Jane Austen music is focus of Seattle Symphony program
"Yes, yes, we will have a Pianoforte, as good a one as can be got for 30 Guineas," wrote the author Jane Austen to her sister Cassandra in 1808, noting that she would practice playing country dances as amusement for their young relatives, when we have the pleasure of their company."
More than two centuries later, in a Seattle far from anything Austen could ever have imagined, we can now hear those very dances at Benaroya Hall on Friday. "The Music of Jane Austen," a special one-night program at Seattle Symphony in honor of the recent 250th anniversary of Austen's birth, will include "Jane Austen's Songbook," selections from sheet music transcribed long ago by Austen herself, an enthusiastic amateur musician who diligently practiced on her pianoforte every morning. Scholars have, in recent years, been able to digitize the Austen family's music books, bringing a taste of Regency-era parlor music to the modern world.
"We've taken some of those pieces of music and blown them up," said Andrew Joslyn, the Symphony's associate director for popular programming, who curated the program. The "Jane Austen's Songbook" selections, he said, are all world premieres, written originally just for pianoforte and voice, some from recognizable composers of the era like Franz Joseph Haydn, some folk tunes - "little vignettes of a different time, of music that she was probably playing and singing in her own voice." They'll be played by the full Symphony, under the baton of associate conductor Sunny Xia.
Singing some of those tunes on Friday will be another Jane: soprano Jane Eaglen, well known to Seattle Opera audiences for multiple roles, particularly in Wagner's "Ring cycle. Eaglen's connection to Austen goes back several decades: Her voice can be heard on the soundtrack of the 1995 Ang Lee movie "Sense and Sensibility," singing "The Dreame," a meditative ballad written by Eaglen and the film's composer, Patrick Doyle, based on a poem by the Renaissance-era playwright Ben Jonson. She'll also perform that song in "The Music of Jane Austen," as well as "Weep You No More Sad Fountains," performed on-screen in the film by Kate Winslet.
Much of "The Music of Jane Austen" will be devoted to music many Austen fans will know well: selections from the soundtracks of several adaptations of Austen's work, including the 1995 A&E/BBC miniseries "Pride and Prejudice" composed by Carl Davis, and films including the 1996 "Emma" by Rachel Portman, the 1999 "Mansfield Park" by Lesley Barber, the 2005 "Pride & Prejudice" by Dario Marianelli, the 2020 "Emma" by Isobel Waller-Bridge and David Schweitzer, and several excerpts from Doyle's "Sense and Sensibility" orchestral score.
"So much of the general public is very aware of the films, these fantastic little forays into Jane Austen's world in film," Joslyn said. "It felt like for us to do the show right, we had to have some representation of the film scores." Working with the European music production company Europäische Filmphilharmonie (which handled the rights and was able to determine what works were available), Joslyn put together the program, wanting to be sure to be "properly representing such a wide scope of different composers and their takes on the Jane Austen world."
Serving as the audience's guide for the evening will be another familiar face: British actor Susannah Harker, who played Jane Bennet in the beloved 1995 A&E/BBC "Pride and Prejudice" (or, as it is known universally, "the Colin Firth one"). Joslyn described her role as "our MC/curator/announcer throughout the program," and said she will be introducing the musical selections and reading a few passages from Austen novels.
Joslyn, who admits that the show is a belated birthday gift to his wife ("a huge Jane Austen fan"), is excited to reveal "The Music of Jane Austen" to an audience - "this will be an absolutely unique experience for patrons." He's not aware of any previous Seattle Symphony evenings focused on an author as opposed to a composer, but hopes this might be the beginning of a new tradition. "I would love to continue down this route and look at other authors and their relationships with music, and see if there's other curated programs we could do like this," he said. "This one seemed like honestly a no-brainer to start with."
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This story was originally published May 11, 2026 at 5:01 PM.