Reflections of Madness in Music: A Comparative Analysis of Assorted Musical Settings of Ophelia’s Mad Scene From Hamlet

For over 400 years, Ophelia’s mad scene from The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark has inspired countless works of visual, musical, literary, and dramatic art. With its multifarious psychological and metaphorical implications, it has consequently become the Shakespearean scene that is perhaps most frequently and elegantly set to music. Some of the most notable examples of this include Hector Berlioz's "La mort d'Ophélie," Charles Ambroise Thomas' "A vos jeux, mes amis, permettez-moi de grace… Pale et blonde," from his eponymous opera, and Richard Strauss' "Ophelia Lieder." It is the goal of this paper to propose yet another (purely theoretical) musical setting of Ophelia’s mad scene by culling features from all these works, weaving in elements of structuralist analysis using textual evidence from the play to do so. In the process, it will make the argument that Act IV, scene v from Hamlet is best embodied in a fugal setting, scored for a coloratura mezzo-soprano. The metaphorical implications of Ellen Terry’s 1911 non-musical portrayal of this scene will also be analyzed and incorporated into the final proposal for this hypothetical musical setting.    

            Berlioz’s (1903) depiction of Ophelia’s mad scene is one of the earliest notable examples of a composer attempting to instantiate elements of her characterization into music. To that end, he begins his art song with a tremolo-like accompanimental figure in the upper voices, which evokes the rippling or shimmering of water (p. 1) -- a technique that harkens to the brook in which Ophelia eventually drowns herself. While this is a decidedly homophonic texture and so would be difficult to incorporate into a fugue, the idea of finding a way to metaphorically evoke the surface of the water in which Ophelia finds her ultimate rest is a fascinating one. One way this could have significance in a fugal idiom is that fugues must employ invertible counterpoint, or, as Johann Josef Fux calls it in his seminal text on the subject, “double counterpoint” (Mann, 1987, p. 107).

            According to Fux, “double counterpoint designates an ingenious manner of composition, the parts of which may be interchanged so that, by inversion, what was an upper part becomes a lower part. This technique evidently receives its name from the fact that it produces a duality of melodic lines which are different in register but, except for their inversion, show no change” (Mann, 1987, p. 107). This technique is critical to employ in the composition of fugues, as melodies called the subject and countersubject are constantly being introduced in different registers. However, they still need to follow all the very intricate rules of counterpoint regardless of the position in which they sound (Mann, 1987, p. 157). The idea of these two melodies working as mirror images of one another evokes the “glassy stream” (Shakespeare, 1992, 4.7.191) in which Ophelia’s body was found, just as the texture Berlioz employed in his setting does. The possibilities for exploiting the mirror-like qualities of different fugal elements are practically endless, whether through melodic inversion or retrogression (otherwise known as “mirror” or “crab” canons, respectively), both of which are commonly employed techniques in this genre (Mann, 1987, p. 158). The resultant effect, in addition to conjuring Ophelia’s brook, would be not dissimilar to an aural kaleidoscope, much as Shakespeare paints a kaleidoscope of themes, logic, and, as Hamlet would say, “Words, words, words” (Shakespeare, 1992, 2.2.210) in his characterization of Ophelia.

            Berlioz’s (1903) decision to conclude “La Mort D’Ophelié” with nearly two pages of melismas similarly demonstrates significant insight into her state of mind at this point in the play (p. 13),  an insight that he was not alone in having. Charles Ambroise Thomas (1868) includes melismas to an even greater extent throughout his depiction of this scene in his complete setting of Hamlet – particularly starting at the Allegretto of the mad scene (pp. 294-303). These figurations have significance because a melisma is when a single vowel is sung on multiple pitches, thereby preferencing sound over the word; connoting a lack of logos or articulation, the absence of which is rife throughout the play -- perhaps most starkly in the figure of King Hamlet, who serves as the driving force for the play’s action.

            In the very first scene of Hamlet, the audience finds Horatio, Barnardo, and Marcellus encountering the king’s ghost, the mere presence of which already defies logic, as both Hamlet and Horatio note. It is furthermore significant that this specter remains inarticulate until the end of the first act, despite many entreaties for it to speak. Eventually, though, King Hamlet reveals that Claudius poured hemlock into his ear and that, consequently, “the whole ear of Denmark / Is by a forgèd process of (his) death / Rankly abused” (Shakespeare, 1992, 1.5.43-45). Already, the implications of logos in the storyline are manifold. For one, the king’s death came about via the poisoning of his ear, which is how logos is communicated. This action connotes an attack on the reasoning process itself, as the two are inexorably tied (Funk, 2010, p. 3). In keeping with this, the revelation of the manner of the king’s death throws Hamlet’s “symbolic order” (Johnston, 2013) into a tailspin, which Horatio immediately recognizes when he tells Hamlet in their ensuing conversation, “These are but wild and whirling words, my lord” (Shakespeare, 1992, 1.5.148).

            The breakdown of logos that Hamlet experiences upon his father's death is also something that Ophelia goes through in Act III, Scene I. In this scene, Hamlet conflates her with his mother and denies he ever loved her, whereupon she says, "I, of ladies most deject and wretched, / That sucked the honey of his musicked vows, / Now see that noble and most sovereign reason, / Like sweet bells jangled, out of time and harsh" (Shakespeare, 1992, 3.1.169-172). While, in context, she is referring here to Hamlet's lack of reason and the pain it has caused her, the last two lines in this quotation also foreshadow what will happen to her by Act IV, scene v. Like Hamlet, her once reasonable mind will be plucked "out of time" and turned "harsh." Not only do the implications of this further buttress the decision to represent a lack of logos with melismas in a musical setting of this scene, but it also has implications in the duality instantiated within invertible counterpoint. Namely, the instances of inversion that would be used in a fugal setting of this scene could metaphorically represent both the brook in which Ophelia dies and the fact that she and Hamlet are reflections of one another with similar themes undergirding their characterizations. This dyadic quality of their relationship also has significance in the subject of articulation, as inarticulate phenomena are without distinction.

            The notion of a lack of distinction comes up in innumerable ways throughout the play. In the scenes already mentioned, when King Hamlet refers to his death, he fails to distinguish between his ear and that of all of Denmark. Additionally, Hamlet doesn't differentiate between his anger towards his mother and Ophelia, and Ophelia, as quoted previously, doesn't distinguish between her eventual madness and Hamlet's. This lack of distinction could be conveyed musically through the omission of a perfect authentic cadence (or PAC) at the conclusion of the proposed piece, as this would signify an open-endedness to the musical thought being expressed in the composition. Interestingly, this notion has some historical precedence, for not only is a final PAC missing from Berlioz's (1903) setting of the mad scene (p. 14), but it is also absent from the final song in Richard Strauss' (1964) "Ophelia Lieder" (p. 297).  

            In Western classical music, the most fundamental harmonic relationship has traditionally been that between the V and I chord. It establishes the tonality of a given piece and gives the listener a sense of resolution at the end of phrases, movements, and compositions. Consequently, in much of tonal music, pieces are commonly concluded with a perfect authentic cadence. However, composers can also play with the listener’s expectation for this kind of resolution and leave them without ever satisfying it in various ways (Smit et al., 2020, p. 2). In the case of the two compositions at hand, Berlioz (1903) concludes his piece with a viiº chord that contains an accented dissonance, followed by a repetition of the I chord over three bars (p. 14). While this constitutes a cadential motion, it is not a PAC and so does not give the listener the kind of resolution they expect. The same is true of Strauss’ (1964) “Sie trugen ihn auf der Bahre bloss,“ as he interpolates a viiº7 of iii chord between his I6/4 and I chords, rather than placing the typical V7 chord there (p. 297). The resultant effect of these techniques is that the listener gets the impression that the composer and, by extension, Ophelia, is abandoning the symbolic order of harmony, much as Ophelia does linguistically in the play.

            Strauss (1964) employs another technique in the second song of his "Ophelia Lieder," "Guten Morgen, 's ist Sankt Valentinstag" that similarly betrays her intrapsychic state at this point in the play. Namely, he includes several rapid shifts in tessitura. As a result, the singer must sing sequences of notes squarely within the span of one of the two pure vocal registers and then suddenly jump up or down to sing in the other for a while. Employing this technique would be an effective choice in any setting of this scene for several reasons. For one, much like the coloratura that Thomas so famously and deftly employs in his depiction of Ophelia in Act IV, Scene V, it gives the impression of mania. This effect is attributable to the singer audibly taxing their capacity to express musical ideas incredibly quickly. This kind of melodic movement is also usually through-composed, as it is supposed to sound quasi-improvisatory. Consequently, its thematic material is left undeveloped to a great extent, representing a similar eschewing of a type of musical symbolic order and further making the material seem stream-of-conscious.

            Coloratura and shifts in tessitura also highlight the differentiation between the chest voice and falsetto, representing yet another duality and instance of delineation that can be exploited. Because both vocal registers, even if they are well-merged, entail some form of a timbral shift, doing so gives the impression of one person having two voices. Having Ophelia highlight this could represent two things: 1. Her trying to re-create the “other” that she has lost within herself by metaphorically depicting a fracturing of her intrapsychic makeup (otherwise known as disassociation), or 2. Her failure to make distinctions between inter- and intra-subjective phenomena, as the changes in timbre would sound as if her relationship to her identity as a subject was tenuous. Both of these effects are perfectly in keeping with the themes of dyadic characterization and the blurring of reason outlined so far.  

            The idea of using shifts in tessituras to represent different speakers within a single text has some historical precedent, most notably in Franz Schubert’s (1821) famous song, “Erlkönig,” in which he sets Goethe’s ballad of the same name to music. In it, he not only changes the texture and harmonic landscape when the speaker shifts between the father, son, narrator, and Erlking, but he also uses changes in registration to delineate each character’s passages. However, exploiting the timbral shifts in the vocal registers to denote either a fracturing or dissolving of Ophelia’s sense of self is not the extent of the implications that the registers could have in her musical characterization.

            In elucidating the role that the two vocal registers could play in a musical portrayal of Ophelia, it may surprisingly be helpful to turn to a purely recited interpretation of her character. Of those on record, that by Ellen Terry (1911), one of the late 19th century’s most accomplished actresses, is among the most compelling – and it is a depiction in which she exploits the qualities of both registers to a startling effect. Because Terry was active long before the advent of microphones, she had to develop her chest voice to an enormous extent. This development was necessary because the chest voice (specifically the action of the vocal folds that it entails) is the register that is responsible for carrying power, or what is known as “the singer’s formant” (Lee et al., 2008). On careful listening, one can discern the degree to which Terry’s folds approximate, resulting in a rich, resonant sound when speaking. Because chest action results in an increase in dynamic, people often employ this register when they want to be particularly emphatic or convey emotional immediacy – both behaviors that would be in keeping with the mania that Ophelia displays in this scene.

            It bears mentioning that when reciting Ophelia’s songs in the original scene, Terry (1911) switches to a more falsetto-dominant register configuration. One of the reasons why she likely does this is because employing falsetto results in a scaling back of one’s dynamic. Consequently, she gives the listener the impression that she is singing to herself, as her volume indicates that she is not primarily concerned with whether others can hear her. This attitude is in keeping with the interpretation of Ophelia being cut off from the “other” at this moment in the play, whether that be Hamlet, the other characters in this scene, or the audience.

Based on Terry’s portrayal, a singer would need to have equal facility in the emotionally immediate chest voice and the quiet, supple falsetto in her interpretation of this scene. Because of this, it would make sense to score a musical setting of this scene for mezzo-soprano, as they constitute the mid-range female vocal fach, with their natural tessituras straddling the two registers comparatively equally. Because they have more facility in their falsetto than their lower vocal counterpart, contraltos, it would also mean that they would have a slight advantage in performing the type of coloratura mentioned earlier. Surprisingly, Berlioz (1903) was unique in sharing these emotional and technical insights into the registers, as he is the only composer under discussion to score Ophelia as someone other than a soprano.

            An analysis of Ellen Terry’s (1911) performance of this scene yields another notable insight regarding the subject of a musical setting – namely, the harmonic contour of the melodies that she sings for Ophelia’s various songs. Though there is no information available on the degree to which her choices were informed by music theory, her interpretations of the melodies are notably haunting. This is both a consequence of her delivery, and also that, while tonal, many of the melodies are highly chromatic and not in a functional, tonal idiom. As Polonius says of Hamlet’s murmurings, the result is that they give the impression of being “pregnant” with meaning (Shakespeare, 1992, 2.2.226-227). In other words, they bear vestiges of a functional tonal idiom, but one that is heavily obscured through chromaticism. As Terry demonstrates, just like omitting a PAC at the end of a musical setting of this scene, playing around with chromaticism or functional harmony would be another way of dissolving the symbolic order that Ophelia so evidently eschews in the text of this scene.

            One last characteristic that lends a haunting quality to Terry’s (1911) melodies is that she sings them completely unaccompanied. Doing so connotes a kind of isolation and open-endedness, as monophonic melodies merely imply a harmonic contour, leaving the audience to extrapolate their underlying harmonies. This dynamic causes the audience to do what Ophelia is doing at this moment: mentally conjuring an “other” (in this case, harmony), set in relief against the silence that actually accompanies her. Including monophonic lines in a musical composition is perfectly amenable to a fugal setting, as most fugues begin with an unaccompanied subject. Fugues also sometimes only have the subject and countersubject playing at a given moment, which similarly would encourage a sparse treatment of the melodies (Mann, 1987, p. 185).

            Through analysis of Ophelia’s characterization, both throughout Hamlet and, in particular, in Act IV, Scene V itself, this paper has endeavored to make a compelling case for a new musical setting of this storied moment in literature. In doing so, it is essential to look at the different ways this task has been undertaken over the more than 400 years since Shakespeare’s magnum opus premiered, whether that be with the work of Berlioz, R. Strauss, or Thomas. This paper has made the argument using textural evidence and various elements of music theory that Ophelia’s state of mind before she dies is best exemplified by a harmonically non-functional, though tonal fugue (perhaps even a mirror fugue, though certainly one that contains invertible counterpoint and several instances of inversion and retrogression), scored for mezzo-soprano. However, if this paper has accomplished one thing, it should be to help demonstrate the genius and depth of Shakespeare’s characterization of Ophelia – a figure that has reverberated throughout the centuries and will continue to ignite artistic emulation across mediums for untold years to come. 

References

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·      Berlioz, H., & Legouvé, E. (1903). La mort d'Ophélie: Ballade d’après Shakespeare. (C.

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·      Funk, J. (2010). The Return of Logos: Language and Meaning in Hamlet. The Oswald Review: An International Journal of Undergraduate Research and Criticism in the Discipline of English: Vol. 12 , Article 3.

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·      Lee, S.H., Kwon, H.J., Choi, H.J., Lee, N.H., Lee, S.J., & Jin, S.M. (2008). The singer's formant and speaker's ring resonance: a long-term average spectrum analysis. [Abstract]. Clinical and experimental otorhinolaryngology vol. 1(2) https://doi.org/10.3342/ceo.2008.1.2.92

·      Mann, A. (1987). The Study of Fugue: Unabridged Dover edition. Dover Publications.

·      Schubert, F., & Goethe, J.W. (1821). Erlkönig:Ballade von Göthe.[Musical Score]. Diabelli.

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·      Smit, E. A., Dobrowohl, F. A., Schaal, N. K., Milne, A. J., & Herff, S. A. (2020). Perceived Emotions of Harmonic Cadences. [Abstract]. Music & Science, 3. https://doi.org/10.1177/2059204320938635

·      Strauss, R., & Shakespeare, W. (1964). Drei Lieder der Ophelia. [Musical score]. Boosey &

Hawkes. (Original work published 1919) 

·      Terry, E. (1911). Ophelia's mad scene, part 2. [Recitation]. Victor Talking Machine Company. https://adp.library.ucsb.edu/index.php/matrix/detail/1000002522/C-9992-Ophelias_mad_scene_part_2