Aperçu partitionNotice
Acrisios, King of Argos, knew that his grandson would kill him. Greek oracles are often conditional, so he thought he could evade fate by avoiding ever having a grandson, and locked his daughter Danae in a bronze tower for perpetual virginity. But a shower of gold struck the tower and slipped in, a shower of divine seed from Zeus, and the virgin Danae conceived. Acrisios then locked her and the child Perseus in a large chest, which he abandoned to the waves of the Aegean Sea. You can guess what happened next, if you remember how stubborn fate is among the Greeks: Danae and her son were saved, and long afterwards Perseus ‘accidentally’ killed his grandfather during a discus throw.
There is little connection between the legend of Danae and the work that bears her name. Certain passages were consciously inspired by recordings of the Hounza of Kashmir, and an imaginary whispered language was also used. Of the thousand possible interpretations of the reference myth, I wanted above all to retain the very distant echo of a golden rain on bronze walls on the shore of a Greek sea, and I dedicated it to Iannis Xenakis. It was first performed on 3 September 1970 in the ruins of Darius’s palace in Persepolis, by the soloists of the O.R.T.F. choir and Jean-Pierre Drouet, conducted by Marcel Couraud. A few years later, I dedicated three more works to female figures from Greek mythology: Kassandra (Prix Italia 1977), Andromède (1980), and Cassiopée (1978 and 1988).
Instrumentation
3 S.., 3 A., 3 T., 3 B., 1 perc (12 damarus for singers)First performance
Persepolis, festival, 9.3.1970, soloists from the ORTF choirs, dir. Marcel Couraud & J-P.Drouet
