Sounds of love and death: Sonic retellings of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet

This paper catalogues the significative techniques used by Berlioz, Tchaikovsky and Prokofiev to represent love and death in their respective Romeo and Juliet adaptations. In particular, this analysis focuses on the Balcony and Tomb Scenes; the pivotal scenes of the play in which the concepts of love and death are fully developed. The author draws from semiotics, topic theory, and traditional forms of music analysis in order to construct a comprehensive study of these composers representational devices. There are incontrovertible commonalities amid the signification paradigms deployed by these composers; there are numerous semic and topical crossovers, instrumentation is often used to signify dramatis personae, and all of the composers utilize letimotif. These commonalities point toward a potential archetype for the portrayal of love and death. Whilst these semes and topics apply to tonal music, they are less congruous with the atonal idiom. Tonality itself, is arguably a precondition for the efficacy of these signs, particularly with regards to signs of love. Amongst these composers the representation of love consistently depends upon consonances and tonal harmony, however, death is less dependent upon the tonal tradition and is frequently signified through dissonances and chromaticism. This paper suggests that whilst an entirely atonal Romeo and Juliet is injudicious, an amalgamation of tonal and atonal idioms could yield an effective and compelling adaptation.