KHAOS – Scene 6Well it’s 3 months into the new year and ages since anything has been posted on the site. This absence is actually due to real progress on the libretto writing front as well as some modest inroads into the music. Nicola has come up with some beautiful prose and I can’t tell you how exciting it is to wake up and find a libretto filled email waiting to be put to music.
Having worked in film for such a long time I am used to responding musically to visual cues, whereas working from a page of prose I have to imagine the scene entirely. It’s a new and exciting challenge. In a number of attempts at writing the music for scene 6, my interpretation of the text lead me down a musical pathway that slightly misrepresented the emotions of Demeter. Her daughter abducted, Demeter sings the words “torn from my body”. In each restatement of this theme my music originally delved into an increasing sense of sadness and grief. Nicola suggested that the text here is one that actually dwells for a moment on loss but moves quickly to an emotion of one who feels betrayed – loss – bitterness – anger – and in the end a move into action. After a number of attempts I arrived at an opening harmonic concept that plays to Demeter’s grief but in each of the two following verses the harmonic undercarriage shifts to follow her changing emotions. Near the end, grief has given way to fury and the chorus will join her on stage for the closing of the scene heard here with only the rhythmic pulsing of the orchestra.
Stay tuned. The conveyor belt of progress is slowly starting to chug along.
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