Penelope Appleyard and Jonathan Delbridge: "Sense and Musicality"

Sense and Musicality explores the importance of music in Janes life, and her relationship with it.Accompanied on an historic square piano from 1814, Sense & Musicality includes music Jane played and sang herself (many being scores found in the Austen family music albums, often in her own hand) as well as music and composers mentioned or suggested in her novels.

Also included are pieces from the soundtracks of well known screen adaptations, quotes from her writing, as well as extracts from letters between Jane and family members, most often her beloved sister Cassandra.Ode to Pity is a brand new composition by Donna McKevitt, commissioned especially for this programme, and is a musical setting of Austens teenage poem (1793) which she wrote when she was 17.

Donna McKevitt has been inspired by the folk music Jane would have heard at the time, creating a song the young author might have enjoyed singing herself.

Musical settings of Austens poetry are extremely rare and there appear to be none currently performed or recorded in the English Song repertoire.

This commission may also be the first contemporary music written especially for square piano.

The recording of this track was released on 19th September 2025.