In the spring of 2016, I wrote “incidental music” for The Laodamiad, a new play by Chas Libretto. The play tells the story of Laodamia, the first widow of the Trojan War, and was inspired by the sole surviving line of an ancient Greek drama. My first instinct after reading Chas’s play was to create a score for solo cello, to be played live onstage. I asked Kajsa William-Olsson to play and to my great fortune she agreed. We spent many hours together, exploring themes, sounds and the relationship between the text, the actors and the music.	
	
	My idea for the music was to create themes for the main characters, as well as themes for love, fate and the underworld. I then transposed each theme into every mode (Ionian, Dorian, Phrygian, Lydian, Mixolydian, Aolian, Locrian.) Once I had a version of each theme in every mode, I made further variations of each modal version in retrograde, inverted, and inverted retrograde, a technique normally associated with Schoenberg’s 12-tone System. I used the different modal variations and inversions to reflect different aspects of character and story. A theme of love would transform to despair when it was played backwards. A hero’s theme would become broken when inverted.

	THE LAODAMIAD (A Mythic Journey) utilizes the musical materials I created for the play, and reflects the structure of the story starting with Laodamia walking into the ocean, in despair. Iolaus rescues her, and the spark of love begins. Hesitation, and then a quick marriage. Soon after, Iolaus is called to war. Fate is not kind. As his is the first foot to touch the sand, he is the first to die. Laodamia goes to the underworld to search for him. His transformed persona (now called Protesileos) sends her away. Laodamia’s father (Acastus) erects a bronze statue of Iolaus, and Laodamia falls in love with the statue. Acastus cannot bear to see his daughter’s delusion, and takes the statue down. Laodamia is immediately pulled into the underworld again, but this time is visited by her mother who sends her back in the world to live. The final scene takes place thirty years later, next to a tree that she planted to honor her husband.

1 Ocean Of Despair

Song for Tenor and Harp by Jason Robert Taylor.
Recorded by Daniel Neer, tenor and Caroline Cole, harpist.  Text: Sonnet LXIII, William Shakespeare.

Bare Ruined Choirs

Kim Sherman is a composer who writes music for concert, stage and film. 

1 Ocean Of Despair

kdsherman

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