Daphne and Apollo - (1996)    

Chamber Ballet for Six Players

for Lior Shambadal

 

 The myth of Daphne and Apollo has inspired art of many sorts, from sculpture and painting to opera, with its themes of lust and rejection, flight and capture and salvation by metamorphosis.

 

Detail from Bernini's Apollo and Dafne, with hands becoming branches of the laurel/

 

I chose this for the musical forms of allure, the chase, and the ending of wanting and being wanted by escape to a separating distance. I met Lior Shambadal as he led us in Tannhäuser to open the new Pfalztheater in Kaiserslautern where he was general musical director. Shambadal serves as chief conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic among his many other pursuits worldwide.

 

Lior Shambadal

 

A consortium of players from that orchestra planned concerts, and sought works for this set of musicians. The work is tailored to them and a conductor. The sections are not marked with tempi, but rather indications for interpretation.  The recitativo, rubato espressivo may be thought of as the dotted quarter at circa 70, those marked movendo, molto agitato as the dotted quarter at circa 84 and the  lirico, rubato a piacere as the dotted quarter and later quarter in 3/4 at circa 50, though expressive, interpretive rubato is wished for throughout.

 

The French horn sings out a plaintive phrase, answered by the cold distant octaves in contrabass and bowed crotale.

 

The plaint becomes an aggressive chase between the horn and tenor trombone

 

A break from the chase, as two voices dialogue to a minimalist, repetitive background in the harp.

 

 

 

The chase takes up again, but is frustrated by a disjointed line in the English horn as change comes to the textures.

 

 

The tinkling of bell tree (or wind chimes) brings in a long-lined melody in 3/4, the harp with only small harmonic changes arching beneath the English horn's plaint. The work ends in a musical fade out.

 

16 pages in full score, circa 8' 30",  - an MP3 demo is here: 

 

The score is available as a free PDF download, though any major commercial performance or recording of the work is prohibited without prior arrangement with the composer. Click on the graphics below for this complete full score and separate instrumental parts.