Medea’s Meditation and Dance of Vengeance, Op. 23a
Barber composed the music for his ballet score, first called Serpent Heart, then Cave of the Heart, in 1945 and 1946 on a commission from Martha Graham; the ballet was first performed at Columbia University in 1946. In 1947 Barber extracted a seven movement suite from the score, with greatly expanded orchestration, under the title Medea. In 1955 he created a highly condensed one-movement version of the suite, with further expanded instrumentation, under the new title above. This version of the music was first performed in 1956 by the New York Philharmonic under the baton of Dmitri Mitropoulos. The score calls for 3 flutes, piccolo, 3 oboes, English horn, 4 clarinets, bass clarinet, E-flat clarinet, 3 bassoons, contrabassoon, 4 horns, 3 trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion, harp, piano, and strings.
*****
In 1945 Martha Graham asked Samuel Barber to compose music for a ballet loosely based on the Greek mythical figure Medea, daughter of King Aeëtes and wife of Jason, leader of the Argonauts. The story of the ballet is horrific, even by the standards of Greek myth: Jason abandons Medea to take a young princess as his wife; in a fit of jealous rage, Medea murders her own children to spite him.
Barber and Graham were interested in going beyond mere story-telling in the ballet. Barber wrote, “These mythical figures served rather to project psychological states of jealousy and vengeance which are timeless. The choreography and music were conceived on two time levels, the ancient-mythical and the contemporary. Medea and Jason first appear as godlike, superhuman figures of the Greek tragedy. As the tension and conflict between them increase, they step out of their legendary roles from time to time and become the modern man and woman, caught in the nets of jealousy and destructive love; and at the end reassume their mythic quality.”
Barber’s original ballet music was scored for a mere thirteen instruments. When he made a concert suite from the ballet he expanded the orchestration to better exploit its dramatic possibilities. He increased the orchestration once again when he created this final, highly condensed version of the music.
This form of Medea not only concentrates the music of the original ballet, it distills its psychological subtext to its essence. The opening music is slow, brooding, and oppressive. (It is also immensely colorful.) The music grows with inexorable intensity as jealousy becomes rage and, finally, a savage madness. A magnificent and harrowing work.