Patrick Doyle - A Trio of Shakespeare Inspired Songs

Today is Shakespeare’s birthday, and in honor of that I am using the songs of a man who has scored more Shakespeare adaptations than anyone else.

Scottish film composer and longtime collaborator of actor-director Kenneth Branagh, Patrick Doyle is known for his work composing for films such as Henry V (1989), Sense and Sensibility (1995), Hamlet (1996), and Gosford Park (2001), as well as Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (2005), Eragon (2006), Rise of the Planet of the Apes and Thor (both 2011). Doyle has been nominated for two Academy Awards and two Golden Globe Awards, and is the recipient of the ASCAP Henry Mancini Award for "outstanding achievements and contributions to the world of film and television music".

His music matches the bard’s writing beautifully. Always adding and never overpowering. Like the writing it is inspired by it is complex, light, funny, deep, touching, frightening, scandalous, and romantic in turns.

Here are three small selections of some of the different works he has produced for Branagh’s Shakespeare adaptations.

So today, with understanding looming like a specter, I choose Patrick Doyle’s “Pardon Goddess of the Night” from Much Ado About Nothing, “In Pace” from Hamlet, & “I Loved You Once” also from from Hamlet, as my, find the light you used to hide, say goodbye to the things that no longer serve, do not be precious with yourself, songs for a , burn the rafters, shake the sky, walk with diamonds falling from your fingertips, Tuesday.