DESCRIPTION:
From the piano suite 'Ophelia and the Language of Flowers', premiered in Tokyo 2009
Sheet music at http://www.scoreexchange.com/scores/146386.html

Inspired by Millais' painting the Prelude is a musical summary of Shakespeare's Ophelia narrative, reflecting something of the symbolism associated with the willow, forsaken love. It aims to capture something of Ophelia's bewilderment and despair at being spurned by Hamlet - following the accidental slaughter of her father at Hamlet's hand - and the beguiling welcome of release in death as she drifts downstream, borne on the water's surface by the buoyancy of her skirts. The speech-rhythm of Ophelia's name is used to generate some of the main melodic and rhythmic motives.

"There is a willow grows aslant a brook,
That shows his hoar leaves in the glassy stream;
. .
There, on the pendent boughs her coronet weeds
Clambering to hang, an envious sliver broke;
When down her weedy trophies and herself
Fell in the weeping brook. Her clothes spread wide;
And, mermaid-like, awhile they bore her up:
Which time she chanted snatches of old lauds;
As one incapable of her own distress,
Or like a creature native and indued
Unto that element: but long it could not be
Till that her garments, heavy with their drink,
Pull'd the poor wretch from her melodious lay
To muddy death." Hamlet Act 4 Scene 7