Page 10 - GALIET MUSIC´S METAPHOR: The House of Atreus IV

far excel the less effective portrayals of Orestes’ matricide and of the gods.
These musical fissures enhance the tensions of the Oresteia’s textual reality. Although we are uncertain whether percussion is heard on stage in classical Athens, “The House of Atreus” hurls us into the tensions felt among drums, pipe and lyre throughout the play. Much of this textual and musical friction progresses from drums-only (Agamemnon) to drums-pipe-lyre (Libation Bearers) to lyre-only (Eumenides) throughout the plays. In a way, these musical tensions evoke the Dionysian and Apollonian Athenian fissure. In Agamemnon, drumming overwhelms one’s senses: suspense blooms as doom approaches. These Dionysian interludes are twofold. First, they precede the koryphaios’ welcoming soliloquy (Ag. 780-785) and supersede Agamemnon and Clytemnestra’s dialogue (Ag. 914-956). Secondly, they accent the arrival of Agamemnon and of the meters of luxuriant embroideries flowing from within the palace. Similarly, agitated percussion in Libation Bearers intensifies Orestes’ coming to Argos. Much Dionysian-like drumming precedes the prologue and supersedes the procession (LB 1-9) providing a stark contrast to Apollonian lyre playing. In order to make Agamemnon’s and Aegisthus’ off-stage murders more afflicted, one hears, the percussive terror of the Dionysian5 soul as an emblem of retributive murder. Orestes’ on-stage matricide, by contrast, accompanied by a mix of drum-pipes-lyre suggests first, Orestes’ confusion about killing his suppliant mother and, second, Athens’ transition from the drumming Dionysian phase to the lyrical Apollonian phase of restorative murder. These contrasts become more and more evident
5 Dionysus, in retribution for Pentheus’ rejection of his divinity, causes Agave, Ino and Autonae to tear him to pieces in a fit of Dionysiac madness. The Minyads were also horribly afflicted for resisting the god and feasted on their own children. The Proetids suffered a similar fate. The Etruscan pirates, who kidnapped him, were also driven insane.
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