Record ground-breaking new Jane Austen song

Over the centuries many great writers have had their poetry set to music... Shakespeare, Goethe, Burns, Rossetti to name a few. Now it's the turn of Jane Austen!

Music was very important to Jane. As a pianist and singer herself, she collected her favourite songs and piano pieces into albums from a young age, and sang them for friends and family.

So, to celebrate her 250th anniversary next year, I (Penelope Appleyard, singer and Austen fan!) have commissioned internationally renowned composer Donna McKevitt to set Jane's teenage poem 'Ode to Pity' (1793) to music, for voice and square piano. This will be performed as part of new recital programme 'Sense & Musicality' featuring myself and pianist Jonathan Delbridge, owner of a magnificent square piano, close in age to Jane's own instrument.

"I can't wait to hear what Donna McKevitt makes of the teenage Jane Austen's wryly romantic verse!" - Dr Gillian Dooley, author of 'She played and sang: Jane Austen and Music'.

The song is being composed as I type, but we need to raise the funds to record and promote it, and potentially make history! This could be the first ever setting of Austen's poem as a classical song, as well as the first contemporary music written for square piano.

The new song will be inspired by the music that influenced the seventeen year old poet, as well as what we know she sang and enjoyed throughout her lifetime. Composed on a modern Broadwood piano for performance on a Broadwood square piano (Jane's was probably also a Broadwood) this song connects female writer, composer, singer and instruments across the centuries and is highly significant for both classical music and literature.

We would be so grateful for contributions, of any size, so we can share this amazing writer's teenage words with the world through song.

Ode To Pity

Ever musing I delight to tread

The Paths of honour and the Myrtle Grove

Whilst the pale Moon her beams doth shed

On disappointed Love.

While Philomel on airy hawthorn Bush

Sings sweet and Melancholy, And the thrush

Converses with the Dove.

Gently brawling down the turnpike road,

Sweetly noisy falls the Silent Stream—

The Moon emerges from behind a Cloud

And darts upon the Myrtle Grove her beam.

Ah! then what Lovely Scenes appear,

The hut, the Cot, the Grot, and Chapel queer,

And eke the Abbey too a mouldering heap,

Conceal'd by aged pines her head doth rear

And quite invisible doth take a peep.