By Paul Horsley

For more than four centuries the plays and sonnets of Shakespeare have been enshrined as the pinnacle of English-language poetry. Why, then, do we need to put them to music? It’s a question that Charles Bruffy, the Grammy Award-winning director of the Kansas City and Phoenix Chorales, has given a bit of thought to. “What I tell my choruses is that in fact what we are doing is ‘reading’ poetry to our audience,” said Charles, who has led the Kansas City group since 1988. “And our poetry is beautified by pitch, dynamic and duration: which is the exact same thing one would do if he or she was merely reading the poetry.”

In other words, musical poetry versus spoken poetry is a difference of ‘degree’ rather than ‘kind,’ he said. Singing Shakespeare is much like reading it, “intensified by pitch.”

On May 1st and 3rd, the KC Chorale and the Heart of American Shakespeare Festival present a program they call Such a Charm: Shakespeare in Song. The concert juxtaposes musical settings of Shakespeare with actual readings from the plays and sonnets, as performed by Festival actors led by Artistic Director Sidonie Garrett. It’s one of several local Shakespeare-related activities this season, part of a year of international focus on the greatest writer in the English language in commemoration of the 400th anniversary of his death in 1616.

All of these activities culminate this June (the 6th through the 28th) with the Kansas City Public Library’s Show Me Shakespeare 2016, a city-wide celebration of the Folger Shakespeare Library’s First Folio Tour. Lectures, films, workshops and performances will highlight the 50-state tour of this rare first complete edition of the bard’s works, published in 1623. Nabbing it was no small task. “It’s only going to one site in each state, and it will go to all 50 states within the year,” Sidonie said. “The Kansas City Public Library won the bid. … It’s a feather in the cap that we beat out St. Louis.” (See firstfoliokc.org.)

Music has always been central to Shakespeare’s works, Sidonie said, beginning with the content of the plays themselves. In fact Twelfth Night, which the HASF will present this summer (June 14th through July 3rd), “has five songs that are actually sung within the context of the play.” Live music makes a huge difference, she said of the Festival’s increased use of musicians onstage. “It gives it a different feel.”

For the Chorale’s program she will choose excerpts that both cast light on the singing and make for a logical, linear program. “I always look at the emotional thread,” she said. “We’re going to do everything we can to make it into a meaningful afternoon.”

At its best, Sidonie said, music can enhance and elevate poetry. “Our lives, our stories, are musically scored. We’re used to having storytellers push or pull us one way or another. … And sometimes we tell stories in ways that people maybe understand better with music than they do without it.” Often specific pieces of music come to mind when staging a play, she added, as Rodrigo’s Concierto de Aranjuez did when she staged Twelfth Night here in 2001. “That’s a piece that played in my own head when I thought about this play: Everyone is longing for something. … It’s screaming ‘longing’ to me.”

How can a piece of music enhance great poetry? An illustration can be found in Vaughan Williams’ “Full Fathom Five,” a setting from The Tempest that forms part of the KC Chorale’s program. As Ariel sings of the watery grave of Ferdinand’s father (at the bottom of the ocean), undulating choral voices express both the sea-nymphs’ death-knell (“Ding-dong”) and the rise-and-fall rippling of waves on the ocean surface. “The onomatopoeic sound of the words and the meaning of the words all come to life,” Charles said, “and can become much more meaningful than just the statement of the words.”

To illustrate, Charles gave an even more vivid example of how text-painting functions, by pointing out the different effects that the word “cold” can have depending on musical setting. “If we just speak or sing the word ‘cold,’ we don’t know how cold it is: We don’t know what the temperature is. But if we accentuate the ‘k’ sound, then it gets colder; if put the ‘k’ in and then hesitate, and then bring in the vowel quickly, it’s even colder still. And if we do that and then allow the vowel to shake a little, like it’s shivering, then it becomes colder still.”

Such a Charm takes place on May 1st at Asbury United Methodist Church and on May 3rd at Unity Temple on the Plaza. For tickets and information call 816-235-6222 or go to kcchorale.org. Also purchase the Chorale’s new disc Rachmaninoff: All-Night Vigil, Op. 37, which won this year’s Grammy Award for Best Choral Recording.

The program includes “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?” by Nils Linberg; Songs of Ariel from Shakespeare’s The Tempest by Frank Martin, Shakespeare Songs by Jaakko Mantyjarvi; Three Shakespeare Songs by Ralph Vaughan Williams; and Shakespeare Songs by Matthew Harris.

For information on the Heart of America Shakespeare Festival’s Twelfth Night call 816-531-7728 or see kcshakes.org.

To reach Paul Horsley, performing arts editor, send an email to paul@kcindependent.com or find him on Facebook (paul.horsley.501) or Twitter (@phorsleycritic).