John Buller’s BAKXAI, Iannis Xenakis’ Bacchantes d'Euripide, and Eve Beglarian’s Beijing Bacchae

: Three case studies of contemporary musical response to Euripides.

Abstract

This study explores responses to Euripides' metre in three modern operatic adaptations of Bacchae, whose composers all set the play's choral odes to music in ancient Greek: BAKXAI (1992) by John Buller, Bacchantes d'Euripide (1993) by Iannis Xenakis, and Beijing Bacchae (1996) by Eve Beglarian. The three operas appear to represent a trend in music and in the reception of Euripides at the end of the 20th century and can be seen, in the way they interpolate ancient rhythms, as collaborations between modern and ancient composers. In these collaborations, Euripides' music undergoes a form of translation but continues to play a vital part.
The means and extent of each composer's adaptation of the underlying music of Bacchae can be investigated by combining discussion of the contemporary reception of the productions with musicological analysis and the application of techniques from translation theory to the scores. The form, content, and performance history of Euripides' play, and its status as both an archetype of ancient New Music and a prototype of Orientalist art make it especially suited not just to musical adaptation, but as a source for a musical reception study which can explore the resonance of these two related phenomena in the music of the case studies. Examination of the critical and scholarly response to these pieces shows that they were all, to some extent, unsuccessful: they can be read as examples of artistic ambition hampered by the orientalizing of antiquity, in which the choice to retain the original language was a significant contributing factor. These diverse strands are synthesised to tell a story about the musical strategies employed by composers who refashion and appropriate Euripides’ music; and about the legacy and effects of those aspects of ancient music which, in these operas, are re-performed for modern audiences.

Date of Award	25 Jan 2022
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	University of Bristol
Supervisor	Vanda D Zajko (Supervisor) & Emma K Cole (Supervisor)