Humphrey Clucas - Serenade for soprano & double bass quartet Words by William Shakespeare (The Merchant of Venice)

'Serenade' is about music; the words are Shakespearean. The two verses of the song 'O mistress mine' act as book-ends to some words from The Merchant of Venice. These tell of the (to us) silent but imagined music of the spheres, and then, by contrast, of 'the man that hath no music in his soul'; two of the four double basses in this latter section are fixed on a monotone, where ...