Caliban and Ariel are musical opposites. Ariel’s songs are quite complex and difficult to sing, but Caliban’s music is extremely simple. His song is mainly variations on the same phrase, repeated over and over again. Caliban uses only simple intervals, with none of the tricky dissonance that the actor playing Ariel has to negotiate. (As can be heard on the recordings, Ian Charleson was an extremely accomplished singer, which is a necessity for managing Woolfenden’s Ariel songs.) Woolfenden doesn’t explicitly use music for characterisation, as some composers do. He doesn’t give Prospero, Ferdinand or Miranda musical themes, for example. But his music does add to the characterisation of Ariel and Caliban. When Ariel sings, he always has instrumental accompaniment — he commands the island’s music. But Caliban has no such support. When he sings, he sings alone. Even though he is the island’s sole inhabitant, Woolfenden’s setting supports the idea that Caliban is an outcast, a stranger in his own home.
In this production, Caliban is also a figure of ridicule. When Stephano commands him to ‘lead the way’, there’s a comic reprise of the tune from ‘Ban Ban Caliban’, starting with a glissando (slide) on the trombone and now accompanied by Rototoms and timpani. The impression is that Caliban is clumsy, loud, and more than a little bit tipsy. The trombone glissando is often used to accompany comic characters in films and on stage, establishing the connection between this particular sound and the comedy figure.
