Download Loreena McKennitt, Merchant of Song

Acclaimed Canadian Celtic bard Loreena McKennitt discusses the m
2001 Stratford Festival production of The Merchant o f Venice .
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McKennitt (first woman from right) moved to Stratford in 1981 to perform in the chorus of HMS Pinafore, directed by Leon Major. "I was one of the sisters and
aunts ."
ROBERT C . RAGSDALE, COURTESY THE STRATFORD FESTIVAL ARCHIVES
of the Celts, who were in mid-Europe from 500 BC .
I have been using Celtic history as a creative
springboard and this era is within the oral fabric
that I draw on . Venice was a repository of eastern
influences and not too tar from where I was musicall',.
The result is a mixture of themes that remind us of
snakes writhing out of baskets and gypsies dancing sinuously through the streets . Apart from a short flurry of
masks and costumes and the prow of a gondola appearing at the end of an aisle, it was McKennitt's music that
SUMMER 2002
gave this production its exotic flavour. She reminded us
musically that we were visiting Renaissance Venice : a
melting-pot trading port with ties to India, Mexico,
Barbary and Lisbon, not some English market place or
mansion . The few anglicized themes and songs demanded by the text seemed unremarkable in comparison .
Composition of a theatrical score is very different
from conventional song-writing . It must dovetail with
production needs . "The music is primarily very short
cues," McKennitt explains .
The Shvlock theme is a motif that doesn't ever
develop . The two other Middle Eastern themes
could be developed to stand alone but last about
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line .
To this end, she made use of several instruments
authentic to Renaissance Venice - the esraj, the dumbec
and the kanoun .
Apart from Italian and middle-eastern influences, the
prominence of Shylock gave McKennitt an opportunity to
dabble in Jewish music .
I had already been tracing the trajectory of Jewish
communities who left Spain and traveled across to
Venice and Turkey. I've visited the Jewish Ghetto in
Venice - the place where the word ghetto was
coined. The gates are locked after eight at night .
There were some groups who cohabited with the
Muslims and Christians . Their music blended in, so
that the Jewish music is very Middle Eastern too . It
can swing a few ways .
The presentation of the Shylock character is perhaps
the greatest challenge for the director . A modern audience's perception of Jews is very different from the attitudes of Shakespeare's day. It is impossible to come to the
play without a knowledge of all that has happened to the
European Jewish population since then, in part because of
a long history of racist representations . When first written,
Shylock was a caricature of evil played in a comic style,
but such racial lampooning is no longer acceptable . In the
In 1984 McKennitt composed and performed the music for the
Stratford Festival production of The Two Gentlemen ofVerona, directed
by Leon Rubin . I-r :William Dunlop asThurio, Laurence Russo as First
Outlaw and Loreena McKennit as Musician .
PHOTO BY DAVID COOPER COURTESY THE STRATFORD FESTIVAL ARCHIVES
She also used subliminal notes and tremolos to highlight moments of cunning and intrigue, revealing an
intense interest in the dramatic shape of the play itself.
Sitting in on an analysis of Shakespeare is unbelievably interesting. They should describe this play as a
basket of moral and ethical dilemmas . Almost every
scene has one . When Bassanio talks of Portia for the
first time, there's the question of being attracted to
people who are rich . There's Lancelot's dilemma of
working for a Jew when he wants to work for a
Christian . There's the moral dilemma of the rings
and of the caskets - a kind of Sufi principle that
Shakespeare would have been exposed to even if he
didn't understand it completely : the idea that things
are not necessarily what they seem to be .
McKennitt doesn't pretend that her score is pure to
Elizabethan or Venetian period or place .
It's not an academic kind of document . It's an
impressionistic
musical
response . Richard
[Monettel pointed out that there are lots of inconsistencies in Shakespeare's text. He played around and
flirted with various approaches, so the music didn't
have to be fundamental. I tried to infuse the music
with eastern influences and not just in the melodic
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contemporary theatre the character tends to be more sympathetic, more humane and the music accompanying the
character must necessarily adapt . Instead of comic emphasis, it must present the character with a degree of dignity
and humanity that the director and actor, in the case of the
Stratford production, intended . In writing "Shylock's
theme," McKennitt avoided overtly comic, stereotypically
"Jewish" sounds while still evoking the distinctive culture
and ethnicity of the character through the use of a lively
Jewish motif.
The credibility factor of McKennitt's music is helped
by her extensive research . "I use certain information I gain
from traveling, and I draw upon reading for inspiration ."
She was in Venice in the summer of 1998, when "all hell
broke loose" in her own life . Now that she has returned to
creative work she plans more travel . In fact, she calls her
composing style "travel writing ." She points to what she
calls her "tickle trunk" - a box of research, threads of history and subjects she hasn't had time to study that she
takes with her on her travels . She laughs that she could
end up anywhere . A Professor of Archeology from
Arizona has invited her to a dig in Tuscany . A Christian
Monk living in caves by the Dead Sea has invited her to
stay. Someone else wants to show her an island off Turkey.
"It's all quite tempting ."
It will be no surprise if Loreena McKennitt's musical
journey brings her back to Shakespeare in future projects .
She possesses a rare ability to induce an imaginative
adjustment in her audience, and to suture what
Shakespeare wrote with what we want to hear . CTR
Judy Van Rhijn is an Australian solicitor and freelance writer
living in Kitchener, Ontario .
CTR ill