Patria
The Crown of Ariadne suite is taken from Schafer’s masterwork Patria. Dissatisfied with the limitations and excesses of traditional opera, Murray Schafer advocated for what he called “Theatre of Confluence”, a unique marriage of music and theatre which he employed in his dramatic works. Patria (Homeland) is a colossal twelve-part musical, theatrical, operatic, ballet cycle, which cannot ever be performed as a traditional cycle due to the scale and wildly differing settings of the individual works, ranging from a forest at dawn, to a carnival, to a beach, to a ritual from dusk till dawn.
Kirk Mackenzie explains it most eloquently in his article for the Canadian Encyclopaedia:
Unlike Wagner's music dramas where music reigns supreme, Patria features a flexible hierarchy between the various art forms so either text, music, mise en scène, or any other elements of the work can rise to the foreground to underscore a given dramatic situation; in Schafer's words, 'co-opera rather than opera'… In some Patria works, Schafer extends the number of art forms which are traditionally employed in the theatre by creating experiences which engage the audience's senses of smell, taste, and touch.[1]
Indeed, because of these directives, most of the works have had few performances, other than the Epilogue: And Wolf Shall Inherit the Moon (which is performed yearly in Haliburton Forrest, on the edge of the Algonquin Wildlife Park, Ontario) and Asterion (which has yet been unrealised). Another interesting facet of Patria is that the role of the audience is constantly subverted and explored. They might be passive spectators (i.e. Princess of the Stars), or actively interacting with the performance (i.e. Ra or The Greatest Show), or sometimes they must be performers themselves with no spectators allowed (i.e. And Wolf Shall Inherit the Moon.)
Patria comprises of twelve component works:
Prologue – Princess of the Stars
1 – Wolfman
2 – Requiems for the Party Girl
3 – The Greatest Show
4 – The Black Theatre of Hermes Trimegistos
5 – The Crown of Ariadne
6 – Ra
7 – Asterion
8 – The Palace of the Cinnabar Phoenix
9 – The Enchanted Forest
10 – The Spirit Garden
Epilogue – And Wolf Shall Inherit the Moon
For an overview of each work, I recommend visiting www.patria.org. In this research I will be focussing on the Prologue, Princess of the Stars, Patria III, The Greatest Show, Patria V, The Crown of Ariadne and Patria VII, Asterion. “There is a certain evolution of thought throughout Patria, but the individual works do not have to be experienced sequentially to be understood. Each work is self contained but gains in richness by the overlayering of themes from the others.” [2] The suite The Crown of Ariadne itself is but a minute representation of the greater Patria cycle. I am examining how best to convey the greater context through a performance, of how much to infer or how much to explicitly show or tell an audience.
Prologue - Princess of the Stars
The Prologue outlines the overarching story of Patria, introducing the character archetypes and central themes. The Prologue centres around two protagonists; Wolf and the Princess of the Stars. These characters are archetypes of the hero and heroine whose journey of reincarnation is explored throughout the series.
The story begins in a world fractured by the greed of humans, who have abandoned their place in the Great Wheel of Life. Wolf, a grim and lonely creature, whose anger isolates him from all other life symbolises this alienation from nature. The Princess of the Stars symbolizes the saving grace of compassion. She heard Wolf’s lonely cry and pitying him, she fell from the sky to the earth. She hoped to reconcile Wolf with the other animals, but Wolf, in his rage, lashed out with sharp teeth and wounded the Princess. She fled to a lake. There, while she was cleansing her wounds, the Three-Horned Enemy rose up, captured the Princess, pulled her down into the water and imprisoned her. Fortunately, the Sun Father was alerted by the dawn birds and descended to earth. He made the Three-Horned Enemy release the Princess's jewelled crown to the sky, to reinstate her constellation, but ordered her to remain on earth until she could tame Wolf with her compassion. As for Wolf, he was condemned to wander the earth until he could find the Princess. Only when they were re-united would harmony be restored.
Throughout the Patria cycle the archetypes of masculine, feminine, hero, heroine and dynamic force are reincarnated as different characters. Where my interest lies is that whilst all the other archetypes only visit the same character or name twice at most, the heroine archetype is reborn five times Ariadne as once as Ariane (in Patria and the Theatre of Confluence Schafer states that the heroine is always Ariadne. This, however, was before the completion of the garden works, Patria 8 to 10). What is it about this name or character that is so important to the heroine archetype? And what does this say about their relationships with other characters?
Set on a lake at dawn, Princess of the Stars is a fantastic example of Schafer’s environmental theatre and work in acoustic ecology. The drama unfolds in the centre of the lake with actors, dancers and puppets in canoes, with the musicians hidden from audience view around the edge of the lake. The music makes use of all the natural sounds and of the dawn acoustics.
Patria III - The Greatest Show
The Greatest Show was performed 1988 in DelCrary Park, Peterborough, Canada, and employed a cast of around 150 people, a mixture of professionals, students, and locals, with capacity for roughly 1,000 audience members attending each show. Originally entitled “The Greatest Show on Earth”, the latter part of the title had to be dropped after notice from the lawyers of the Ringling Bros, Barnum and Bailey Circus.[3]
The Greatest Show, as its name implies, is a carnival or fair, performed outdoors at night, consisting of dozens of attractions in various tents and booths. Wolf and Ariadne appear as spectators but the Showman, Sam Galuppi, compels them to volunteer for two magic acts in which Ariadne is chopped into pieces and Wolf is made to disappear. While the police stalk the grounds hunting for wolf (who is suspected of some unspecified crime) pieces of Ariadne’s anatomy begin to appear in some of the side shows. From a burlesque beginning, the show becomes more macabre until the magicians, attempting to reconstitute the hero and heroine, bungle the job and produce Three Horned Enemy [or Minotaur], who destroys the entire fairground.[4]
The audience are pushed out of the park by the musicians, with announcements broadcasting “It’s all gone wrong, get out, run for your lives!” The show ends on the empty park, with no applause, and a general sense of confusion.
After the disappearance of the hero and heroine, the audience are cast as protagonist and tasked with finding Ariadne. Although there is constant music, acrobatics and entertainment throughout the carnival, audience members also have the opportunity to win their way three private tents, the blue, rose and purple theatres, where larger musical works are being performed. One of these pieces is The Crown of Ariadne suite, performed in its entirety for a seated audience.
This clip taken from Rhombus Media’s film adaptation Carnival of Shadows (1988) gives a flavour of what it might have been like to attend. A brief clip of Crown appears at 4.11.
Patria V – The Crown of Ariadne
The Heroine, Hero and Dynamic Force reappear as Ariadne, Theseus and the Minotaur in Patria V, also entitled The Crown of Ariadne, based on the Ancient Greek Theseus myth. Schafer “chose dance as the primary medium in which to tell this story, because I want it to be sensed physically, proprioceptively, as if foaming out from inside the body rather than trickling down from the mind as a textbook memory.”[5] It was to be ideally performed on a beach with a constructed palace backdrop, incorporating elements of ritualistic dance, indulged by and involving the audience members. However, the practicalities of this proved impossible for the premiere, and so Schafer rewrote the piece to suit a concert performance. He noted, however, in his book “Patria, The Complete Cycle”, that it would be necessary to preserve “the terra cotta earthiness of an event centred in pagan Crete, the visceral uneasiness and sensual excitement of being under sun and stars.”[6] How one might do this is a question that might be carefully considered by performers of the suite.
Schafer’s version of the myth paints Crete as a declining matriarchal society, with Pasiphaë as reigning moon queen. Pasiphaë is presented as the figure of ultimate depravity, having been overly pampered during her reigning years, to the point where her husband Minos can no longer sexually satisfy her. On appearance of Poseidon’s bull, Pasiphaë openly desires him, thus coupling and producing the Minotaur, who was worshipped by the Minoans as Asterion. He was a sacred offspring of the bull (whom Cretan’s worshipped as a chthonic symbol of fertility), whom Ariadne was expected to marry after Pasiphaë’s death. Ariadne, as the future moon queen, breaks the line of succession by falling in love with Theseus and entering the labyrinth with him to kill the Minotaur. The outcome of the fight, however, is inconclusive. One of the three is killed and two unidentifiable, hooded characters escape, setting fire to the palace and fleeing to Naxos.
Unusually, a certain sympathy for the Minotaur is expressed. Schafer refers to him as “The Prince of Darkness”[7] and suggests that Ariadne is drawn to him, noticing “her own strange affinity with him.”[8]
Although Patria V uses a whole orchestra, the solo harp is assigned to Ariadne. In fact, the suite The Crown of Ariadne is used again in this work but repurposed in individual fragments to accompany Ariadne’s various dances. She is “all life, moving with the delicate grace of appoggiaturas.”[9] [harpists, infer what you will about how this directive may be applied to performance of The Crown of Ariadne suite.]
Although originally intended to be written in Mycenaean, due to vocabulary limitations the vocal score is in Ancient Greek (translated by Michael Silverthorn of McGill University.) The music also borrows melodies from Greek and Cretan folk music, although to the providence of these Schafer was unconcernedly ignorant.[10]
Patria VII - Asterion
The only Patria work currently left unperformed, Asterion, is set in a labyrinth, which audience members must travel alone, meeting characters from Patria along the way until a final encounter with Asterion/Minotaur. Asterion translates as “star creature”, and indeed, in using his human name Schafer acknowledges “the celestial light he inherited from his mother”[11] and that he retains his “divine spark,”[12] giving his divinity equal importance to his monstrosity. I feel this is important to examine in relation to the suite due to the relationship between Asterion and Ariadne, and by extension the relationship between percussion and harp.
In placing Asterion/Minotaur/Dynamic Force at the centre of this drama, Schafer further expands his version of the Theseus and Ariadne myth. He criticised other popular presentations of the myth, such as the Monteverdi and Strauss opera, claiming that “none present the heroic aspect of the drama effectively.”[13] The duality of the Minotaur/Asterion is fully explored here, focussing on the dichotomy between darkness and light, and Schafer stresses the need to expand the characters of Thesesus, Ariadne and the Minotaur; “Theseus would need to be provided with a more subtle character, Ariadne’s role would require expansion and the Minotaur would [be given] the cunning of Nietsche or the physical prowess of Nijinsky.”[14] It is difficult to expand more on the plot of Asterion for it has not been performed, nor the script/score published. I think it is still worth considering in relation to the suite however, simply for the humanising of the Minotaur, and how performers might choose to apply this to their characterisations. Or not, indeed!
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[1] Mackenzie, Kirk, “Patria”. The Canadian Encyclopedia. Accessed 7th August 2022. https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/patria-emc
[2] R. Murray Schafer, Patria, The Complete Cycle, Ontario: Coach House Books, 2002. p.209
[3] Public Energy Vault, The Greatest Show, written and composed by R. Murray Schafer, 6th March 2012, Promotional Video, 7.59. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JFUnGD3HVWU
[4] R. Murray Schafer, Patria and the Theatre of Confluence, Indian River, Ontario: Arcana Editions, 1990. p.210-211
[5] R. Murray Schafer, Patria, The Complete Cycle, Ontario: Coach House Books, 2002. p.154
[6] Schafer, Patria, The Complete Cycle, p.155 – Perhaps this might also be used as a directive for how to perform the suite?
[7] Scahfer, Patria, The Complete Cycle, p.204
[8] Schafer, Patria, The Complete Cycle,p.158
[9] Schafer, Patria, The Complete Cycle, p.155
[10] Schafer, Patria, The Complete Cycle, p.161
[11] Schafer, Patria, The Complete Cycle, p.203
[12] Schafer, Patria, The Complete Cycle, p.158
[13] Scahfer,Patria, The Complete Cycle, p.202
[14] Schafer, Patria, The Complete Cycle, p202