Salome (2008) 10'
Incidental music for Oscar Wilde's Salome for oboe, cello, organ, and baritone
Oscar Wilde | play
Emma Lunbeck | direction
Jenny Nissel | Salome
Anna Lindemann | music
Cory Finley | Iokanaan, baritone
Ray Nagem | organ
Maddy Blount | oboe
Nathan Reiff | cello
Emma Lunbeck & Anna Lindemann | choreography
Premiere | 3,4,& 5 April 2008, Dwight Chapel, Yale University
Synful Orchestra | synthesized music realization
Anna Lindemann composed incidental music for a production of Oscar Wilde's Salome staged in a small chapel. During the dance of the seven veils, Salome, with increasing impatience, rejects the members of the court that approach her for a dance and eventually turns to seduce the musicians that accompany her, only to silence the oboist and pluck the strings of the cello before seizing the cellist's bow at the end of the dance. Sound evokes Iokanaan's imprisonment in a cistern as the chapel's organ drones and fritters beneath the sung lines of the prophet. Iokanaan's melodies are based on the hymn to St. John the Baptist, but as the play progresses, his melodies sink into the motivic musical world of Salome's dance of the seven veils.