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Apollo and Dionysus

A sequence of poetry, prose and music celebrating the gods Apollo and Dionysus and their contrasting natures. With readings by Niamh Cusack and Philip Franks.

This programme is an offering to the gods Apollo and Dionysus, or Bacchus as the Romans called him. Apollo, with his golden curls and athletic beauty is the God of Light. He personifies Reason and Harmony. Dionysus, with vine leaves in his tangled hair, is the God of Wine and he represents Chaos and Ecstasy unchecked by Reason. Are you Apollonian or a Dionysian? If you're not sure, perhaps this edition of Words and Music will help you to make up your mind.

Producer: Philippa Ritchie.

1 hour, 15 minutes

Last on

Sun 25 Jan 2015 17:30
麻豆约拍 Radio 3

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Music Played

Timings (where shown) are from the start of the programme in hours and minutes

  • 00:00

    Ian Venables

    Temple to Apollo, from Complete Works for Solo Piano

    Performer: Graham Lloyd.
    • NAXOS 8573156.
    • Tr2.

  • Robert Herrick

    To Apollo, read by Philip Franks

  • Callimachus (c. 310-240 BCE) translated by H W Tytler

    from Hymn To Apollo, read by Niamh Cusack

  • 00:03

    Benjamin Britten

    Young Apollo

    Performer: Steven Osborne piano, 麻豆约拍 Scottish Symphony Orchestra.
    • HYPERION CDA67625.
    • Tr6.

  • Rick Riordan

    Percy Jackson and the Titan聮s Curse, read by Philip Franks

  • 00:07

    George Harrison

    Here Comes The Sun

    Performer: George Harrison (lead vocals) The Beatles.
    • APPLE 3824682.
    • Tr7.
  • 00:09

    Nikolay Tcherepnin

    Bacchus Et Les Bacchantes from Le Pavillon d聮Armide (ballet)

    Performer: Moscow Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Henry Shek.
    • MARCO POLO.
    • Tr10.

  • Bacchae by Robin Robertson, adapted from Euripides

    Speech by Dionysus, read by Philip Franks

  • 00:10

    Nikolay Tcherepnin

    Bacchus Et Les Bacchantes from Le Pavillon d聮Armide (ballet)

    Performer: Moscow Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Henry Shek.
    • MARCO POLO.
    • Tr10.
  • 00:13

    Jocelyn Pook

    Untold Things, Dionysus

    Performer: Melanie Pappenheim.
    • REALWORLD CDRW93.
    • Tr1.

  • Bacchae by Robin Robertson, adapted from Euripides

    Speech by the Chorus, read by Niamh Cusack

  • 00:13

    Carl Orff

    Veni, Veni, Venias from Carmina Burana

    • IMP CLASSICS PCD 855.
    • Tr23.

  • Robert Herrick

    A Canticle To Apollo, read by Philip Franks

  • 00:19

    Robert J. Foster

    Ancient Empires 1, Anakrousis

    Performer: Robert J. Foster.
    • KPM 0565 01001.
    • Tr10.
  • 00:20

    Igor Stravinsky

    Apollo, Naissance d聮Apollon

    Performer: City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra conducted by Simon Rattle.
    • EMI CDC 7 49636 2.
    • Tr1.

  • Rainer Maria Rilke

    Archaic Torso of Apollo read by Niamh Cusack

  • 00:31

    Johann Nepomuk Hummel

    Variations on Vivat Bacchus

    Performer: Madoka Inui.
    • NAXOS 8572736.
  • 00:34

    Sylvie Bodorov谩

    Juda Maccabeus, Orgies In The Temple

    Performer: Prague Radio Symphony amd Prague Royal Philharmonic Choir.
    • ARCO DIVA UP0065-2.
    • Tr9.
  • 00:34

    Henry Purcell

    Secular Solo Songs Vol 3, Bacchus Is A Pow聮r Divine

    Performer: Michael George, singer and The King's Consort.
    • HYPERION CDA66730.
    • Tr12.

  • Tony Harrison

    Speech of Apollo from The Trackers of Oxyrhynchus, read by Philip Franks

  • 00:39

    Carl Orff

    Opera聮s Greatest Drinking Songs, Taberna Quando Sumus from Carmina Burana

    Performer: Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra and Chorus, conducted by Leonard Slatkin.
    • RCA 09026680952.
    • Tr7.

  • Robert Herrick

    Apollo, A Short Hymn, read by Niamh Cusack

  • 00:00

    Tomaso Giovanni Albinoni

    Nascimento Dell' Aurora, aria: Pianta bella (sung by Apollo)

    Performer: Terry Wey and the Clemencic Consort.
    • OEHMS OC913.
    • Tr24.
  • 00:46

    Fr茅d茅ric Chopin

    Prelude in E Minor Op 28 No 4

    Performer: Jean鈥怸ves Thibaudet.
    • DECCA 466 357-2.
    • Tr3.

  • Matthew Arnold

    Apollo Musagates (part of Empedocles on Etna) read by Niamh Cusack

  • 00:49

    Henry Purcell

    Dioclesian, aria: Make Room For The Great God Bacchus

    Performer: Monteverdi Choir, English Baroque Soloist conducted by John Elliot Gardiner.
    • ERATO 4509997772.
    • Tr16.
  • 00:53

    Alberto Ginastera

    Estancia, CD title: Heitor Villar-Lobos, John Antill, Alberto Ginastera

    Performer: London Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Sir Eugene Goossens.
    • Everest evc9007.
    • Tr12.

  • Robert Robinson

    extract from Dionysus And The Maiden read by Philip Franks

  • 00:56

    George Frideric Handel

    Apolle e Dafne, aria: Cara Pianta Co聮Miei Pianti

    Performer: Thomas Bauer.
    • CANTATE ITALIANE GLOSSA GCD921527.
    • Tr18.
  • 01:00

    Duke Ellington, Jon Hendricks

    Gimme That Wine

    Performer: Lambert, Hendricks & Ross.
    • COLUMBIA C2K64933.
    • Tr7.

  • Seamus Heaney

    To A Wine Jar, read by Philip Franks

  • 01:03

    Igor Stravinsky

    The Rite of Spring, Ritual of Abduction

    Performer: City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Simon Rattle.
    • EMI CDC 7496362.
    • Tr 11.

  • Robin Robertson, adapted from Euripides

    Chorus speech from Bacchae

  • 01:04

    Benjamin Britten

    Death in Venice, aria: Receive The Stranger God

    Performer: Philip Landridge, City of London Sinfonia, conducted by Richard Hickox.
    • CHANDOS CHAN102802.
    • Tr20.
  • 01:05

    Igor Stravinsky

    The Rite of Spring, Ritual of Abduction

    Performer: City of Birmingham symphony Orchestra conducted by Simon Rattle.
    • EMI CDC 7496362.
    • Tr 11.
  • 01:09

    Igor Stravinsky

    Apollo, Apotheose

    Performer: City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, Simon Rattle.
    • EMI CDC 7 49636 2.
    • Tr10.

  • Percy Bysshe Shelley

    Hymn of Apollo (final verse) read by Philip Franks

Producer鈥檚 Note

Although Apollo and Dionysus are both sons of Zeus, they are completely different.听 Apollo is the God of light and the sun. 听He is the leader of the Muses, so he鈥檚 connected with music, poetry and art.听 Dionysus, or Bacchus as the Romans called him, is the God of wine and ecstasy and madness. But he too is associated the arts, with music and theatre in particular.

Scholars have portrayed Apollo as a symbol of harmony and reason and Dionysus as representative of the libido and gratification.听 The dichotomy between the Apollonian and Dionysian was famously analysed by Nietzsche in his essay The Birth of Tragedy.听 A much earlier writer to depict the tension between our rational minds and our primitive urges was Euripides, whose play The Bacchae was first performed in 405 BCE.听听 It is a vivid dramatization of what happens when we deny our basic instincts - when Apollonian restraint tries to deny the Dionysian libido.听 It is the tension in all of us between the rational and the irrational, between restraint and release, that I wanted to explore musically and verbally in this programme.听

The first thing I had to consider was whether music could be divided into the Apollonian and the Dionysian and if so, what were the main features of each style? 听I started by looking at Stravinsky and his score for the ballet Apollo (originally entitled Apollo Musagetes) which was choreographed by Balanchine.听 The work was composed in 1927/28, during his neo-Classical period. In his Poetics of Music, Stravinsky said of Apollo 鈥淲hat is important for the lucid ordering of the work 鈥� for its crystallization 鈥� is that all the Dionysian elements which set the imagination of the artist in motion and make the life-sap rise must be properly subjugated before they intoxicate us, and must finally be made to submit to the law: Apollo demands it."听 He conceived it as a 鈥榖allet blanc鈥�, a classical ballet in which all the dancers wear white 鈥� as in Giselle or the 鈥榳hite act鈥� of Swan Lake.

According to Balanchine, when he heard Stravinsky鈥檚 music all he could see was pristine white. The choreography he created for the piece was completely abstract and avoided any hint of story or psychological expression and it was staged in an austere modernist style.听 There is a tranquillity and objectivity to the ballet that is far removed from the dissonant, rhythmic and primitive-sounding score he wrote fourteen years earlier for Nijinsky鈥檚 ballet The Rites of Spring.听 That ballet depicts the primitive rituals celebrating spring, ending with the sacrifice of a young woman, 鈥榯he Chosen Maiden鈥�.听 It seemed to me that Stravinsky鈥檚 Apollo music is purely Apollonian, whereas The Rite of Spring is purely Dionysian 鈥� but you may disagree. 听I decided to start and finish the programme with extracts from Stravinsky鈥檚 Apollo, but sandwiched in between are plenty of seductive pieces of Dionysian music, including an extract from The Rites of Spring.听

I wondered whether musical instruments themselves could be divided into the Apollonian or Dionysian.听 The lyre was famously Apollo鈥檚 instrument and the aulos was associated with Dionysus. The aulos was a wind instrument, a bit similar to a flute but with a reed mouthpiece. I found it quite difficult to associate the delicacy of a wind instrument with wild Bacchic orgies, though it was easy to associate the plangency of the lyre with Apollo.听 The aulos came from the East, whereas the Greeks invented the lyre, so it may be that the difference between the instruments symbolised the difference between indigenous and Oriental culture.听 To me stringed instruments tend to sound Apollonian, whereas drums and brass feel Bacchic.听 And I also can鈥檛 help feeling that melody is essentially Apollo鈥檚 territory whereas rhythm belongs to Bacchus. 听The music I have chosen to represent Dionysus in the programme tends to be rhythmic, lower and louder whereas that representing Apollo is sweeter, less dissonant and more measured. 听

Near the end of the programme I have included an extract from Britten鈥檚 opera Death in Venice, (based on the Thomas Mann novella) where the central character of von Aschenbach falls asleep and is visited by both Apollo and Dionysus who proceed to give him conflicting advice.听 Dionysus urges von Aschenbach 鈥渄o not turn away from life . . . do not refuse the mysteries鈥� while Apollo warns him to 鈥渞eject the abyss . . . be ruled by me and my laws.鈥� Aschenbach cries out 鈥淒o what you will with me!鈥� and the scene ends there.听 In the next scene it becomes clear which god has won possession of the hero鈥檚 soul.

Most of us contain elements of both gods within our natures and the trick is probably to try and keep a balance between the two.听

听

听

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    麻豆约拍 Radio 3

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