Rhian Samuel
Clytemnestra has always been treated as a crazy woman who killed her husband. But if you look at the story in Aeschylus, she’s treated very sympathetically. Her husband went o and sacrificed his daughter himself, and Aeschylus portrays Clytemnestra as a wounded mother. The last piece in my cycle is a lament for her daughter. I was trying to set the record straight a little bit.
I can remember every note of Clytemnestra. Even though I hadn’t gone back to it for a long time, as soon as the recording started it was as if I had written it yesterday. It’s a good example of my joy in writing for orchestra. The first piece is called ‘The
Chain of Flame’, about the bonfires on the mountaintops. I use the woodwind to create the feeling of flickering flames.
When I set text, I feel I’m having a dialogue with the poet. I feel that with the poets May Sarton and Anne Stevenson, whom I’ve o en set. I was almost inside their minds before I wrote the pieces.
Of course, I then need a musical idea that interacts with the poem. I’ve no idea where they come from, but I can sit and write a piece anywhere. I’ve composed in the lobby of a Tokyo hotel.
When I was a student we were always listening to new Stockhausen and Boulez. Now we’re listening to women composers who go back several centuries and it’s almost like new music because we haven’t heard it before. It’s exciting. As composers, we’re all the same; but audiences still make a distinction between men and women. I’ve always said that if you’re a woman composer, then please just be proud of it. Seven Ages of Woman is for International Women’s Day.
I’m coordinating it and I’ve been asked to mentor the younger composers. There’s one from each decade and I’m from the last decade, which was a bit of a shock to me as I don’t feel that old! When I was beginning, I didn’t know any women composers, and now there are lots of them. That’s great.