Daphne — for solo oboe (2021)
Commissioned by and written for James Austin Smith. The commissioner currently has exclusivity of the work, duration 4’
Daphne’s story is one that has fascinated me since the first time I saw Bernini’s Apollo and Daphne in person. True to the sculptor’s flare for drama, Bernini’s marble work recreates the moment Apollo is catches up to Daphne as she turns into a tree—leaves sprouting from her fingers, her midsection becoming bark as roots grow out of her toes.
“Daphne,” from Metamorphoses, Ovid
This musical work takes fragments from Barbara Strozzi’s Che si può fare. In the solo oboe piece, I imagine Strozzi interpreting the Brunacci text through the voice of Daphne: cursed by cupid, slowly having difficulty breathing as she becomes a tree: the gods’ answer to her plight.
The lament bass transforms slowly into a repeated gesture is based on the melody above the final word of the Strozzi song, “trabbocca” (stumbles). Daphne begins to panic, running through uneven roots and pushing through branches. The shape of the final flourish of key clicks is that of the word, “eternarmi” (eternalize me). I imagine through these gestures that Daphne is humming fragments of Strozzi’s song to herself as she frantically tries to escape.
Strozzi (1619–77) was the most published composer of her era. In Sounds and Sweet Airs: The Forgotten Women of Classical Music, Anna Beer writes, “The shadow of the courtesan, present in the lives of all women composers, still present now in the way we seek to understand them, looms particularly large for Barbara Strozzi. Yet I believe that Strozzi was on a quest for something like professional recognition as a composer. That she died alone, with no memorial, suggests she failed, at least in her lifetime. The record of her quest, those remarkable seven collections of music, means that, close on four hundred years after her birth, her ability as a composer is at last gaining the acknowledgement she sought, and that her music deserves.” Strozzi’s own transformation into a tree—her unmatched output as a published composer—allowed her to become something tangible and timeless that gave her agency.
Past Performances
Saturday, June 8, 2024 — James Austin Smith, Cape Town Concert Series, Baxter Concert Hall, Western Cape, South Africa
Monday, June 10, 2024 — James Austin Smith, Knysna, South Africa
Wednesday, August 16, 2023 — James Austin Smith, Bay Chamber Concerts: US premiere, Camden, ME
Saturday, January 14, 2023 — James Austin Smith, Tertulia x Iceland: world premiere, Evening Dinner Party and Performance at Brút. Tertulia is a dinner party and a concert, a musical and culinary evening. Performances between courses of Chef Ragnar Eiríksson’s celebrated cuisine at Brút, Reykjavik, Iceland