Feature interview: Withington puts Shakespeare to music on Love’s Best Habit

By Christopher Taylor

Grant Withington is recording a new album based on sonnets by Shakespeare.

Senior English major Grant Withington of Raleigh, NC is recording an album called Love’s Best Habit. It features nine Shakespearean sonnets he has adapted to music as part of his senior integration project. The Bagpipe sat down with Grant to talk about the album and the process of adapting Shakespeare.

CT: When did you first get the idea of putting Shakespeare sonnets to music?

GW: Freshman year of high school. We were doing a poetry section in my English literature class. I came across sonnet number 71 and it made an impression on me. I thought it was brilliant, and I was surprised at how well I understood it. In the past I thought of Shakespearean language as difficult and over my head. I wrote the sonnet on the back of a notebook where it stayed for years. I always thought it would be great if it were set to music. It seemed so lyrical. I had made several attempts to force it into musical form, but nothing fit.

CT: How did you arrive at the melody you have now?

GW: In 2005 I was writing a piece of music. It had a certain flow that seemed to lend itself to iambic pentameter. When I applied sonnet 71 to the music, it matched perfectly; not just the syllables and rhythm, but the nature of the words themselves went with the melody.

CT: How did this become part of your SIP?

GW: I was working on a full length screenplay for my SIP. It was going to be around 120 pages. I just came to a point where I wasn’t interested in doing it anymore. I didn’t know what direction to take it in, and I simply didn’t have the drive to finish it well. Over Spring Break I decided to switch to something I was more passionate about, a subject I was more familiar with.

CT: Do you feel the album is something non-Shakespeare fans can enjoy?

GW: The whole point of the project is to make the sonnets accessible to people who would not normally read them, similar to how [Kenneth] Branagh has used his film adaptations to bring Shakespeare to a generation that would not otherwise sit down and read the plays. I wanted to help revitalize a language that is considered archaic. But it was very important to me to keep the integrity of the original text. I didn’t want to update it or modernize it. I wanted it to flow naturally.

CT: Why did you choose the sonnets you did?

GW: When I had the idea for this project, I read every one of his 154 sonnets again. I wanted to pick ones where the language didn’t get in the way or feel stiff. Many of the sonnets do not lend themselves to music. I didn’t want it to seem forced. I wanted sonnets that had varying moods. The passage of time, fleeting beauty, the timelessness of poetry, and the true nature of love were some of the main themes I wanted to explore. There are sonnets I use that talk about poetry living beyond the poet, which is something I am trying to encourage. I want to show that Shakespeare’s words are just as powerful today as they always were. They have not lost their weight.

CT: Who else plays on the album?

GW: My brother Ben is producing it, Dave Hess on piano, David Henry on bass and trumpet and a handful of other Covenant musicians.
Love’s Best Habit will be completed this spring and available for purchase in the fall.