The Gifts of the Furies

RELOCATING A WESTERN LAW SONG

The Gifts of the Furies began as a lecture Dr Glenda Cloughley was to give to Canberra Jung Society about the social and ethical crisis of climate change in February 2008. But Glenda, a Jungian analyst as well as singer and emerging composer, couldn’t get the language of a lecture to come.

She felt snared by the same ‘sterile anxiety’ that the Citizens’ Chorus cry out about in the Greek tragedies the poet Aeschylus wrote in 458BC. Rather like us as the rivers die and the polar ice melts, the ancient chorus are complicit in a fate set by political leaders who have raised the mortal laws of their city-states above the immortal laws of Nature. Aeschylus saw the necessary corrective in terms of poetic justice and used the dramas to encourage people to bring the laws into right relations so the Furies of Earth would not regulate the balance in a catastrophic way by hurling a bloody tide of destruction against humankind.

Glenda began to feel that the human causes of the climate change crisis were more likely to be addressed if the power of poetics to reach people’s feeling could be activated than if it were all left to rational analysts and lecturers.

Three weeks before the Jung Society date, she began writing a story-song. Basing it in the analogies between our plight and the Greek myth, she also included the pain of ‘suffering into truth’ that is the lot of those artists who become caught in the spiritual challenges of their age. She interspersed the story-song with choral music she had written in the previous 15 months from the Songs to the Earth cycle and the first version of The Gifts of the Furies was completed four days before a work-in-progress performance Glenda and Chorus gave to the Jung Society with musical direction and much emotional nurturance by Johanna McBride.

For the 2009 performances, more choral and instrumental music has been added and the Greek story has been more thoroughly relocated to our time and place. The presiding divinity of Civilised Wisdom –– Athena in the ancient story –– becomes ‘Ethos’, the spirit of the city who has stood at the entry to the Legislative Assembly since Tom Bass sculpted her for the people of Canberra in 1961. Apollo, who seeks to rule all things with enlightening rationality, is ‘Lord Reason’. And the old songman Aeschylus, whose quavering heartstrings are tuned to the harmonies of life and Mother Gaia, the Earth, is ‘Mr Mythos’.

ANCIENT FORMS
Glenda has based part of the structure of her 80-minute work in storytelling and choral traditions that are more ancient than the dramas of the Greek theatre.

As Storyteller she sings the retold myth to a simple story tune in 120 verses of hexameters set to the Aeolian mode. A Narrator links the seven movements of the work and points to the story’s current relevance. There are choral songs, solos and small vocal ensembles. Throughout, the Chorus of Citizens comments on the emotional consequence of the changing climate and political leaders’ actions. Even the citizens in the audience get in on the story with comments to sing into the drama. In the end, as you might expect, reconciliation between people and Nature is achieved not by kings, queens, business leaders or priests, but by activating the great ethical potency of human love.

SYNOPSIS OF MOVEMENTS

The Watchman – a citizen of the city-state of Argos sees fateful portents as the fleet of the tyrant king sails home from war. The Chorus of Citizens tells of feeling frightened and powerless about the changing climate. Click here for live recording from Longing Wisdom on our Changing Climate (August 2008).
The Songman – Mr Mythos has a personal confrontation with the Furies of Earth and sets out to write a law song to warn the people about the catastrophe ahead.
The Crimes – Mr Mythos’ story about appalling murders within the dysfunctional royal family of Argos unfolds. The Chorus connects these crimes against nature to present crimes against the Earth.
The Trial – Lord Reason and the Fury of Earth take the place of the protagonists from Argos in the murder trial. The two laws they represent come face-to-face in the court of Ethos/ civilised wisdom. Reason wins in spite of the Furies’ threats.
The Eyes of Love – Mr Mythos loses his way through terror of the Furies, then recovers from his writer’s block after a dramatic encounter with love.
Reconciliation – The Furies of Earth and civilised wisdom are reconciled through the promise of the people.
And Now? – The story comes into the present as a question to the audience.

CALL FOR SINGERS
We are also seeking more voices for the Citizens Chorus, especially tenors and basses. Rehearsals begin in the first week of February. Contact Johanna McBride 6286 2486, Judith Clingan 6287 4132 or Meg Rigby 6247 1948 if you would like to sing.

DIARY DATES
Sunday and Monday 29 and 30 March 2009, 6.30pm
The Great Hall of University House, Australian National University