Why do mythological stories from ancient cultures continue to intrigue and inspire us? For one thing, they allow us to consider uncomfortable truths about human nature, as well as fantastic dreams and desires, from the safety of a distant time and place. Composer Steven Ricks drafts characters from Ancient Greek legends to express his own contemporary musical messages in Mythological Fragments, his new album on New Focus Recordings.
Me du sa
The album begins with the title suite. Medusa in Fragments is a monodrama for piano, electronics, and pre-recorded soprano (Jennifer Welch-Babidge). In a harrowing instrumental prologue, cold electronics shiver around jagged piano riffs. The sense of fragmentation continues as the music and Stephen Tuttle’s libretto (unfortunately not included in the packaging) depict aspects of the Medusa myth from the Gorgon’s point of view. Sometimes in spoken word, sometimes singing, she angrily addresses Athena (who turned her into a snake-haired monster); Medusa’s “blathering” sisters and “vacant crones,” the Graeae; and the beautiful Andromeda, whom Perseus married after slaying the Gorgon.
Electronic effects splinter Welch-Babidge’s voice, creating unholy effigies of her words. Medusa’s worst spite she saves for her murderer. The digitally manipulated vocals and piano both compel and distance the listener; they suggest fire and blood, not machinery, especially in the aggressive instrumental section after Medusa’s address to Perseus.
With Perseus, Medusa has a “conversation” with no resolution. They talk at, rather than with, one another. Fragments of syllables arise between their intelligible statements. The sequence leaves us to wonder just what are “these phantom sounds” both of them hear?
A final, instrumental segment is addressed to Pegasus, the mythical horse who sprang from the pregnant Medusa’s body after her murder. The piano tumbles to its booming depths. Whatever Medusa is trying to say to her progeny, we can’t know. The suite ends with fluttering piano figures that subside into an electronic void, like the winged horse soaring into the distance.
Baucis and Philemon
Maybe because it’s less familiar, the myth of Baucis and Philemon gets a straightforward narrative retelling at the outset of the recording of Ricks’ musical treatment (taken from his full chamber opera). In short, the Gods in disguise seek aid from a humble old couple after being refused by the high and mighty. They reward Baucis and Philemon’s ready hospitality by granting them their (humble) wishes. These include (eventually) dying together, whereupon they’re transformed into trees with “their branches intertwined.”
As low and high drones from the cello (Michelle Kelser) speak wordlessly for the arboreal lovers, sounds from nature transport us to a bucolic outdoors. There we meet our protagonists (soprano Madison Leonard and baritone Shea Owens) “at the dawn of a second life,” perceiving “something new in the air,” their human voices restored (wordlessly at first) for a recitative duet. An interlude of birdsong further suggests the lovers’ new vegetable existence. We soon realize that it’s this postlude to the story, not the events of the myth itself, that form the body of the suite. “What do we do when time goes astray?” Philemon asks.
Harp, cello, and flute are prominent in the contemplative Baucis and Philemon. Its movements move through the four seasons, rife with sounds of water, wind, and birds. Though mostly restrained, the music buzzes with life. “I Once Complained” finds Philemon reflecting on the pains of life as a human and the new realities of life as a tree. “The Arrow of Time,” depicting summer, crescendoes as the singers patter: “It [time] moves like a river that never runs dry.” In Ricks’ conception, the couple’s afterlife rooted by a lake is far from an unbroken stretch of blissful peace of mind.
After an interlude dominated by aggressive soloing from the cello, Baucis philosophizes more brightly (“There Is More to You and Me”). A storm blasts through, and when fall arrives, the trees have retained their dessicated leaves (“Marcescence”) – but still the pair despair over what will become of them.
Leaves and Wings
The tale of Baucis and Philemon is a rare Greek love-story myth that doesn’t end in sadness or tragedy. In this vision of the tale, our hero and heroine finish ignorant of their ultimate fates, ending their part in the drama in wordless vocalise – they have no answers. But as in real nature, organisms die to make room for new life. Quiet, toneless percussion at first suggests the emptiness of death, then increases to a metallic clatter – life reasserting itself (“The Hidden Lives of Trees”).
Finally, the narrator returns to paint a picture of the two trees in harmony with nature through the seasons. To be honest, I deliberately cut my third listen short by one track as I was putting the finishing touches on this review. I suppose the “Afterlife” epilogue closes the circle on the suite, but it feels a little sappy (forgive the wordplay). The more philosophically open-ended conclusion of “Hidden Lives” seems more real.
And so the Greco-Roman myths live on, not only on the stage and in literature but in contemporary music. Happily, far from growing stale, the ancient, endlessly variegated canon continues to inspire creative modern souls like Steven Ricks to do some of their best work. Mythological Fragments is out now and available at Bandcamp.
