Escape: Chorus from Euripides' Hippolytos (Jon Corelis)

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Editor: Jon Corelis (submitted 2011-09-10).   Score information: Letter, 2 pages, 40 kB   Copyright: Personal
Edition notes:

General Information

Title: Escape: Chorus from Euripides' Hippolytos
Composer: Jon Corelis
Composer: Konrad von Würzburg
Lyricist: Jon Corelis Lyricist: Euripidescreate page

Number of voices: 1v   Voicing: SA

Genre: SecularUnknown

Language: English
Instruments: a cappella
Published: 2011

Description: A sung chorus from my play EURIPIDES’ HIPPOLYTOS: a modern performance version in verse with music. In this play the choral odes are set to music adapted from the medieval secular repertory; here, the melody is from Konrad von Würzburg's Winter. (My English translation from the original Middle High German of this work set to the same melody is also available on ChoralWiki.) My translation of the lyrics from the Greek is necessarily rather free, but is close enough to be recognizable as a translation. This score is for unaccompanied a cappella female voice: the number of singers, division of parts, and possible accompaniment are left to be decided by performers at production. In this sound file, synth female la-la voice is used to simulate the vocal. The entire play is available at the link given below. The lyrics are also given below.

External websites: EURIPIDES' HIPPOLYTOS: A performance version with music: http://sites.google.com/site/euripideshippolytos/

Jon Corelis: http://sites.google.com/site/jcorelis

Original text and translations

English.png English text


O that god would change me to a sea-bird,
soaring in the sunset,
joyously and free,
leaving all my sorrow
for my own tomorrow,
far beyond this lying world’s illusion.
 
I would fly away to that bright garden
past the ocean’s ending,
where eternity
nourishes the flowers
through their perfect hours
never touched by human life’s confusion.
 
To fly away, away, away, away, away on wings of wishing,
 
where the golden apples swell in ripeness,
and the fertile meadows
bloom abundantly,
bringing forth earth’s treasures
for the deathless pleasures
granted to the gods in calm profusion.
 
White-winged Cretan ship that brought my princess
from her happy childhood
to a queen’s despair,
fatal was your leaving
Crete for a deceiving
wedding-song that was a dirge of sadness.
 
Dark and evil was her hour of sailing,
luckless was her landfall,
doomed to pain and care,
crushed beneath the mighty
storm of Aphrodite,
wrecked by her unholy passion’s madness.
 
And now to die, to die, to die, to die, to die is all her longing.
 
I see my queen retired within her chamber,
weeping under fortune
worse than she can bear,
fastening from its ceiling
her last means of healing
ills that stain her life and end all gladness.