Located in the UK
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- Niels Marthinsen
The Monkey (2007)
- Edition Wilhelm Hansen Copenhagen (World)
- 1.1.1.1/2.1.1.0/2perc/hp.pf/str 1.1.1.1.1
- 12 min
Programme Note
A Gothic Tale for 17 Players
Commissioned by the Århus Sinfonietta and Erik Kaltoft
Written with financial support from The Danish State Arts Foundation
The Monkey for seventeen players is the third of a series of seven compositions named after Karen Blixen's collection of short stories Seven Gothic Tales.
My musical gothic tales are written for very different ensembles - The Supper at Elsinore is a saxophone quartet, The Old Chevalier is for bass trombone and piano - but they all share musical material in a criss-cross of contextual references reminiscent of Blixen's narrative complexity: Themes and motives from one piece appears in others in new and surprising shapes and combinations.
Karen Blixen's The Monkey is about a Prioress who exchanges her soul with a demon. While she is possessed with the spirit of the monkey, she plots for her nephew, a homosexual, to rape a young woman, Athena, who lives with her father in an old castle deep in the forest. Athena is tall, powerful and undaunted; she strikes out at Boris, the aggressor, biting him, drawing blood, and repelling his advances. But Athena is eventually forced to give in to the Prioress's machinations and marry Boris.
The Monkey isn't 'about' anything. The music is inspired by the artistic content of Blixen's short story - its emotionalism, dramatic construction, atmosphere, period and setting - but unfolds in time and musical space in ways that are completely independent of the story's narrative progression... except one might say that the last and ugliest representation of the monkey finally forces the musical battle zone into a kind of reconciliation mode.
Commissioned by the Århus Sinfonietta and Erik Kaltoft
Written with financial support from The Danish State Arts Foundation
The Monkey for seventeen players is the third of a series of seven compositions named after Karen Blixen's collection of short stories Seven Gothic Tales.
My musical gothic tales are written for very different ensembles - The Supper at Elsinore is a saxophone quartet, The Old Chevalier is for bass trombone and piano - but they all share musical material in a criss-cross of contextual references reminiscent of Blixen's narrative complexity: Themes and motives from one piece appears in others in new and surprising shapes and combinations.
Karen Blixen's The Monkey is about a Prioress who exchanges her soul with a demon. While she is possessed with the spirit of the monkey, she plots for her nephew, a homosexual, to rape a young woman, Athena, who lives with her father in an old castle deep in the forest. Athena is tall, powerful and undaunted; she strikes out at Boris, the aggressor, biting him, drawing blood, and repelling his advances. But Athena is eventually forced to give in to the Prioress's machinations and marry Boris.
The Monkey isn't 'about' anything. The music is inspired by the artistic content of Blixen's short story - its emotionalism, dramatic construction, atmosphere, period and setting - but unfolds in time and musical space in ways that are completely independent of the story's narrative progression... except one might say that the last and ugliest representation of the monkey finally forces the musical battle zone into a kind of reconciliation mode.