Never having been able to resist singing with a period instrument, Penny began researching all things Jane Austen and square piano swiftly following her first meeting with Jonathan Delbridge in early 2024. This resulted in ‘Sense & Musicality’, happily coinciding with Austen’s 250th anniversary year. The programme explores the importance of music in Jane’s life, and her relationship with it. It also considers that her characters Elinor and Marianne Dashwood might represent the author’s own conflicting traits of romance and logic, and her views on all things musical and emotional.
The programme includes music we know Jane played and sang herself (some being scores found in the Austen family music albums, often in her own hand) as well as music and composers mentioned or alluded to in her novels. Also included are pieces from the soundtracks of much loved screen adaptations, quotes from her writing, as well as extracts from letters between Jane and family members, most often her beloved sister Cassandra.
‘Ode to Pity’ is a brand new composition by Donna McKevitt, commissioned especially for this programme, and is a musical setting of Austen’s teenage poem (1793.) Jane was 17 at the time of writing and appears to intelligently mock the earnest grandeur of 18th century literary conventions, using highly descriptive, often antiquated language that in fact says nothing of any real depth. Donna has been inspired by this and the folk music Jane would have heard at the time, to create a song the young author might have enjoyed singing herself. Musical settings of Austen’s poetry are extremely rare and there appear to be none currently performed or recorded in the English Song repertoire. This commission aims to change this in celebration of Austen’s 250th birthday, and may also be the first contemporary music written especially for square piano.
The crowdfunding link to help us record, film and promote this exciting song, is here: https://gofund.me/76ca0f50 and we’d be so grateful for donations of any size!
Dates
11th January 2025 – South Somerset Music Centre, Crewkerne, 7pm. Tickets at: www.southsomersetmusiccentre.co.uk
9th March 2025 – Rook Lane Chapel, Frome. Frome Concerts group -11.30am. Tickets at: www.fromeconcertsgroup.org
27th April 2025 – Venue TBC – Music on the Quantocks. 3.30pm. Ticket details to follow.
May 2025 – Shaw House, Newbury. Newbury Spring Festival. 3pm. TIckets at: www.newburyspringfestival.org.uk
May 2026 – Sherborne Abbey Festival. Info/tickets at: www.sherborneabbeyfestival.org