This work was composed in the Summer of 2021. It is dedicated to my US conductor friend Matthew J. George and his
family: To Matt, Jen, Gigi and Sam. It came into being whilst I was reassessing some songs I had written based on texts by
William Shakespeare, taken from his plays, and which dated as far back as 1993. It occurred to me that they could be recast
as an instrumental composition, essentially that of a string orchestra. There were four extant songs and I soon realised that
more were required to form a balanced suite for a string ensemble. In selecting the new contributions all the melodies were
designed to fit the texts of further Shakespeare songs even though they were no longer to be sung. Also no Shakespeare play
could contribute more than one number, each movement was not to last more than two minutes, the forms were to reflect
stage terms and old names for dance or instrumental music, demonstrate a variety of string techniques, textures and friendly
keys and, finally, the completed work was to appeal to a broad audience and be capable of performance by good amateur
ensembles. Hopefully most of these aims were met! The complete work can be performed in its entirety or as various selected
movements.
