A Note on the Music
I have long admired the Baroque operas that used as their subjects the myths from Classical Antiquity. For I heart Artemis, our imagined myth, I wondered if I could create an imagined ‘Baroque’ music as well. In its completed state, the score for this work is a modest homage to that glorious epoch’s forms and harmonies, but I arrived there by quite a circuitous route.
I began with Athena’s symbol: the owl. Where I live in Australia, I frequently hear at night the simple and beautiful two-note call of the boobook (Ninox boobook). Taking this call as my starting point, I developed a motif consisting of pairs of notes, standing for Athena and Artemis. Then I worked on weaving the motif into patterns that cycle perpetually, often through rich harmony, so that the pairs of notes orbit each other like the twin stars of a binary system spiraling through the universe. Viewed this way, the patterns and their perpetual cycles struck me as a suitable vehicle to carry the story of immortal beings. The polyphony that the patterns created also reminded me of the interdependence of living organisms to each other and to their environment, and how the textures of biological diversity become thicker and thinner depending on the external pressures placed on them. By happy accident, the musical material that emerged had a somewhat Baroque flavor, though, due to the rigid restrictions imposed by the patterns’ rules, at times it could seem almost mechanical; in any case, both qualities appealed to me. And it was in this musical landscape—a little extravagant, a little austere—that we were able to place our characters and watch them experience love, fear, and hope.
It is a testament to the virtuosity of my collaborator Maria Zajkowski that, in spite of the constraints posed by the unforgiving machinery of the patterns, her libretto remains stunningly poetic and lyrical, making it, as always, a joy to set to music.
— Wally Gunn, 2022