Medea’s Meditation and Dance of Vengeance Op.23a

Barber’s Medea music originated as a ballet score for the Martha Graham Dance Company, who gave the first performance (under the title Serpent of the Heart) at the MacMillan Theatre in New York in 1946. As a pioneer of modern dance committed to collaboration with contemporary composers, Graham was no doubt eager to continue the series of high-profile commissions which already included Copland’s Appalachian Spring, Hindemith’s Hérodiade and Milhaud’s Jeux de printemps. Even so, Samuel Barber, who was best known at the time for his Adagio for strings and his lyrical Violin Concerto, was not the obvious choice of composer for this particular project. Based on the Medea of Euripides, Graham’s scenario is strident with ugly echoes of betrayal, jealousy, and cruel revenge.

Although Barber did prove himself equal to the demands that were made on him, it took some time to get the score as he wanted it. A revised version of the ballet was presented in 1947, now under the title Cave of the Heart but still with an ensemble limited to the 13 instruments that could be accommodated in a theatre pit. The next step was to separate seven movements of the score from the ballet and arrange them for full orchestra as a Medea concert suite. It wasn’t until 1955, however, that the present work, Medea’s Meditation and Dance of Vengeance – a single movement featuring music associated only with Medea herself – was completed. First performed in 1956 by Dimitri Mitropoulos and the New York Philharmonic, it proved to be much the most successful arrangement of music from the ballet score and has remained one of Barber’s most popular pieces.

Towards the end of his life Barber shortened the title to Medea’s Dance of Vengeance but Medea’s Meditation and Dance of Vengeance is surely more helpful in that it reflects the reality of a construction which, though continuous, is divided in two sections by a distinct change of tone and tempo. In the slower and longer first section Medea contemplates her love for her children, the infidelity of her husband Jason and the vengeful decision she makes not only to poison her rival but also, so as to cause Jason maximum pain, kill their children. The shorter and mainly quick second section is her frenzied dance of vengeance.

The work opens with quietly sustained high string sound as a background to an eerie xylophone motif and fragmentary woodwind phrases. The tender episode that follows, with solo violin and viola rising and falling in thirds and a lyrical flute melody later taken up by clarinet, reflects Medea’s love for her children. That mood does not last long, however. Woodwind figuration becomes more anxious and provokes an early climax on the brass with the xylophone motif doubled in fortissimo octaves on the piano. With the tempo moving ahead the strings become ever more anguished. The tempo slows for a sombre cor anglais solo and then becomes more agitated before a dramatic recall of the opening.

The dance of vengeance, the beginning of which is marked by the quiet entry of a side drum, is animated for the most part by an urgent ostinato on the piano against which woodwind and brass their ever more vehement anger. As Medea says in Euripides tragedy,“Come, Medea, whose father was noble, whose grandfather was God of the sun, go forward to the dreadful act” – which she does with extraordinary rhythmic and textural ferocity, slowing down briefly before projecting herself into her final frenzy.