Carl Vine: Mythologia
Mythologia amazed audiences and critics alike at its Olympic Arts Festival debut in Sydney in 2000. Graeme Murphy's choreography was breathtaking, Carl Vine's score won widespread acclaim, and the Sydney Gay & Lesbian Choir's live performance placed the group firmly among international ensembles worth hearing.
By arrangement with the Sydney Dance Company, this release presents the dance score as edited for CD by the composer, with a new studio recording by the choir. The striking cover was created by Myth Design with photographer and stylist Richard de Chazal.
Reviews
Mythologia is a dance score composed by Carl Vine, an Australian composer. It is a piece about Olympian fun and games--the athletic kind and the sexual (mostly homosexual) kind engaged in by the insatiably horny gods and demi-god groupies that frequent Mt Olympus. The chorus is used only intermittently to sing original Greek texts like Pindar's odes to Olympic athletes. Most of the time, synthesized sounds accompany the choreography. Some of those interludes are atmospheric and New Agey. Others are percussive or full of 'flying saucer' blips. Hercules and Omphale tryst again (like they did last summer) to an incessant beat as annoying as anything you'd hear on a disco dance floor.
Mythologia is satisfying musically in being devoted to a single work, Vine’s score for a Murphy ballet of that name presented during Sydney's Olympic Arts Festival last year. Vine worked with Suzanne MacAlister, an expert in ancient Greece, to create a kind of Pindaric ode.
The Sydney Gay and Lesbian Choir, directed by Jonathon Welch, sings these texts capably enough within a quasi-orchestral, rock group and percussive context entirely created by Vine on computer.
This score is an outstanding achievement. In a practical sense it confirms the worst fears of orchestral musicians in showing how flexibly and completely an electronically based piece of music can provide large-scale and varied sounds for the nightly repetitions of a major staged event.
On the other hand, company administrators who believe this is the answer to improving the balance of their accounts should note that Vine’s capacity for using computers is creatively quite exceptional and that the vividness and resourcefulness of his timbres and patterning are informed by his very extensive experience in writing for ensembles and orchestras.
The appeal of the recording is enhanced by a booklet containing parallel texts and, satisfyingly detailed scenario for the ballet.
Artists
Carl Vine
Carl Vine AO is one of Australia's best-known and most often performed composers, with an orchestral catalogue of eight symphonies and thirteen concertos. His piano music is played widely around the world, and recordings of his work appear on more than seventy albums across the major streaming services.
Tracks
- Prelude – Hylas and the Argo 3:42
- Scene I – The First Olympic Games 7:33
- Scene II – Zeus and Ganymede 5:25
- Scene III – The Ceryneian Hind 5:57
- Scene IV – Zeus and Callisto 6:25
- Scene V – Eurytus' Banquet 4:59
- Scene VI – Omphale and Heracles 6:25
- Scene VII – Callisto Exiled 3:43
- Scene VIII – Hylas and Heracles 6:06
- Scene IX – Bacchanalia 3:59
- Scene X – Finale 6:46
- Prelude 1:54
- Scene X 2:32
- Os gar es Scene IV Carl Vine 2:08
- Alla kai Amphitruonos Scene VIII Carl Vine 2:25
- Olympic Anthem Carl Vine 2:02
Mythologia Carl Vine
Phainetai moi Carl Vine
Performer
- Sydney Gay & Lesbian Choir · choir
Where to listen
Carl Vine: Mythologia is available for streaming through Apple Music. It can also be purchased through the iTunes Music Store.
Carl Vine: Mythologia is available as a CD. It can be purchased online through Buywell Music or the Australian Music Centre which both offer online ordering.
Product details
- Catalogue number
- TP149
- Total playing time
- 72 minutes 1 seconds
- Release date
- 31 May 2000
- Label
- Tall Poppies
- Sound recording
copyright - ℗ 2000 Tall Poppies Records
- Categories
- Australian Classics, Voice / Soundscape
- Genres
- Contemporary Classical, Stage & Screen
- Barcode
- EAN 9399001114924
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