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BRUCE O'NEIL: My name is Bruce O'Neil, and I'm the Head of Music for the Royal Shakespeare Company. Well, I started out the RSC as a music director, so I would work on productions and really

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be the conduit between the composer and director and help rehearse the music into the production and then work with the band, once the musicians got involved at a later stage.

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Typically play keyboard or other instruments and conduct the band and help rehearse the singers, warm them up, if the cast is singing in the production. And generally, musically direct for the play.

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And I then became head of music in 2013, and that sort of expanded out, so I still continue to musically direct, but I suppose a bit more strategic thinking about, musically, what

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the company should be doing. And working with composers and supervising productions, and we've also been doing quite a long project to record scores composed for Shakespeare

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plays, which we've been doing since I became head of music in 2013, which is just coming to fruition this year. The RSC is fairly unique in many ways when it comes to music in productions for theatre.

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There's a very long tradition of commissioning new music for plays in Stratford, which really goes back to towards the beginning of the 20th century. And certainly, since the royal charter

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was granted for the company in the 1960s, we've basically commissioned composers to write new music for every production. So there's an ever-growing archive and body

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of work of music composed for Shakespeare plays, as well as the work of contemporary writers, the work of Shakespeare's contemporaries, new musicals. So it's a really big body of work.

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And one of our other-- a fairly unique approach is that typically we have live music for every production. So there's lots of things we can do

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with that that's not quite possible in the same way with a recorded score. So it's great that we have that resource and it's a really strong tradition here, which

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partly comes out of the Shakespeare plays themselves. There's lots of music in Shakespeare's plays. Musicians are mentioned, quite a lot, sometimes they actually appear.

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Sometimes they even have a speaking role. And the live music element is really, I suppose, one of the unique selling points of the RSC in many ways.

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And even now, with lots of contemporary approaches to music, we still perform the music live because in marrying the music with the actors' performance, which is obviously a live performance,

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it's that sort of subtlety and nuance that is very difficult to achieve in other ways. So it's a great tradition of music here. And you know, it feels like in terms of music for theatre,

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we're sort of a bit of a beacon really, I would say. When a production is really starting out, from the very beginning, I suppose the first person is going to be the director.

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And amongst the creative team that they assemble to work on the production, one of those people will be the composer. And the music that a director needs for a production

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is about achieving their particular specific vision for that production. That's what's quite interesting in many ways about working at the RSC, where our core repertoire of plays,

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being the plays of Shakespeare, some of those come along again in a few years' time, so we come back to doing a play that we've produced a few years before, but with a different creative team

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and a different composer. It's amazing how different the music can be for the same play. And the reason for that is partly that music is an incredibly powerful tool for a director

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to conjure things like location, period, more abstract ideas, and things like establishing a mood or an atmosphere. Obviously with regard specifically to the Shakespeare

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plays, there are sometimes very specific moments that call for music. But Shakespeare himself included so much music in his plays because he knew it was a very powerful dramatic tool.

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So what composers bring to the production for a director is a very powerful element to establish what the director is trying to achieve. And we've worked with some fantastic composers

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in recent years. And there's a great, big, long list of really big names of the 20th century composers who've worked here in Stratford.

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And they assemble an ensemble of musicians. So the orchestration, if you like, is almost like a kind of aural version of the set. So the orchestration and the sound world

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that they create with a particular combination of instruments, and in more recent years, with digital technology and sound design, can create very, very specific sound worlds,

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which are achieving this vision that the director wants to achieve. And so, the musical director will occupy this pivotal position between what the composer is

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being asked to achieve from the director and the practicalities of making that happen, integrating the music into the play, editing the music, shaping it around what's going on, whether it's an underscore

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or if there's a particular performance of a song by one of the actors. Sometimes the entire company of actors might need to sing together, either in character

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or they sometimes might contribute to the music that's being performed by the musicians as well. And typically, the music composed for a play

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will go through a lot of changes, whereas a composer writing for a concert performance, for example, will conceive their piece, compose it, rehearse it, and perform it.

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In the theatre, it's such a collaborative process and there are so many cogs within the overall machinery that the music needs to go on quite a transformation. So really great composers for theatre have to have that

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flexibility to be able to write very distinctive music that has their signature but is also meeting the brief of the director. And then also have the flexibility

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to change and evolve the music as the requirements shift, as the production goes through rehearsals and through the technical period and ends up being performed in front of an audience.

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And that collaboration not only involves the music director but also the musicians themselves. The musicians we work with here are quite unique in terms of their talents

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because no matter how good the composer, what they write initially really goes through a transformation when the musicians come in and inject their personality as well into the overall sound of the music.

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So it's quite a complex process and very collaborative, I would say. It's interesting that often directors will have quite a strong relationship

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with a particular composer and work with them quite a lot. For example, Greg Doran has worked a lot with Paul Englishby. They've worked together on, I think, over 20 productions

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together. And it's not surprising that those sorts of close relationships exist because talking about music is quite difficult.

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And what a director might have in their head is difficult to put into words. And then when a composer actually writes something and then demonstrates it to the director,

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there might be a mismatch there. So that close relationship and shorthand that partnerships build up over a long period of time is really valuable.

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I mean, having said that, it's also really interesting when a director works with a composer that they've never worked with before. It can really vary between productions

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how the relationship works. And ultimately, it's about composers trying to interpret and respond to the brief that they're given.

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And also, I've heard it said a lot from various composers that they need to check their ego at the door. Because they write something and then the director might go, that's not right, you know.

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And they have to go back and just try and get inside the head of the director to come up with the music that is being imagined for the production. When a composer first starts working

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on a score for a production, they have various conversations with the director, and they might write one or two things. But I would say in some ways, possibly one of the first things they do is actually

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think about the orchestration in a way. Because the overriding concept is a sound world for the world of the play, and that's achieved by the combination of instruments.

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And it might be suggested by the stylistic requirements, for example. So there was a production of Much Ado About Nothing that Marianne Elliott directed here

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in 2006 which was set in Cuba. So that was immediately a gift for Olly Fox, the composer, to model the ensemble of musicians on a typical musical ensemble from Cuba.

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So the starting point, I think, is that sound world and that combination of instruments. And there might be some immediately obvious musical set pieces that are, for example, already in the play,

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and we know that we need a song, or we need a dance or there's some sort of ceremonial set piece. So there might be a few things that are obvious that we'll need a starting point for rehearsals,

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but then other things might develop once rehearsals start. So it's quite a messy process in some ways. And some directors might want to lock the music demoed beforehand, others might not even

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be specific with their brief until rehearsals have started. So it can really vary according to the way different people work. But really, the music gets started

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to feed into rehearsals, and there might be initial sketches, and then it really builds up. Once the music is starting to feed into that process, it lays down roots and grows.

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And then, further into the process when it's more established, it might be that the musicians will have some rehearsals to start rehearsing the orchestration immediately prior to then the technical period,

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where we'd sound check the music in the theatre ahead of doing the technical rehearsals and working the music along with other technical aspects lighting, sound, and set design and costume and all that into the play.

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And then, once you're into the process of previewing, and it's all being performed in front of an audience, then you learn even more. It might be that changes are needed

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because for example, a particular set change might take a lot longer, or it might be shorter. And then typically, you need to change the music to adapt to those changing elements elsewhere.

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And because we have live musicians, we need score and parts for the music, which typically, these days we use software that typesets the music in digital format.

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And there are a number of different applications that achieve that process. Really, I think probably it was about 2000 that the approach started to use digital applications to achieve

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that. Prior to that, it would be composed as working pencil on paper. So changes to the music would be a case of a copyist staying up

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all night and using scissors and sellotape and lots of ink and all the rest of it to change the parts. So it's interesting to look into the archive because all our scores are archived at the Shakespeare

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Birthplace Trust, and there's probably about 500 scores in there now. And over the years, you can see changes and trends in terms of the sorts of musical ensembles

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and the sizes of ensembles that composers were writing for. Typically scores were written pencil on paper or ink, so lots of scribblings out. And then, from around 2000 onwards,

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you can see that the parts have generally been typeset using software. So they look more like published, printed music. And yeah, because that process is very collaborative and does

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evolve quickly because of the nature of theatre, typically, the scores have lots of crossings out, lots of cuts, changes, revisions. So it's kind of interesting to look at the original versions

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that a composer might have written compared to what it ends up being the final version for the play. The RSC, as I mentioned, has got this fantastic tradition

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of commissioning composers. Productions in Stratford from when the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre opened in 1879, I think it was, there was one particular director who

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directed most productions here for a number of years, Frank Benson. And his approach was to utilise music from the standard repertoire, if you like.

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So known music by composers like Beethoven and Mozart and Schubert and basically grab sections of music that felt appropriate for a particular moment. And actually there is a box of music at the archive, which

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is called the Frank Benson box, and lots of published music by all these established composers, where they would typically use a particular section for a particular moment across lots of different plays.

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And that was the approach for a number of years. And around 1912, 1913, a young Ralph Vaughan Williams came to work in Stratford and composed some music for some productions.

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And he was really interested in collecting folk music, which a lot of composers were at that time. So I think against Frank Benson's instinct, Vaughan Williams is brought in to provide some music

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for production of a few plays. I think he works on Merry Wives of Windsor and Richard II amongst other plays. And so Vaughan Williams was partly using existing folk

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music and adapting those melodies and themes, and also writing some of his own music. And it was regarded as a bit of an experiment. And apparently, after Vaughan Williams

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had worked on these productions and then left, apparently Frank Benson chucked all that out and reverted back to the music that he'd been using for previous productions. Because I think that approach was so embedded,

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and it was very much a novelty at that time to have a composer come in and write new music for a production of a Shakespeare play. So it's interesting because the recording project

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that we've been doing, which we started in 2013 with Richard II which was Greg's production, music by Paul Englishby, we wanted to include some music from a previous production in Stratford to go alongside and just look back

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at how the approach to music had changed over the years. One hundred years earlier, 1913 we used Ralph Vaughan Williams music from Richard III. So it was interesting to note that change.

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And then, from then, you can see in the archive more and more the approach was to bring in composers to write original music. And that tradition really expanded

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through the 20th century. And you get people like Alan Rawsthorne, Roberto Gerhard, and more recently, people like Stephen Oliver, Nigel Hess-- great, big, long list of fantastic names.

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Dudley Moore composed for a production. I think he wrote the music for Caucasian Chalk Circle. That they just basically really recognized that composers bring this really interesting aspect

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to reinterpreting Shakespeare plays. Of course, as well as all the other repertoire that the RSC has done over the years. And from the 60s and 70s onwards, a number of people

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became the head of music at the Royal Shakespeare Company. Guy Woolfenden really was the first key head of music for the RSC. And he composed for every Shakespeare play I think,

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at least three times, you know, and left this incredible body of work. Which is the other interesting thing about music for theatre. Because it's composed for that particular production,

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but then of course, music has a life of its own beyond the production. So there's this amazing body of work, a lot of which is sitting on the shelves in the music archive room

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at Shakespeare Birthplace Trust. I mean, I mentioned Guy obviously, who was the head of music here for many years and composed an enormous number of scores.

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And later Stephen Warbeck was the head of music here, who went on to win an Oscar. And he composed many fantastic scores here over the years. I think one of the scores that maybe, is probably

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quite memorable for a lot of people is the production of Nicholas Nickleby that was famously televised, which had music by Stephen Oliver. And I suppose it's partly the exposure

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that production had because of it being televised, Stephen Oliver was really interesting composer. And he was I think a natural theatre animal and knew how to create a very unique sound world,

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as well as a unique musical language for that particular production. So his music from Nicholas Nickleby is very memorable. And actually, in more recent years

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Michael Boyd's History Cycle had a really interesting approach to the music. It was composed and devised as a collaboration between Jim Jones, who was a percussionist here at the RSC for 40 years,

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and so played on many productions and also composed for some productions. And he collaborated with another previous head of music here, John Woolf, and Shannon Jones

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on music for all eight plays of the history cycle. And it was very percussion led. And in fact, what they did because of the complexity of the characters

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and the relationships and the politics across the histories, what they did was that they created a very complex suite of musical themes that gave them a logic to applying

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the music in any particular scenario, and a sort of integrity to the thread of how the music worked through all eight plays. And the starting point for the music

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were South American dance rhythms, which is a really interesting concept. And when you think of things like salsa, you don't necessarily think of the history

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plays of William Shakespeare, but that's exactly what they did. And it created this very, very unique sound world. And the music was really integral to those productions

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and really embedded within all eight plays. So that was a really interesting approach. But so many really. I mean, from my own point of view,

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the first production I did as head of music was Greg's production of Richard II, which he did in 2012 and 2013. David Tennant played Richard II, and the music

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was composed by Paul Englishby, who had already collaborated with Greg quite a lot up until that point. And Paul's idea was, again, one of those examples

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of how the orchestration creates a sound world which completely conjures this aural world of the play. And his idea was essentially to have three trumpets and three sopranos.

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And they were positioned high up in the theatre on the upper circle balcony, either side of the stage sort of representing God and military might. And it's really beautiful music, fantastically effective

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for the production. And one of those sort of iconic scores that survives the test of time and sort of transcends the production itself and exists in its own right.

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I think there was. I mean, there always has been, really, I suppose a sense of music for RSC productions leading the way in many ways.

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Certainly, in the mid-20th century, electronic music was being experimented with in the sort of classical avant garde. And that was filtering into theatre music.

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And actually, I've got a feeling that Roberto Gerhard-- so he worked here a couple of times, sort of pre-Royal Shakespeare Company, if you like. And he composed the score for Peter Brook's production

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of Romeo and Juliet, in 1947, which we recorded. Which is alongside a recording of music composed by Sophie Cotton for Erica Whyman's production of Romeo and Juliet a few years ago.

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But I believe Roberto Gerhard might have done another score here in which he experimented with electronics, and I think it might have actually been the first production-- theatre production in the UK to actually exploit

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the possibilities of electronic music in a theatrical context. But I suppose composers generally, they're writers and they're always searching for something new. And I suppose in particular when they're

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working on a new interpretation of a Shakespeare play, there's always the possibility that they're being asked to do something new. So from that point of view, I suppose

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every time we do a production, the composer is always trying to go somewhere different in some ways. And even if they are trying to conjure a particular period that might be in the past or a particular location,

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you know, that they're still doing that in a novel way because of the context of what the production is asking of them. Richard Rodney Bennett is a composer who worked here

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in the 60s, also Lennox Berkeley composed a score for Winter's Tale here in 1960. And actually, that music has never been published or recorded.

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So I'm hoping to get that one out of the archive and record that. I mean, there's just, there's a treasure trove of music we have in the archive.

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Ilona Sekacz composed many fantastic scores here over the years. Gary Yershon-- it's some really interesting characters. Rosabel Watson composed the music for Coriolanus

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here in 1926. She was a suffragette. And she actually MDed a number of productions, as well. There's also Leslie Bridgewater, composed the music for Henry V

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here in 1951. And I think that was actually the year it was The Festival of Britain, so he had a band of like, I think it was 18 musicians.

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And at that time the Royal Shakespeare Theatre had an orchestra pit, so it's one of those things as well where you see at particular times the sort of resources that were available.

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There's actually a composer called Antony Hopkins, who's nothing to do with the famous actor, who worked here in the 1950s, and composed music for Antony and Cleopatra, and that music was recorded.

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And in fact, we got hold of the 78s that were on vinyl in the archive, and we had to see if they still worked, digitise the music, and then we recorded the music because it was also

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obviously in print. So it's an interesting one. The recording we made of that-- you hear the original recordings,

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which are a little bit sort of scratchy. And then they cross fade into the new studio recordings we made of the music, so it's sort of-- it kind of illustrates that idea of going back in time.

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And that's one of the interesting things I think about rejuvenating, if you like, and bringing alive these music scores that were composed for productions over the years.

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Because it's one of the elements of the production that is really visceral. You can listen to the music, and that is what people heard in the auditorium

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when they went along to that performance in 1953. And I think that's quite interesting, really, to get that sense of what that experience was actually like. And even when you look at the scores

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and you see the personality and the handwriting of the composer, or the music director, or the arranger or orchestrator that was writing this music down, you really

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get that sort of sense of connection. And it's like looking at a letter from someone. There's something really personal about seeing that written down on the page, that that's kind of really

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interesting compared to just seeing a sort of type set bit of music that doesn't have that same individual personality. I think it's really important that we

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keep on archiving the music that has been composed for our productions. It's interesting because theatre is quite ephemeral, isn't it? People work on a production, and then they

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perform a live performance and it's gone. And then at the end of a run of a production, that's finished. And so, the foresight, if you like, of all this material to have been archived,

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and now the fact that it's getting digitized so the access is much broader is really fantastic. Because it's very easy-- when you're working on a production at the time,

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you don't necessarily think that anyone might be interested in looking at that in 100 years' time. But certainly in the project we've been doing to record some of the scores

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from the archive as well as the recent productions, you know, I'm so glad that material has been archived. Because I contacted Jeremy Sams, who's another really big figure in UK theatre, and he started out as a composer actually,

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although he's a director and sort of real Renaissance man, and I contacted him the other day because I said I said we'd like to record your music that you composed for a production of All's Well That Ends Well in 1989.

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And he emailed back and said, that's fantastic, great. He said, I can't remember anything about it at all. He said he might sort of remember one particular tune from it.

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So when we record that music, I'm just really looking forward to sending him the recordings because it's one of those things that I think it will really come flooding back.

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And anyone who saw that production, just really interesting to instantly, as music does, it takes you back to a particular point in time instantly.

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And from a wider perspective, it's just really interesting to hear how aesthetics change over the years and just hearing how one production and one composer decided to approach a particular play compared

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to 20 years earlier, 50 years earlier, 10 years later, which says something about Shakespeare's plays as well. And I think it also says something about how theatre

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some people say is essentially a mirror held up to the audience. So, yeah, it's just, it's really interesting how the musical part of productions can reflect those changing tastes over time

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and exist as really interesting pieces in their own right. And it's just really great to be able to go into those archives and delve in there and see what people were up to over the last however many years.