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Miller Theatre Program Notes

Iannis Xenakis: Oresteia

Saturday, September 13, 2008, 8:00PM

Tuesday, September 16, 2008, 8:00PM

Wednesday, September 17, 2008, 8:00PM

Introduction

I felt I was born too lateI had missed two millennia. I didnt know what there was for me to do in thetwentieth century. (Conversations with Iannis Xenakis, by Blint Andrs Varga)

Composer of electronic music, rethinker of the orchestra, startling defier of the norms of goodinstrumental sound, pioneer of musical cybernetics, Xenakis here situates his modernity in the distantpast, as if his music were all about revivifying an archaic culture, making the statues speakand sing.Often he would chose titles for his works with reference to the literature, philosophy, and religion ofGreece in classical or pre-classical times. Only rarely, however, did he form his music directly on themodel of an ancient text. Not only is his treatment of the Oresteia(The Orestes Story) the mostsubstantial of these exceptions, it is also his longest work and the one that took him longest tocomplete, for to his original score of the mid-1960s he made additions in the late 1980s and early1990s.

This is a story with many beginnings. One was in Athens during World War II, when Xenakis,then a student, stood in the halls of the National Archaeological Museum and first started wishingaway those two millennia (and more). Another was in 458 B.C., again in Athens, when Aeschylusnowin his mid-sixties and the most famed dramatist of the agepresented his fellow citizens with a trilogyunfolding how a young man was beset by supernatural forces for fulfilling his obligation to revenge hisfathers murder. Still others lay in yet earlier centuries, when the pieces of the Orestes legend cametogether out of history and invention. And there was another in the small town of Ypsilanti, Michigan,which decided in 1963 to honor its Greek heritage (Demetrius Ypsilanti, for whom the place wasnamed, was a hero of the Greek War of Independence) by building an amphitheater for an annual

festival of Greek drama.As it turned out, the debut performances in the summer of 1966 took place on a makeshiftstage on the college baseball field, with an audience in the bleachers. Nevertheless, ambitionsremained high. Alexis Solomos, artistic head of the National Theater of Greece, was brought in todirect. He had worked with Xenakis in Athens in 1964 on another Aeschylus play, The Suppliants, andnow he called on the composer again, to supply music for what was the U.S. professional premiere ofthe Oresteia. There was also a starry cast. Judith Anderson, as Clytemnestra, turned the ball field intoa nightmare-real landscape of bloody tragedy, according to Timemagazine.

Like other composers writing music for the Oresteiain the 20th century, from Darius Milhaudto Harrison Birtwistle, Xenakis evidently strove for the elemental and the hieratic, as if to evoke theremoteness of the source material in the act of making it so very present. The instrumental score, foran ensemble of wind and percussion plus a lone cello, is often rude and brazen, the harmonies

rendered savage by quarter-tones. Many of the choruss contributions, set for groups of men, women,and children, suggest that the lineage of Greek drama can be traced straight through to the chant ofthe Orthodox Church. Elsewhere come signal, fanfare, and brute noise, with all the non-percussionistperformers also playing small percussion instruments. Greek theater, we are reminded, was ceremony,a ceremony of life and death.

In 1967 Xenakis recast his Ypsilanti score as a 40-minute concert piece. Twenty years laterhe brought the music back to the stage and added a new section, Kassandra, for a performance amidthe ruins of Gibellina, Sicily. This was only a few kilometers from the burial place of Aeschylus at Gela,

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as he noted in the score for the new piece, which he devised for two artists with whom he hadcollaborated before, the actor-singer Spiros Sakkas and the percussionist Sylvio Gualda. The work wasrecorded by Radio France in Strasbourg soon after the Gibellina production, and this is theperformance to be heard on the Nave album MO 782151. A second section for Sakkas, La DesseAthna(The Goddess Athene), was written for a performance in Athens in 1992, honoring thecomposer on his 70th birthday, and creating a final version that plays for over an hour.

Torn from the theater and restored, put together at different stages in the composers life,leaving out much of the drama, or else representing it by instrumental commentary, wildly disparate instyle and tone, Xenakiss Oresteiathrives on disunity. The statues sing indeed. They are broken andstand amid wreckage, but it is their condition and status as remnants that gives them power. They havesurvived. From more than two millennia ago, they are still here.

The Aeschylus story in brief

The chorus, onstage throughout, says more than any individual, whether in lengthy passages ofdescription or narration, or else in dialogue with the characters. The action they observe, interrogate,expound, and review starts with news arriving in Argos of the fall of Troy and the imminent return ofthe Argive king, Agamemnon, after a decade-long campaign. ClytemnestraAgamemnons wife, who

has governed in his absencewelcomes her husband back. However, he brings with him a trophyconcubine, the Trojan princess Cassandra. Clytemnestra kills both of them, justifying herself on thegrounds not only of Agamemnons adultery but also of his sacrifice of their daughter Iphigenia on theway to Troy. She stakes her claim to go on ruling with Aegisthus, the consort she took whileAgamemnon was away.

Orestes, son of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra, returns to Argos and meets his sister Electraat their fathers tomb. Together they decide on vengeance. Orestes duly kills Aegisthus and, aftersome hesitation, Clytemnestra. Then he stands to face the chorus (and the audience), likeClytemnestra before him, a revenger over two bodies. However, he lacks his mothers bold confidence,sensing rather that he is pursued by the Furies for his sin of matricide.

With the Furies at his back, Orestes appeals to the gods: first Apollo, then Athene, whodeclares there must be a trial, before a jury of Athenians, to decide whether or not Orestes acted justly

in killing his mother. The jurors are evenly divided, and so Athene gives her casting vote, in favor ofOrestes. When the Furies complain, Athene transforms them from demonic creatures into mankindshelpmates.

The Xenakis version

Xenakiss work presents fragments of the three plays in due order, beginning with theAgamemnon,which tells of the kings return and murder. A quick double stamp from the ensemble introduces ashort prelude in which instruments growl and slither within hot, quarter-tone space. Then the chorusenters: men in unison answering a soloist. The ensuing instrumental section, with high wailing oboe,reflects the sacrifice of Iphigenia, after which the chorus returns, cursing Helen of Troy in bare fourths.Another instrumental lament leads back toward the atmosphere of the prelude, now with speaking

chorus. A fanfare frames the arrival of Agamemnon, whose speech is replaced by pounding drumswith slow glissandos from super-high piccolo and cello, on harmonics, and brass punctuations.When Agamemnon has gone into the palace and his wife Clytemnestra has followed him,

Cassandra is left onstage with the chorus. At this point comes Xenakiss first insertion, Kassandra,involving a male vocalist also strumming a psaltery, an instrument the composer used here as a directdescendant of the ancient lyre, together with a percussionist performing on skin drums and woodblocks. The vocalist, whose part is notated as a waving line, alternates between falsetto speaking orsinging for Cassandras lines and his baritone register when he is acting as the chorus, so that thewhole scene (somewhat cut) is delivered as split monologue. In graphic imagery, and at extraordinary

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musical tension, Cassandra foresees Agamemnons murder at the hands of his wifea prophesy thechorus interprets as madness.

Xenakiss earlier score picks up just before the scene of Agamemnons slaughter, the kingsdying words being relayed by the chorus, still of men only, crying out. Then the same chorus sings inoutbursts of lament before the scene ends with instrumental music for Clytemnestras self-justification.

We now proceed to the second play, the Choephoroi(The Libation-Bearers), so calledbecause it opens with Orestes, son of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra, watching as his sister Electraand other women arrive at Agamemnons tomb to pour a libation (an offering of oil or wine), a tributeClytemnestra has ordered to salve her guilty conscience. The instrumental opening, of keening linespunctuated by wood block, replaces the lines in which Aeschyluss chorus considers the queensdemeanor. Then Xenakis introduces his chorus, of women in this part of the trilogy, giving a differentcolor from that of the male-dominatedAgamemnon. There are no soloists. The chorus first sings alament, in phrases separated by a clangorous quarter-tone chord; then, with percussion only, they rattleoff a dialogue in which Electra and Orestes move toward a demand for vengeance. Extremely highpiccolo notes and cello harmonics lead to a choral chant of expectation while Orestes is in the palace.Trombone, cello, and percussion create an ominous atmosphere before Aegisthuss death cry is heard.Then an instrumental passage supports Orestess confrontation with Clytemnestra, and the play ends

with sirens and percussion.The third play takes its title from the new name the gruesome Furies who have been doggingOrestes get at the close: The Eumenides(The Kindly Ones). Far from kindly at first, these darkcreatures, introduced by subterranean wind tones and percussion, mutter in complaint to Apollo andsing a chant of blood lust. According to an ancient story, this episode had such an effect at the firstperformance that a pregnant woman miscarried and died.

A shrill fanfare announces the arrival of Athene, and of La Desse Athna, in which the solomale vocalist again switches between baritone and falsetto declamation, but now on fixed pitches andas a single person, the goddess, decreeing that her favored people of Athens shall henceforth decidehomicide cases by trial. There is no psaltery this time, but accompaniment for the full wind-celloensemble plus solo drummer.

In the final sequence, the chorus delivers the argument between Athene and the Furies in

which the latter agree to become the Eumenides, and a choir of children comes forward with a hymn,personifying them in their new role. The plays final chorus is sung by the full chorus in an atmosphereof mounting celebration and noise.

Paul Griffiths (www.disgwylfa.com)Miller Theatre has commissioned writer and music critic Paul Griffiths

to write the program notes for its 20thanniversary season of events.