Shadowplay

Shadowplay forms the second part of Goehr’s Music Theatre Triptych (the first, Naboth’s Vineyard, was written in 1968). The action was invented as a counterpart to Plato’s text, taken from the 7th Book of the ‘Republic’. Like the other two 20-minute parts, it can be performed as a separate work. In an underground chamber, men are shackled so that they cannot move. Behind them burns a fire and between fire and prisoners is a wall with a high road built along it. On this road people pass carrying objects of one kind and another. Some talk, some are silent. So the prisoners believe that these shadows constitute a real world, which they learn to recognise and differentiate. One prisoner is released. At first he associates the reality of the light he has never seen with the pain of his body which he has pulled out of its habitual posture. Forced into ‘the world’, he at once hankers after the illusory world of the past and is unconvinced of the wonders of the real world. Returned to the chamber, he is now blinded in reverse. The light of the real world has spoilt his eyes for the subtle differentiations of the illusory. Nor is he able to convey what he has experienced to his fellows.
The concept of 'music theatre' was developed by Goehr, Birtwistle and Maxwell Davies in different ways in the late 1960’s, but they had basic features in common: a small ensemble of singers and players, an actor/mime, a director. The composer provides the music and some of his own background imagery and then collaborates with the creative team, so although the score is fixed, a new dramatic interpretation may result every time. Written with great economy of means, they are fragile, yet universal.