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Description
The concept of "And Then She Said" evolved while I was working on the music for the production of "Medea-Plays" conceived and directed by Ed Isser at the Stanford Drama department. Ed had the ingenious idea to use four narrators, backstage, each reciting a different version of the Medea story in a different language (Greek, Latin, French, or German), while four actors on the center stage spoke in English. The rich musical possibilities that this idea offered attracted me immediately. With Ed's permission, I recorded the four narrators in the four languages. They spoke the text just as in the …
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The concept of "And Then She Said" evolved while I was working on the music for the production of "Medea-Plays" conceived and directed by Ed Isser at the Stanford Drama department. Ed had the ingenious idea to use four narrators, backstage, each reciting a different version of the Medea story in a different language (Greek, Latin, French, or German), while four actors on the center stage spoke in English. The rich musical possibilities that this idea offered attracted me immediately. With Ed's permission, I recorded the four narrators in the four languages. They spoke the text just as in the play, but I also included some variations such as having them whisper the text, or sing it on certain specified pitches. I then processed those recordings with a Lexicon digital reverberator, and combined them with some of the computer-generated sounds I had used for the original Medea score. The actress does not play the role of Medea; instead I chose to juxtapose the Greek myth and an opposite idea: the Judeo-Christian symbolism of child sacrifice as the ultimate religious commitment, as in the stories of Isaac and Jesus. The story that I adapted for this piece is that of Hanna and her seven sons, taken from the book of Maccabees. "And Then She Said" was written between September 1986 and March 1987. It is dedicated to the memory of Catholic archbishop Oscar Romero of El Salvador, who was assassinated there on March 24, 1980 for his beliefs.
This recording is part of the following collection of related materials.
Mnemothèque Internationale des Arts Electroacoustiques
Sound recordings of electroacoustic music from the archive of the International de musique électroacoustique de Bourges (IMEB). The works were created in the IMEB studios or submitted by participants of the Festival Synthèse or the Bourges Electroacoustic Music Competition. Access is restricted to the UNT community.