His journey is a hard trip in which he needs to repeatedly stop, to surmount obstacles, to force through brushwood, to palter, to imitate wisdom, to resist temptation. His life is an eternal metaphor for the career of an artist. On the surface, an artist's life looks like beauty and dignity. On the inside, it can be filled with a sense of unavoidable defeat. Essentially, it is the ultimate service and devotion.
According to the ancient myth, as well as in art history, there have been several travels of Orpheus. One of these may be found in the film of the same name by Jean Cocteau (1950). In this film, the main character, after having gone through a mirror, moves against time followed by the angel of death. In the film, they both manage to overcome the elastic substance of time.
My Orpheus Travelling is an instrumental drama with a hidden subject, in which the dramatic personae are the motives, the harmonic structures, and the "characters" of the instruments. Their transformation and interaction outline the inner musical "plot".
The work was premiered by the ensemble musikFabrik in 2008 in Kyiv.
Alexander Shchetynsky
© 2008 by Alexander Shchetynsky