Eight Songs for a Mad King


Eight Songs for a Mad King is a monodrama by Sir Peter Maxwell Davies with a libretto by Randolph Stow, based on words of George III. The work was written for the South-African actor Roy Hart and the composer's ensemble, the Pierrot Players. It was premiered on 22 April 1969.
Lasting half an hour, it is scored for a baritone with an extraordinary command of extended techniques covering more than five octaves, and six players :
The songs derive from tunes played by an extant mechanical organ owned by George III, tunes that he attempted to train bullfinches to sing:
  1. The Sentry
  2. The Country Walk
  3. The Lady-In-Waiting
  4. To Be Sung on the Water
  5. The Phantom Queen
  6. The Counterfeit
  7. Country Dance
  8. The Review
The action unfolds as a soliloquy by the king, the players being placed on stage in large birdcages, and climaxes in his snatching and smashing the violin.
The score is published by Boosey & Hawkes, and its cover shows a famous excerpt in which the staves are arranged like the bars of a birdcage.
Besides Hart, exponents of this work have included William Pearson, Michael Rippon, Thomas Meglioranza, Julius Eastman and Vincent Ranallo. The Swedish baritone Olle Persson performed the work in Stockholm in the 1990s. The British baritone Richard Suart has performed the piece in Gelsenkirchen‚ Milan‚ Helsinki‚ Strasbourg‚ Stavanger and Paris; in 1987 The Musical Times described Suart's take as "compelling from start to finish". Welsh baritone Kelvin Thomas sang the role at Munich's Kammerspiele Schauspielhaus in 2011, and in a production by Music Theatre Wales in 2013.