Eleni Karaindrou: Trojan
Women
ECM New Series 1810
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 Eleni Karaindrou is a Greek
composer best known in the US for her scores for the films of Theo Angelopoulis (Ulysses'
Gaze, Eternity and a Day), but she has a long association with the theater as
well. Trojan Women was composed for a new staging of the play by Antonis Antypas,
with whom Karaindrou has collaborated on 20 stage productions for the Aplo Theatro.
Antypas's interpretation premiered at the Ancient Theatre of Epidaurus on 31 August and 1
September 2001 in front of 15,000 cheering theater lovers who greeted it with a six-minute
standing ovation. It then went on the road for 15 additional performances. The public and
the critics were wildly enthusiastic about the play and its music. One critic called
Karaindrou's compositions "an artistic and spiritual asset," while another
observed, "The spectators were enchanted by Eleni Karaindrou's magnificent music. A
very important work."
I have to admit I have a little trouble wrapping my mind
around the heady concept of there being 15,000 screaming partisans for a work dealing with
genocide, exile, and the sufferings of non-combatants, but we are talking about Greece
here -- its national theater, after all, is classic.
Manfred Eicher, ECM's head honcho, re-sequenced
Karaindrou's incidental music, crafting a work that stands on its own. Or, in the words of
the composer, he separated the music "from the shell of the theatrical performance,
breathe[d] autonomy into it, and recompose[d] it with magical touches into an integral
musical work."
Eicher deserves a great deal of credit for this, but he had
such great fragments to work with. The composer was familiar with the ancient Greek
original, but Antypas's production was based upon a modern Greek poetic adaptation by K.X.
Myris. As she read Myris's words, Karaindrou reports, "The instruments appeared by
themselves, they sprang out of the need of the subconscious, charging with their presence
the pain of human adventure in this particular land, the land I call home. Constantinople
lyra, kanonaki, ney, santouri, outi, laouto, harp, daires, daouli, sounds which come from
the depth of time. Sounds which caress the shores of Asia Minor, travel to the Black Sea,
nest in the domes of Constantinople and bind with the wail of Smyrna burning. Sounds
recognizable not only in Greece but also in the Balkans and in all the countries wetted by
the Mediterranean . . . "
The music does have a timeless sound, literally -- some of
it could be ancient airs and laments, while other parts have an almost mechanical pulse
that would seem at home in any Soviet-era paean to mass production. But most of it has a
mournful, mysterious sound that seems rooted, more than anything, in the sound of the
sighs and moans of the oppressed.
Much of it is sung ensemble, by a chorus of women.
Oh, bitter lament,
my boy, my bitter boy.
Oh, bitter lament,
my boy, my bitter boy,
the earth will contain you . . .
Sigh, orphaned mother.
Turn your hands into oars
To row in the ocean of lamentation.
Trojan Women is considered one of the most powerful
indictments of war's stupidity and lack of "glory." Set in the aftermath of the
Trojan War, Euripides wrote it as an indictment of Athens' brutal assault on Melos, which
had incurred its wrath by remaining neutral in the war with Sparta. Although writing about
events shrouded in history, Euripides was actually reporting fresh news -- and great
literature, as T.S. Eliot observed, is news that stays fresh.
It's hard to imagine any message more timely or pertinent
to our new world order, or to our new century. Karaindrou's music serves to amplify and
refresh this vital work of art and, in doing so, reveals itself as a great work of art in
its own right.
If that makes it sound "heavy" or portentous,
blame me, not Karaindrou, because it is light and quite easy to listen to. However, it is
not a cheerful work for all of its beauty. It's haunting and full of mystery in the
original sense of the word: truth that can be revealed only by revelation and never fully
understood. It manages to insinuate itself deep into your conscious mind and work its
miracles unexamined.
And if that sounds like a religious experience, then
perhaps I haven't done such a bad job of describing it after all.
...Wes Phillips
wes@onhifi.com
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