Commissioned by Soundstreams' Emerging Composer
13 April, 2016, Alliance Francaise Theatre, Toronto Zorana Sadiq, soprano; Wesley Shen, piano; Daniel Morphy, percussion
The scholar Hypatia (4th-5th century CE) became one of Alexandria’s most respected citizens and teachers. Her grisly murder – kidnapped, flayed, burned – stands symbolically alongside the burning of the great library at Alexandria. The Greek word ostrakios, used by Socrates Scholasticus to describe the murder-weapon, literally means “with or by oystershells,” but also means sharp, similarly shaped objects. Struck violently by scraps of broken tiles and pottery shards – fine and thin and lethally-edged as oystershells – flesh does flay. Both the text and the music explore a sing-song, sinister atmosphere – a delicate, bell-like klangfarbenmelodie that never quite settles; canon-like, it never quite aligns. The identity of the Sibyl-singer is unclear, and her storytelling is hypnotic, elusive: the images of the sea, the shells, and the ashes all mix together in an echoing, shimmering, uncanny music – something (to echo Shakespeare) “new and strange.” percussion: crotales (2 octaves); vibraphone; suspended cymbal also: waterfall shells, capiz shells (played by the singer)