Ssax(tsax)-tpt-pno-vln saxophone, trumpet, piano, violin and amplified narrator - Digital Download
SKU: S9.Q19663
For narrator and instrumental ensemble. Composed by John Casken. This edition: score. Egypt - destiny - D.M. Thomas - Drama - dramatic - poem - Cleopatra - Life - poetry - fate - death - dead. Downloadable, Score. Duration 25 minutes. Schott Music - Digital #Q19663. Published by Schott Music - Digital (S9.Q19663).
English.
This work’s title comes from DM Thomas’s dramatic poem on an imagined episode in the life of Cleopatra. Cleopatra offers any three men from her royal court a night of unbridled passion, in return for which they must forfeit their lives the next morning. Three men step forward, the last of which is the son she had by her brother Ptolemy, whom she gave away at birth. Unaware that Cleopatra is his mother, he gives her wine laced with mandragora and makes his escape before daybreak. The grisly tale provided the composer many opportunities for dramatic characterisation. The use of a narrator necessitated an episodic structure in which the music captures the atmosphere suggested by the text, and mirrors the different moods as the journey unfolds and the three characters live out their different fates.
The title Deadly Pleasures was suggested by the content of D.M. Thomas’s dramatic poem on an imagined episode in the life of Cleopatra. Cleopatra offers any three men from her royal court a night of unbridled passion, in return for which they must forfeit their lives the next morning. Three men step forward, the last of which (unbeknownst to all) is the son she had by her brother Ptolemy, whom she gave away at birth. Unaware that Cleopatra is his mother he gives her wine laced with the drug mandragora and escapes his grisly death before daybreak. The music of Deadly Pleasures skilfully captures the diff erent episodic moods of the text as the journey unfolds, and the three characters live out their diff erent fates.
