As You Like It, overture for orchestra, Op. 28

• Composer: John Knowles Paine
• Period: Romantic (1820-1869)

Review

John Knowles Paine was the first important American composer with thorough European compositional training and in 1873 became the first professor of music in a major American university (Harvard). His training was solidly Germanic, obtained during the late 1850s, and so was based on the examples of German symphonic music from Beethoven to Schumann.

The impetus to write an overture on Shakespeare's play As You Like It was similar to that which persuaded the young Mendelssohn to composer the overture to A Midsummer Night's Dream. That is, both works are pure concert music, inspired directly by the spirit of their respective plays and not written with any theatrical performance in mind. (Mendelssohn's Overture became part of a composition of incidental music to the play only years later.) Paine's music is more abstract than Mendelssohn's: There is no specific theme associated with any of the characters, situations, or setting of the play. Instead, it brilliantly captures of the spirit of the play, beginning with a slow introduction featuring a clarinet solo and progressing to an energetic, dancing main section in 6/4 time.

The overture was well received at its premiere in Boston in 1876 and received several performances in the 1800s. There are signs that it was undergoing a mild revival by the end of the twentieth century ~ Joseph Stevenson, Rovi

Albums with Complete Performances of the Work

Title	Date
John Knowles Paine: Overture to Shakespeare's As You Like It, Op. 28; Symphony No. 1	1989

Previous:	As You Like It, overture for orchestra, Op. 166
Next:	As You Like It, poem for soprano & orchestra (after the film score, arr. by C. Palmer)