FOSTERING BRASS CHAMBER MUSIC
Serenade to Music
Extraction by Elam Sprenkle from Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice, Act V


  • Lorenzo. How sweet the moonlight sleeps upon this bank!
    Here will we sit and let the sounds of music
    Creep in our ears: soft stillness and the night
    Become the touches of sweet harmony.
    Look how the floor of heaven
    Is thick inlaid with patines of bright gold:
    There's not the smallest orb which thou behold'st
    But in his motion like an angel sings,
    Still quiring to the young-eyed cherubins;
    Such harmony is in immortal souls;
    But whilst this muddy vesture of decay
    Doth grossly close it in, we cannot hear it.

    Come, ho! and wake Diana with a hymn!
    With sweetest touches pierce your mistress' ear,
    And draw her home with music.
  • Jessica. I am never merry when I hear sweet music.
  • Lorenzo. The reason is, your spirits are attentive:
    The man that hath no music in himself,
    Is fit for treasons, stratagems and spoils;
    The motions of his spirit are dull as night
    And his affections dark as Erebus:
  • Portia. Music! hark!
  • Nerissa. It is your music, madam, of the house.
  • Portia. Methinks it sounds much sweeter than by day.
  • Nerissa. Silence bestows that virtue on it, madam.
  • Portia. How many things by season season'd are
    To their right praise and true perfection!
    Peace, ho! the moon sleeps with Endymion
  • Soft stillness and the night become the touches of sweet harmony
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