The Tempest

The Tempest

The center of The Tempest is its music. Pervading and informing the action of the play, music is always sounding, always affecting the lives of the characters. Often directionless and ambiguous in its meaning, the music of The Tempest provides a context for Prospero's magical machinations and becomes, through the course of the play, a powerfully evocative symbol of this magic. In The Tempest music is the medium through which order emerges from chaos; it is the agent of suffering, learning, growth, and freedom.

The musical allusions in Shakespeare's drama have distinct purpose of music he was trying to communicate in his plays. This is most easily accomplished by rather vague references to Renaissance, it has also been pointed out that during the Renaissance, music came more and more to be associated with the heart, in which man could express his feelings and communicate them to others. In The Tempest this type of interpretation results in an emotional outcome. Embodying its own conceptual integrity, music becomes a force that transcends its power the case of song to achieve its status as the play's presiding symbol of both feeling and form.

The music depicting the happenings in the play links various keys with moods. The Tempest begins quietly with an air of calm and expectation, the music depicting a placid sea and Ferdinand's ship sailing along confidently. Soon the mood becomes intense and violent as Ariel, at the behest of the magician Prospero, summons a tempest. The music parallel’s the atmosphere when the ship wrecks. In the closing section, the music reverts back to the calm, seafaring mood of the opening.

Ultimately one's view of the importance of music in The Tempest will depend upon what one thinks the play's dramatic import finally is. If one believes that Prospero's island is a harmonious one where good triumphs over evil, one is apt to find its music symbolic of a celestial concord which will eventually obtain...