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- Cheryl Frances-Hoad
Bouleumata (2008)
- Cadenza Music (World)
Catriona Scott
Programme Note
Commissioned by the Presteigne Festival in 2008 and premiered by Catriona Scott during the festival.
Arranged for solo flute as Medea.
Shortly before writing this piece I reached the final of a competition to compose the music for the Cambridge Greek Play, which happened to be Medea that year. Although I didn’t end up winning, Euripides’ play stunned me with its depiction of Medea, a woman who kills her two children to spite her husband Jason (who has just left her for a Corinthian princess). This piece was inspired by the wildly contrasting emotions that Medea experiences during a monologue immediately preceding the double-murder: that she can’t possibly go through with it, but that she must in order to punish her enemies. In one passage she says “I understand that what I am about to do is wrong, but my thumos (emotion) has vanquished my bouleumata (ability to deliberate).
© Cheryl Frances-Hoad, 2008
Arranged for solo flute as Medea.
Shortly before writing this piece I reached the final of a competition to compose the music for the Cambridge Greek Play, which happened to be Medea that year. Although I didn’t end up winning, Euripides’ play stunned me with its depiction of Medea, a woman who kills her two children to spite her husband Jason (who has just left her for a Corinthian princess). This piece was inspired by the wildly contrasting emotions that Medea experiences during a monologue immediately preceding the double-murder: that she can’t possibly go through with it, but that she must in order to punish her enemies. In one passage she says “I understand that what I am about to do is wrong, but my thumos (emotion) has vanquished my bouleumata (ability to deliberate).
© Cheryl Frances-Hoad, 2008