Sunday afternoons are special on WSHU. Every week, David Bouchier puts a different spin on classical music - anecdotes about the great composers, poetry, musical history, and even musical jokes. Sunday Matinée may explore the hidden links between music and literature, composers' letters, music for a special season of the year, or music designed to make you think. Whatever the theme, David Bouchier gives classical music a new dimension on Sunday afternoons.

William Shakespeare's traditional birth date is April 23rd, but even that is not certain. Very little is known about his life. But he (or perhaps the Earl of Oxford, whose anniversary fell on April 12) left us an extraordinary legacy of great plays and poems, which live today as vividly as they did in the Globe Theater on the bank of London's River Thames. For hundreds of years, composers have found inspiration in Shakespeare's plays and characters - Coriolanus, Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet, Macbeth, Othello and many others. Enjoy a festival of Shakespeare's music this week on Sunday Matinée.

Among the highlights (subject to change):

  • Thomas Linley Jr.: A Shakespeare Ode (selections)
  • Otto Nicolai: The Merry Wives of Windsor (overture)
  • Heinrich Wilhelm Ernst: Fantasia on Rossini's Otello
  • Hector Berlioz: King Lear (overture)
  • Henry Purcell: The Fairy Queen (overture) A Midsummer Night's Dream
  • Carl Maria Von Weber : Overture to Oberon
  • Ludwig Van Beethoven : Coriolanus (overture)
  • George Frideric Handel : Julius Caesar (selection)
  • Giuseppe Verdi : Macbeth (ballet music)
  • Richard Strauss: Macbeth - Symphonic Poem
  • William Walton: Henry V (movie music)
  • Hector Berlioz : Romeo and Juliet: Queen Mab Scherzo
  • Sergei Prokofiev: Romeo and Juliet: Dance of the Knights
  • Charles Gounod: Romeo and Juliet (overture)
  • Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky: Romeo and Juliet fantasy overture
  • Leonard Bernstein: West Side Story: "Somewhere" (Romeo and Juliet)
  • Ralph Vaughan Williams: Serenade to Music (Merchant of Venice)
  • Sir Arthur Sullivan: Henry VIII (incidental music)
  • Erich Korngold: Four Shakespeare Songs
  • Patrick Doyle: Hamlet (movie music)
  • Felx Mendelssohn: Incidental Music to a Midsummer Night's Dream

For more about the Shakespeare authorship debate, go to: The Shakespeare Oxford Society Home Page


Join David Bouchier for Shakespeare's Music on Sunday Matinee, from 1 till 6, right after Sunday Baroque, only on WSHU and WSUF.

This program is produced in the Long Island Studio of WSHU & WSUF, on the campus of Suffolk County Community College in Selden, New York.

This page and its contents are copyright WSHU-FM, Fairfield, CT., and David Bouchier.

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