gentility.

[vlion.livejournal.com]

Good points.