For some of us living here in the Northeast, autumn brings with it the pleasures of baked goods, homemade soups, colored leaves, moody skies, carved pumpkins, black-and-white horror movies, used book shopping, sweaters, Brahms, and cozy cups of tea. But for the House of Atreus, “fall” meant something completely different.
This Sunday night on “The Lost Chord,” we’ll hear music inspired by “The Oresteia,” a trilogy of surviving plays by Aeschylus that relates the impact of a curse on the House of Atreus. Dating from the 5th century B.C., the overall story arc reflects the shift from perpetual vengeance to the formation of a rational social justice system – the thinking being that man cannot hope to build a progressive civilization if he is engaged in unremitting bloodshed.
However, along the way to that all-important message, the audience gets to have its cake and eat it, too, as it is treated to such lurid incidentals as human sacrifice, incest, adultery, filicide, fratricide, mariticide, matricide, and cannibalism. The name of the cycle derives from Orestes, who avenges the murder of his father, Agamemnon, who in turn was killed by his wife, Clytemnestra, and her lover, Aegisthus.
The subject was a popular one with the playwrights of antiquity – it was also treated by Sophocles and Euripides – and it continues to have resonance in the present day. It is certainly very well represented in the classical music world.
Darius Milhaud treated all three surviving plays in the Aeschylus cycle, as “The Oresteia of Aeschylus,” which he composed over a ten year span. Combined, the cycle runs to three hours and involves over 300 singers and players. Allegedly, Milhaud considered it his greatest work.
The second part is titled “Les Choéphores,” or “The Libation-Bearers,” referring to the women who offer up ritual sacrifices at Agamemnon’s grave. The story, the familiar one, concerns the victorious Agamemnon returning from the Trojan War, only to be murdered in his bathtub by Clytemnestra and Aegisthus.
They go on to rule a resentful populace, with Agamemnon’s daughter, Electra, consumed by her thirst for vengeance, which is delivered eventually, upon the secret return of her brother, Agamemnon’s son, Orestes. In the meantime, Clytemnestra, racked by guilt and haunted by nightmares, attempts to appease her husband’s ghost and avert her fate by sending an offering of libations to his tomb.
Milhaud worked with poet, playwright and frequent collaborator Paul Claudel to structure Aeschylus’ play, the second of the trilogy, into seven scenes, beginning with a threnody and concluding with a plea for justice.
We’ll round out the hour with incidental music written by Dutch composer Alphons Diepenbrock, inspired by Sophocles’ “Electra.”
Comedy tomorrow, tragedy tonight! Join me for “Fall at the House of Atreus.” That first step’s a doozy, this Sunday night at 10:00 EDT, on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.
PHOTO: The fall has seldom been so grim
